Skyping My Mother (a draft) by Phil Metres – video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSg1dFkG1s8


Phil Metres read his draft of “Skyping My Mother” on 10 May 2009 at the Coventry Village Library 
in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, during Tres Versing the Panda: Three Days of Poetry Soiree.
 The event was sponsored by Green Panda Press and The Temple, Inc.

Video appears courtesy of PoetryVidz – camera & editing by Ken Kitt

* * *

Visit Philip Metres online at www.philipmetres.com

Follow his blog at http://www.behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com/

Drop him a line at pmetres@jcu.edu

We highly recommend the following works by Philip Metres:

   

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On 24th and South, Philadelphia (by Philip Metres)

Philip Metres – poet, translator, educator
[photo taken by Jesus Crisis at Cleveland’s Literary Cafe on 9/11/2008]

On 24th and South, Philadelphia

We need to envision utopia,
I read today, just before we heard
the crash outside. 

We need to envision utopia
but tonight, love, we gape
at the wind-blasted craters and cliffs
of Arctic ice
filmed in Nanook of the North.  Nanook, nearly
on all fours, gnaws
the frozen leather of his boots—
just to walk outside.  His wife cuts an igloo window

out of ice.  Today, we saw a woman’s face
sculpted into windshield.
She stumbled from the car, holding her head
like a bell.  Someone brought her a blanket,
lay her down.  Broken,

the traffic light closed its eye.  We stood,
the whole street still
crowded, quiet, someone sweeping glass,
red lights pulsing over everything.
I can’t help but admire
Smailović, dressed in full concert attire,
carefully stepping to the bottom
of a Sarajevo bomb crater, pulling the bow
across his cello
twenty-two days, one day for each one dead—
too often, I long for another’s life. 

But sometimes, you call me out
of myself so completely, I cease 
turning from what’s right
in front of me.  Some kids craned out a third story window, 
Bomb Pops dripping to the street.  Together
we watched the woman’s boyfriend
pound on the ambulance door
where the world lay, shaken, amnesiac, wanting him.

* * * * *


This piece appears in Metres’ prize-winning collection To See the Earth
(Cleveland State University Press, 2008)
and is included in the Crisis Chronicles Library by permission

All rights remain with Philip Metres

Visit Philip Metres online at www.philipmetres.com

Follow his blog at http://www.behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com/

Drop him a line at pmetres@jcu.edu

Order To See the Earth and other fine books by Philip Metres from Amazon:

   

   

The Idle Childless (by Philip Metres)

Philip Metres – poet, translator, educator
[photo taken by Jesus Crisis at Cleveland’s Literary Cafe on 9/11/2008]

The Idle Childless

The largely-unpuked-upon
dine in Thai Gardens every Friday night,
decide between Mango Lassi or Mai Tai,
discuss the tonal color of their favorite
Tuvan throat singers, Huun Huur Tu,
and lose a whole hour plotting
their annual worldspinning travel—

whose thoughts saunter like couples
on the observation deck of a cruise,
stand chatting before the banquet table,
freshened drinks in hand,
who can retire to bed whenever they choose,
with whomever they choose,
and wake whenever they can no longer

sleep—who, upon waking, occasionally
wonder what it was they’d forgotten,
the thread of it left behind in a dream,
and though they tug at it, it unhooks itself,
slips off, like a pair of glasses
over the ship’s railing, and sinks
to the bottom of whatever ocean they float over.

* * * * *


This piece appears in Metres’ prize-winning collection To See the Earth
(Cleveland State University Press, 2008)
and is included in the Crisis Chronicles Library by permission

All rights remain with Philip Metres

Visit Philip Metres online at www.philipmetres.com

Follow his blog at http://www.behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com/

Drop him a line at pmetres@jcu.edu

Order To See the Earth and other fine books by Philip Metres from Amazon:

   

   

Creation Story on Magnolia Drive, Cleveland (by Philip Metres)

Philip Metres – poet, translator, educator
[photo taken by Jesus Crisis at Cleveland’s Literary Cafe on 9/11/2008]

Creation Story on Magnolia Drive, Cleveland

The dregs of dried jasmine in the sink, pear slices over flakes in a wooden bowl.

Once there was a woman floating in a cloud, looking down.  Someone carrying a cello along the sidewalk, against the wind, as if she were dragging a partner in a marathon

dance, trying not to fall.  Once a car turned over, woke from its dream, and wandered backward down the drive.  Once a turtle sat sunning in the middle of the street, neck outstretched, eyes closed, holding up the world.
 
Once there was a nickel, a dime, slipped into the parking meter: fifteen minutes of borrowed time.  Fennel spines sticking out of a paper sack, a drought-split tomato bigger than a fist.  Our local gangster, gold chains around his neck, cradled the cardboard carton, fingered each egg for cracks. 

Mid-morning drizzle, back home, you talking pathology blues to your sister on the phone.  And wind shushing the willows.  On the floor below, the Greens outlining the risks of transporting plutonium.  And wind shushing the willows.  Dumping the rancid vegetables in the backyard.  A stopped-up toilet, rising out of itself.  And wind shushing through willows, working to strip the branches bare. 

Upon a time once.  Once there was she, once there was me, and not yet three: oil of safflower, sweet almond and sesame.  And lovely flanks, and a rough tongue tracing a flower.  Calendula and rosemary: not yet three.  (You were falling, falling).  And downstairs, someone cleaning dishes in a kitchen.  And hair sweeping over legs like a silk fan.  And thunder, and thunder, and a ripple and shudder of the blinds, O and O and O—wind breathing sweet magnolia.

