FISH DRUM
sample poetry

 

WALKING
by robert winson
(Fish Drum #11/12)

I'm one man
with two jobs
coming and going

walking
in the field of breath

among myriad beings
I'll catch up on wisdom later

Where it is
that all the Buddhas come from

like a man
who often spoke your name
when speaking to you

Never coming in through the door
They don't come in that way

Breathing out fields of living beings
Breathing in tremendous bones

I'm not done
But I did everything I needed to do

Now
nothing to do, nowhere to go

I don't mind
being lost

here
where the mountains stand
on the water

Out of arising
coming going

Knowing water
by drinking it

 

PLEASURE OF THE UNSPECIFIC KIND
by tom ireland
(Fish Drum #13)

Pink jubilation clouds
like staying up all night to write a paper
then walking empty streets at dawn
the thing done.

Or maybe a girl. A beautiful girl
who smiled at you thirty years ago
on your way to get a roast beef sandwich.

Or Fifth Avenue at Christmas time
smelling secretly the flayed skins
of women's pocketbooks.

Whatever you want to call it.
These unspecific clouds.

 

KNOW BY HEART
by trinh t. min-ha
(Fish Drum #14)

the worst thing
I'll have to recite this
twice a day
the worst thing
is to give
meaning to
something that
hasn't got
any

 

GREEN TARA
by Anne Valley-Fox
(Fish Drum #15)

"May all beings be blessed by the one who blazes with glory."

Sea grass, eyes in the feathers of
peacocks, Tara's green arms like
Medusa's hair, she speaks in me,
cool and green, when I pass her image
pasted on the refrigerator: Make a wish!
At last I screw up last-ditch courage
squeezed from thieving sorrows
and say: Send me love!

Green Tara, she does'nt mess around.
Next thing I know I am big with child.
I had, of course, envisioned something
other--roller coaster with stained seats,
White Horse Scotch downed by the sea
and dark sex to blind me. But Tara,
she has a raucous sense of humor.
The day she sends me a son, she appears,
neon headlights blinking in her hair:
G. T. delivers the goods!

A decade later she sends more
goods, a man in a green sweater. His love
is like a river of lotus, complex patterns without
complications. Between us the world is
overrun with children: heedlessly, they
trample municipal gardens, we stand them in
corners, suppressing giggles, chagrined
in embrace.

We have not said aloud to each other: Our blood
grows incessantly greener.

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