LIFE IS GOOD
ALM No.65, June 2024
POETRY
Life is Good
The comforting warmth of a winter house
insulated with fine fine layers of coal dust.
That French allure of a French perfume
created with the essence of cordite.
The militarized brain at war with itself
across the corpus callosum of non-conflict.
The blood red tinge of a cabernet
the vintner has named Collateral Damage.
Sunsets inspired by uncontrollable fires
and the tourists who wait their turn at scenic outlooks.
Brown skin sculpting green blades of hedgerow
into the topiary of white dominance.
Prayer taking shape so that its very form
is a monologue of imagined responses.
The moment I surrender to the siren of sleep
and the strange way it carries on my existence.
On the Seventh Day They Say God Rested
When I say the world needs to listen,
I mean that part of the world which is still moral.
Which part of the world is still moral?
You will soon be receiving a questionnaire.
Do not discard.
We are asking for the favor of a reply.
You will find that the first question
beggars belief.
The second question strains credulity.
The third question collapses beneath its own weight.
The fourth question asks if you are the weight
that collapsed the third question.
The fifth question asks: Which is heavier,
Morality or Immorality?
The sixth question asks: Who weighs more,
You or God?
The seventh question is listening for your answer.
Tornado Love
My mother’s voice like the whip of weather. Her words spun round and
scrabbled. Tongue twisting my childhood erratic. “You’re crazy,”
she says to me now. Turns the page of her country living
magazine. As if turning the page of my imperfect
memory. But I’ve tasted the bitter of her
electric kiss. Watched lightning
singe the sky till she wept
with rain. The quiet
that followed
an apology
seldom
held
.
Major Minor
I’ve moved beyond the major classical composers
to discover, unearth, uncover a flea market’s worth
of worthy artists, the ones whose compositions
were the gray silhouettes of the masters, whose works
were buried in a rummage sale of household items
used but still functional, whose value fell between
the ordinary and the antique.
Tartini, Locatelli, Sammartini.
Silver-plated sonatas, gold-leaf concertos. The lesser math
that drove the flights of their harpsichords.
Graupner, Busoni, Giordani.
The ones whose liner notes never mention prodigy,
whose heads never endured the high fire of a kiln,
never served up as a bust to adorn a Parisian salon.
Hummel and Spohr and Haydn’s young brother.
The ones who composed themselves the best they could
and in the forgiving radiance of a thousand-lit candles
flattered the court with flawed jewels of tonality.
Like painters whose lives are lived in minor scale.
Or the way lesser poets touch their own words
with a kind of wariness--fingers to the keys,
eyes on the middle distance, language like chords
they can’t help but create.
Before the Fall
If I’ve been signatory to this culture
and to these times, unaware of
the pen in my hand, how I could have laid it down
the way an infant is laid down, before that child
has learned to give name to any given color
The emerald hues of envy
The ruby flow of mortal wounds…
If I’ve been signatory to the displacement
of all that is indigenous
First peoples
First species
First waters…
If I’ve been signatory to a God whose light
we’ve christened Hiroshima, whose mercy
is mirror to the unmerciful…
If I’ve been signatory to every proclamation
proclaiming genocidal depopulation, bonfires
feeding on the flesh of books and the clothbound spines of men…
If I’ve been signatory to any woman forced
to fulfill in the fullness of time
the full term of what’s fully unwanted…
If I’ve been anything, anything at all,
it’s to have been no more than a child
just before the fall.
Ken Holland has had work widely published in such journals as Rattle, Tulane Review, Southwest Review, and Tar River Poetry. He was awarded first place in the 2022 New Ohio Review poetry contest, judged by Kim Addonizio, and was a finalist in the 2022 Lascaux Prize in Poetry. His book length manuscript, Summer of the Gods, was a semi-finalist in the 2022 Able Muse book competition as well as Word Work’s 2022 Washington Prize. He’s been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York. More by visiting his website: www.kenhollandpoet.com