* * * * *


This piece appears in Metres’ prize-winning collection To See the Earth
(Cleveland State University Press, 2008)
and is included in the Crisis Chronicles Library by permission

All rights remain with Philip Metres

Visit Philip Metres online at www.philipmetres.com

Follow his blog at http://www.behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com/

Drop him a line at pmetres@jcu.edu

Order To See the Earth and other fine books by Philip Metres from Amazon:

   

   

Patronymic (by Philip Metres)

Poet Philip Metres 9/11/2008 before his featured reading
at Cleveland’s Literary Cafe [photo by Jesus Crisis]


Patronymic

A man named Attalah from Mourjan traced his roots back
to the Ghassassinat—those who’d come from Mesopotamia to Lebanon

Eight years old, new to the neighborhood, I pedaled past
a pack of kids: their stare.  Spic.  Hey spic.  First one, then a hail
of crabapples pelting my back. 

Because of his bravery in wars against the Shi’ites,
the Amir called him Abou Alrijali, “Father of Men”
 
On a Carnival Cruise, my father once dressed as a sheikh—
as if to unlock what was coiled in cells, buried under tongues.
All junior high I blow-dried the revolt of curls.

From that day forth, he was Abou Alrijali
With print standardization the name became Abourjaili

In England I was French.  In France I was Moroccan.
In Russia I was Chechen.  In Greece, they read my olive skin
as theirs, could not believe when I couldn’t understand.

At Ellis Island, when Skandar ibn Mitri Abourjaili was asked
it was written: Skandar Metres

But at the port near Ephesus, the scrum of drivers
and pickpockets surrounded us, strictly business.  Among ruins
of houses, a boy who could pass for my child

pressed an old coin into my hand, asking for nothing
but its value in American.  My cousin, forgive me,
I was struck dumb: foreigner to my own lips.  

Like yesterday, a Friday, the sun down, a man
in black coat and bowler hat stopped me in the street:
Son, it’s time for shul.  Why do you walk home?

* * * * *


“Patronymic” appears in Metres’ prize-winning new poetry collection To See the Earth
(Cleveland State University Press, 2008)

with grateful acknowledgement to Mizna, where it first appeared

This poem is included in the Crisis Chronicles Library by permission
All rights remain with Philip Metres

“Patronymic” is one of the poems Mr. Metres performed Thursday September 11th 2008
at Cleveland’s renowned Literary Cafe – click here to view Andy Timithy’s video of the reading

To read Philip Metres “The Ash Tree,” please click here.

Visit Philip Metres online at www.philipmetres.com

Follow his blog at http://www.behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com/

Drop him a line at pmetres@jcu.edu

Order To See the Earth and other fine books by Philip Metres from Amazon:

   

   

The Ash Tree (by Philip Metres)

Philip Metres – poet, translator, educator


The Ash Tree
 
                December, 1998

1.  On I-90 in Indiana, Driving Westward

Just before we shoot through Gary, 
            our ’84 Accord stutters, lurches 
                        and goes silent.  Only the radio chatters,

like someone beginning to freeze,
            of the latest surgical strike: Operation 
                        Desert Fox.  Last night, we held hand-

scrawled signs at Courthouse Square, lifting 
            gloved slogans against the awestruck 
                        exclamations of CNN.  The gaggle

of traffic responded: quick beeps, long honks,
            the bird.  One Ram Tough guy bleated
                        something about Iraq, the Stone Age.

Like a small rain falling,
            Hassan said of the bombing.  Flurries 
                        blow like flies into headlights,

all America catapults into winter.
            On the radio an Ojibway singer
                        says the drum is the heart

of the people.  When the drum stops,
            the people die.  In the breakdown lane 
                        outside the Murder Capital of the World,

we consider the risks: stay in the car—
            frostbite or mangled metal.  Flag down 
                        some help—robbery at gunpoint.  Descend

the exit ramp curling beneath us, 
            to call a tow— …………….
                        ………………………  Headlights
  
bulldoze the black ash of Indiana night.

 
2.  Winter Solstice, Lincolnshire, Illinois

Dawn.  In this suburban preserve,
            I skid down the icy driveway in skivvies
for the news, swaddled in blue plastic.
            No mention of the midnight angel

descending in greasy overalls to lay
            his gnarled hands on our dead engine.  
Overhead, Canada geese kvetch
            like families parting at an airport gate.

Tomorrow, when you fly home,
            you’ll still be with me
like my own pulse, beating
            its single wing in my wrist:

what the geese ululate over, 
            what the robed Iraqi wonders
in the Tribune photo: he clasps 
            his daughter’s hand, stares down a crater

where his house had been.  My love, 
            this is our country.  A small rain falls,
arrowheads of birds arc the sky.  Last spring, 
            they circled our familiar ash tree

my father had just hacked to kindling.  
            It took him all day, what had been dying
from within for years.  What stood 
            cock-eyed and etched on my childhood

window, now hisses in our hearth, rages
            beyond all protest: the ash tree
squat in the flames it feeds 
            with itself, burning into its name.

* * * * *


“The Ash Tree” appears in Metres’ prize-winning new poetry collection To See the Earth
(Cleveland State University Press, 2008)

with grateful acknowledgement to Mizna, where it first appeared

This poem is included in the Crisis Chronicles Library by permission

All rights remain with Philip Metres

See and hear Philip Metres performing his poetry Thursday September 11th 2008
at Cleveland’s renowned Literary Cafe (click here for more information)

Visit Philip Metres online at www.philipmetres.com

Follow his blog at http://www.behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com/

Drop him a line at pmetres@jcu.edu

Order To See the Earth and other fine books by Philip Metres from Amazon: