Sample Poems by John Repp
Mulberry
Despite millennia jammed with the impossible
silk of aroma, intellection?s saffron, the grilled
cocoon of feeling, not to mention Psyche, Muse, Id,
Satori, Melancholy, Eros, Eros, Eros,
or the bottomless agony this poem will
not praise or bemoan or so much as wince at beyond
this line, I offer mulberry, mulberry pure
as idea and mulberry dense by the dozen
in a blue tureen big as a soccer ball halved,
thick bowl glazed blue as mulberries mounded blue-black
as Andalucían sky the moment before
final black comes, and when it comes (mulberry-inked
memory, mulberry equipoise not sweet nor sour),
it bursts between tongue and palate, thirst at once made
and gratified, lamplit night-nectar sluicing down throats,
mulberries hilled on hand-churned ice cream, mulberries
spreading dusk on dabbling fingers, swabbing fat tongues,
speckling noses and eyelids and cheeks and nothing
exists, exists, nothing the mulberry sublime.
The Law
I fought the law, and the law won
The Bobby Fuller Four, 1966
Trimming grass by hand around the Siloam headstones
for $1.35 an hour in the deerfly-crammed heat
while twenty feet away & six down Russian Vic
burbled his one work song & snipped roots
so the vault due from Egg Harbor settled plumb,
I never thought the current minute would end,
let alone hour or day, let alone the hormonal shriek
of sixteen years broiling on the piney flats
nor a single, miles-deep page of the familial saga
& I was right, as all poems prove. Watch me jump
into the cool hole when Vic bellows my name.
Watch us stretch out behind the nearest mausoleum
until the mourners go, eat lunch in the lush grass
of the Civil War graves, conjure another day?s work
from the rattletrap Ford, all while the current
I-of-convenience does an astral ?I Fought the Law?
that blows the roof off Purgatory, Bobby Fuller front-row center,
mouthing Oh Wow. At whim. Any second & its gaggle
of selves at whim, so when I say I never thought I mean
Something new to think?the night of the long table
in Turré? for instance, expatriate Danes burbling
enough Spanish to bring lamb shanks & cous-cous,
chickpeas & carrots, wind-cured ham, wine of four kinds,
calimari & grilled anchovies, mulberries bursting into purple cool
at the merest tongue-curl, Germans at the next table, Italians behind,
candles & oil torches & the flaring embers of Cuban cigars,
the head Dane squaring off a stack of pesetas for the waiter,
the Americans piling into a borrowed Renault, me ratcheting
through the sloppy gears, hollering I?m driving in Spain!
the tang of a final ring of squid on my tongue,
the night ending near the dusty heat of dawn,
none of us caring the law always wins.
Hard Water
I have hard water.
If I don?t scrub the teapot every day,
white flakes show up in my tea.
So I don?t have to scour the bathtub every week
I soften the water with baking soda.
Though I used to hate tea, I?ve always loved baths.
Growing up, I imagined the bathroom
unbuckled from its booster rocket.
Lying in the bath, John Glenn
tested the properties of water in orbit.
Growing up, I thought the dog understood,
and I still think so. What else
could you call it when he?d rest
his muzzle on my leg at the worst times
and look up? I call it compassion.
Compassion wants to be given away
every day, all day. Compassion wants you
to hold your head under its spigot
on your hottest day. It knows most
worst times could be far worse
and it doesn?t care. I bathe best
on hot nights when sweat
runs from the crown of my head
to brow and chin and neck,
down to the steaming water.
Please join me. I splurged on clay soap
from France. I piled rose petals
in a bowl fired in Greece. I have water
from the well and more where that came from
and the oil on my hands for libation.