a bone to pick with time (by Chansonette Buck)

on barton felch, poppa ray facing us

a bone to pick with time
for poppa ray

sitting out back
in the sun
near my magenta
mini-field of phlox
i look up to see
copulating dragonflies
careen through air
to ricochet off foliage —
drunk, directionless,
on their dizzy way
to lose themselves
in dogwood
blossoms

4/18/14

author’s bio

chansonette buck had the great good fortune to be inducted into the obermayr family at three years of age. she grew up among would-be-famous (many of whom achieved that fame) writers, artists, and musicians, and suffered the consequences of being a child erased by those ambitions. in the course of her life after childhood, she has accomplished many things, not the least of which is surviving. other than surviving, she earned a PhD in English at UC Berkeley, wrote a (still unpublished) memoir “Unnecessary Turns: Growing Up Beat” about that childhood, has had her work published in a variety of venues (and been nominated twice for a Pushcart) and has had the very great privilege and pleasure of performing from those works in berkeley, cleveland, and manhattan. ray obermayr, to whom this poem is dedicated, is her heart’s poppa, and her idea of an artist/poet through whom light moves, effortlessly. she knows herself blessed beyond measure to have been his “daughter.” he passed from this world on her birthday, 4/22/2014.

science project, pocatello (by Chansonette Buck)

Chansonette Buck in Lorain, Ohio, 2011
photo by Dianne Borsenik

science project, pocatello

as a child, i was always drawn by death.
i thought it was a fifth-grade project
but i started it so early. early
i slammed out the shack door,
trotting barefoot on night-cooled dust
through sage, mountain flowers, purpleweed,
combing the borders of the government land
looking for death. sometimes i found it:
horse skulls,
eyesockets,
jackrabbit bones,
field mice under a juniper,
lizard skins drying on the hot red rocks.

 

* * *

“science project, pocatello” (c) 2012 by Chansonette Buck, all rights reserved.  It appears in her just published chapbook desire lines (Crisis Chronicles Press).  desire lines features 17 poems on high quality ivory paper with a cover consisting of ashen orange and white cardstock.  Dimensions: 9 x 7 inches.  It is available for $6 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111.

Cover foto captured by Steven B. Smith in Oaxaca, Mexico

Chansonette Buck spent her childhood “on the road” as stepdaughter of a Black Mountain poet, living all over the American West, in England, and in Spain. She holds the PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where she concentrated on 20th-century poetry and poetics and wrote a dissertation on childhood trauma as the source of William Carlos Williams’s poetic obsessions. She has a BFA in painting from Massachusetts College of Art, and has won awards for her visual art, her poetry, and her teaching. Chapters of her memoir Unnecessary Turns: Growing Up Beat have appeared in Why We Ride: Women Writers on the Horses in Their Lives (Seal Press, May 2010) and Polarity eMagazine (Fall 2010). Her poems have appeared online and in print, including a feature in the journal tinfoildresses 2012. Her first chapbook, blood oranges (NightBallet Press, 2011), was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Berkeley with her family, her boa constrictor, and way too many cats and dogs.

bath poems – moon train (by Chansonette Buck)

Chansonette Buck in Lorain, Ohio, 2011
photo by Dianne Borsenik

bath poems

moon train

listening to
the moon train
passing beyond
the bart tracks
while it rains
that lone
lonely whistle
i hear
on wakeful nights
without you
i sink deep
into these
soft warm waters
running my hands
along the contours
of my wet
body, as i imagine
you might…if you
could…if you
wanted to
as i sink
deeper
into the warm
wet and watch
the play of patterns
thrown by candles
onto the ceiling
above me

 

* * *

“science project, pocatello” (c) 2012 by Chansonette Buck, all rights reserved.  It appears in her just published chapbook desire lines (Crisis Chronicles Press).  desire lines features 17 poems on high quality ivory paper with a cover consisting of ashen orange and white cardstock.  Dimensions: 9 x 7 inches.  It is available for $6 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111.

 

Cover foto captured by Steven B. Smith in Oaxaca, Mexico

Chansonette Buck spent her childhood “on the road” as stepdaughter of a Black Mountain poet, living all over the American West, in England, and in Spain. She holds the PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where she concentrated on 20th-century poetry and poetics and wrote a dissertation on childhood trauma as the source of William Carlos Williams’s poetic obsessions. She has a BFA in painting from Massachusetts College of Art, and has won awards for her visual art, her poetry, and her teaching. Chapters of her memoir Unnecessary Turns: Growing Up Beat have appeared in Why We Ride: Women Writers on the Horses in Their Lives (Seal Press, May 2010) and Polarity eMagazine (Fall 2010). Her poems have appeared online and in print, including a feature in the journal tinfoildresses 2012. Her first chapbook, blood oranges (NightBallet Press, 2011), was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Berkeley with her family, her boa constrictor, and way too many cats and dogs.