RACHEL CONTRENI FLYNN at All poetry

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Cat
Jul 10 8:37 PM
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If you don't own it already-

one of the best books of poetry i've read in a long time

ICE, MOUTH , Song
by RACHEL CONTRENI FLYNN

Published by TUPELO PRESS
Cat
July 10
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RACHEL CONTRENI FLYNN
__________________________

Gold Stars

It was forbidden to touch
the Hummels in my aunt's pretty house,
arranged just so and shut
in the glass cabinet, pigeon toed,
rosy faced, holding kittens or balloons,
their porcelain bellies bulging
under pinafores and overalls . . .

and it was wrong to kiss
the high school janitor after track practice
against a concrete wall
in the band room vestibule
where a fake velvet blanket draped
the old upright piano,
and a long row of trombones tilted
in their shiny black cases . . .

but these
were the gold stars I gave myself
when I thought no one was watching
and nothing would get broken,
and I was brilliant: easing

the little brass latches
and reaching in.

[687]

The Physics of the Inevitable

My hometown mourns the farm boy
who kicked a cob stuck
in the combine's flywheel,
and I imagine his foot swinging just as he was thinking
I know better than this,
but it was too great, the weight
of his crusted boot,
not to follow through.
And I think

of the Viking ship pitching
in its greasy groove all summer
at Lake Schaefer, and how the carny said
it don't hardly take any juice at all to run this ride—
once set to rock, it just about
went on its own.

And I've made love like this,
the whole time thinking
how I wasn't,
the whole time my mind watching my body
as a thing in motion but not a mystery,
more like math—more like the arc of a burlap sack
tossed from Moots Creek Bridge,
then the heavy spiral
of rocks and cats.

[688]

Blue Mantilla

When you picked up the hitchhiker
on the road to Red River though I said No,
and he sprawled across the backseat,

filled the car with a stink of sweat
and shit and talk of duct tape, then dug
through his triple knotted knapsack

for something awesome to show us,
twenty miles of forest from anywhere
in New Mexico's wilderness,

I hissed Stop the car, but you hushed me

and smiled eagerly, as if we'd lucked
into some great adventure.

I didn't turn to look at the hollow book
he pulled from his sack or the top secret items
hidden there, but sat very still, curling

my fingers around the door handle,
and the plastic Virgin Mary glue gunned
to the dash stared past me, her mantilla

spread like the boughs of blue spruce
standing mute under the sky, blank
and huge and empty for miles.

[
Luna Tique Fringe
July 11
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That's going on my list for sure, thanks for sharing.