4X4X4's and other works by Jack Collom and Maureen OwenCollaborations of 2009
Jack Collom was born 1931 in Chicago. Birder and woodswalker from an early age. Early onto humors of language. Moved west at 15, attended Forestry school in Colorado. USAF four years. Worked in factories 20 years, writing poetry on the side. Two NEA Fellowships, 23 books and chapbooks. Works with kids a lot. At 76, he's writing more than ever. Thinks everything is funny, perhaps also very sad. Latest book Situations, Sings, with Lyn Hejinian.
Born in Graceville, Minnesota, Maureen Owen grew up training horses and traveling the Racing Fair Circuit with her family who spent their winters in California. She attended Seattle University and San Francisco State University before moving to Japan in 1965 and then to New York and Connecticut. She is the editor and publisher of Telephone Books and author of ten collections of poetry, including Erosion's Pull, a Colorado Book Award and Balcones Poetry Prize finalist, American Rush, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and AE (Amelia Earhart), a recipient of the American Book Award. Formerly co-director of the Poetry Project in New York, she now lives in Denver and teaches at Naropa University.
4X4X4's
I
boldly splashed with designs
ashore I see a bowl
back in the tombs
deal like a hoseInvestors will plant marigold
but of course, you
but now someone says
you can tie a knotI think of Black
it'll take forever to
detail of stamp-sized portraits
water rushing to herin a desperate moment
smoked oysters for lunch
your ivory skin raked
together with real gold
II
between light and fact
crashing into the earth's
when all these things
then the dream spokecrystalline miles creatures pay
champagne it's called bamboo
initial pointless store showers
big pile of Republicansometimes took an egg
dense circle of shade
there will be no
rock from the cartwo hours of assembly
it was still bubbly
some tatted thing under
thorns crossing the yard
Shakespearean Sonnets
IHushed weeds brown grass or lemon seeded where are we?
Facing a land between our legs dissolving into black twists
The likes of wearing shorelessness poorly
O radiance O pearl O whirlpool of murkSyllables floating in wild array over sake cups splash of Samurai pottery
Seeking the state in which hot & cold are mottled like a Pollock painting
Vanishing! the ruins of the pony cart vanishing the little road receding
At last! it was like living coiled around a fire hydrantDodo birds are fabulous to have imagined never traveling
She saw her face in every tile, every floorboard, every anthill
The bakery is contemplating acres of sugar cane
To which he pulled out a plate of history from his chestThe chin of a tobacco shed recalls only melancholy
Bloomsbury, badly hurt, but climbing back up from the dirt
II
Every rock had its own idea; together they formed a babble of
Ageless zombie in haute fashion wear loses body parts walking
Warm skin cold bones, sketching woven stick façade
Rolled in that night belching promise of caged black holesSomething good wrap it up nail it tight deep in the hold with it
You stand in ice cubes watching for penguins
I tell you that sheer grammar has driven a wedge through my heart
"Her obsession with origami" he thought ruefullyAh, the way solid ground always breaks into the most beautiful curlicues
Mouthing Portuguese like alabaster and the olive
When the wind was done with arithmetic, it looked like the Milky Way
Tiny colossus and his miniature armsThe claws grow like red sumac in the oldest places
A satchel of tomatoes like rubies around a cat's paw
4X4X4's
exquisite corpse
into the middle of
life after you ditched
soldiers with attached pets
a fortunate kerflooey rangPeggy didn't think so
going to be huge
but then Wilbur never
the British radical vocabularyis "Yellow-board" absent?
recently fair is not
"tiles of laughter," y'know
might not be leavingbut while I dreamed
a parrot's eye-view
her lapidary "sweet nothings"
sad cellos go west
regular
who are not those
winter trees, which seem
foisted on the solitary
sandpiper? the storekeeper gazesswapping whimsical reverie for
two cans of peas
as troubling and turbulent
times call for Greektheir vermilion stained fingers
breaking down or not
long argued bent on
a quick Brooklyn breakfastcongratulate the broken bridge
radical little radishes -- until
a staggering silhouette approaches
quite near 17th St.
The Great Blue Heron and William Burroughs Sonnet
It is a loose frail platform of small sticks
You're only the most notorious paper hanger
Only dry mud dotted with smoking wicks
A telepathic sender dare not angerFace smooth like yellow wax over cheekbones
And filled with milky light. The doctor shook
Dawn bathed the city in fiery cornpones
In 1925, I sold this bookDonkey trails never bunch together
Our paper is opaque, with minimal leakage
Brothers and sisters yodel in the weather
That tends to swirl- it doesn't seem so freakishThose more aggressive get more than their share
Perhaps you've seen these creatures in a fair
Exquisite Corpse Sonnet
The baby threw her cereal at her Ma
A vast, still harbor of iridescent
The houses blazed; the little boy said "Ahhh"
Her flat shop girl voice that night fluorescentFrom "Quacker drab" to "light mouse special grey"
One more last search for them before going home
Until the glow was lost in the blue of the day
The corpse of a hog bursts out of the domeHe sat and crossed his legs. He lit a smoke
They all ran screaming "octopus!"
Of sharp, rebuffing shrieks and a little joke
A nurse looked at him cold and thunderousOne entire shift of customs people
Beware homecoming lost in thoughts lethal