Sample Poems by John Repp
Astringent
The days of young summer unfold one
into the next thickened, whitened, wool-breeze
swell of bat-wing whir. Such heat takes one
by the gullet for the eon till that
first prehistoric raindrop smacks the tar—
that one and that one and a spatter
and whoosh and rattle of that ones, so drop
in the wicker armchair and sip the gin,
not only this gin with requisite lime
but all the gins since the first astringent
sip while sitting on the lip of a rich
friend’s pool, Beauty’s cool, forbidden thigh
three millimeters away. Touch it, fool!
Blessed fool, cursed fool, claw across ground
glass soaked in lighter fluid for a taste
of this hungry millisecond, and this,
no polite trill, no browbeaten No
from the cortical pulpit—no! Desire’s
ludicrous aria or nothing. Look
in the parking lot after a downpour
for an example: A neighbor towels
his car’s grille, peers for twenty inch-by-inch
minutes, daubs nick after nick with a toothpick
dipped in a baby-food jar of paint.
He’s got the idea.
God Gratitude
Fenway Park, 1988
One day, my friend trotted gabbing to the subway
so early he found a bleacher perch
from which to chirp at Oil Can dropping
warm-up curves into Gedman’s unmoving glove.
During another day, he died,
his last letter a seven-year-old’s crabbed
struggle with the simple sentence.
Gratitude
Thank You for the lesson
of my friend’s death and the blessing
of forgetfulness and the idea that death
is no lesson. Thank You for the failure
of nerve, the anxiety about rent
and airfare and days off work,
the terror of what he’d shrunk to.
The skull-grin of narcissism stretched
the lips of that terror, Lord, thank You
for the therapeutic insight that led me to write that.
God at Fifteen
Translucent as a pearl, I sat in the pew
convinced I heard You in the fusty air,
the water-fountain dribble, the deep No
that kept my hand from creeping down.
I gave up striving almost before I’d striven.
I sang. I listened. My spidery fingers tapped
the pages of the Bible I’d been given
after You took my live-in grandmother.
Tucked under a sweater in a bureau drawer,
a notebook of sins, each tale an ode
to never-again. I enumerated damns
to the square of night my window let in.
Innocence
For innocence I am grateful, how telling
what You already knew still mattered.
For the names of my future children,
military branch, vocation I am grateful,
for the first touch of a girl’s hand, the impossibility
of her lips, the bliss that flooded me
and its banishment.
God
Praise bitterness filing my teeth to nubs.
Praise the hot thrill of hatred
and the plagues I call down daily.
Praise all I’ve torn from others and all they’ve torn
from me. From me. How know thee otherwise?
For the Me, God, my God,
I give thanks.
Brass Buddha, Beeswax Candle, Two Boys
in a Wicker Chair
Brass Buddha, beeswax candle, two boys wedged
grinning in a wicker chair—what year? Now
forever for the figurine, but how
figure the boys? For now, look: shirtless, fledged
by late summer shade, brown eyes black, porch-edge
invisible, lemonade, neighbor’s cow,
deviled eggs, family poised to kowtow—
Seeing what’s hidden is privilege,
need, yet the joy this votive light dapples
is dust. The one who framed a loved moment
in beveled maple? Not whiff or grunt, not scrap
of sales slip, not the most gossamer remnant.
Bow to that Bow to that Bow to that
say the sutras. Bow till autonomic.
Claiming Territory
for Ken
We loved the desk with one drawer frozen shut,
hulk raised from the scoutmaster’s cellar.
Our Easter banks marked the property line.
We plotted acreage for badges, wind-up metal chickens,
the Koufax Baseball Digest and every Tom Swift.
Most nights we’d climb to our twin chairs
and bend over blank maps and arithmetic,
the pleasure of answers enough.
Our shorn heads bobbed. Trucks roared past.
We had it checked and got set for bed.
But how radiant the nights when all we wanted
was more, pressing thighs and arms and shoulders
into a hot tremble, so filled with fury the silence rang.
Our minds sang Mine. We breathed my air.
We solved my word problems and labeled my states.
Later, more money came. Our room had frontiers,
a No Man’s Land, disputed islands, caravans.
Time passed. Gains mounted. Loss piled on loss.
In love at last, I lay some nights giddy,
the girl and I stretching our blanket taut
as swollen skin, chronic fever brief words away,
yet rage keener than lust nailing each to a sliver of bed.
Every last cell matters, every sinew and spore,
and I want more. I want that girl lovelier now
than I can imagine, black hair drawn in a gray-flecked braid.
I want to praise enough the ripple a sip of coffee makes
in sleep’s evaporating pool, the longing full-blown
the moment I drew from an oil-soaked box the plane
two boys built the winter of big snows.