Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
He come up to the house the other day
Three poems by Paul Bone
APGAR
- When you were born, you didn’t make a sound
- until they put you on the warming table,
- cold chick, bluish and mute. The reddened gowns
- the nurses wore were soaked as in some fable
- in which the father (that is me), on seeing
- his daughter’s eyelids shut against the world,
- her mouth a seam the waxy vernix seals,
- head a neglected fruit, the fine fists uncurled,
- moves in a kind of dream. The iron tang
- of blood on the elemental floor, the mother’s sense
- of something wrong draining her face, all hang
- in some between-time as he wonders when
- he’ll have to tell. But then the light goes on,
- blood rises under your skin, you raise your arms.
- You squeeze life in your fists, you sing your song
- wide open so to break the tale’s dark charms.
Daughter
- I glimpsed your purple backpack in the woods,
- looked back and it was just the autumn leaves
- flickering like fish. The pinkish hood
- you took your angry shelter in, the sleeves
- you pulled up to the elbow, even in cold —
- all gone, only the shadow of the yew
- that said I gave you up. By now I was old
- and had forgotten how it happened. Clues
- came and went like the seasons, more like flashes
- of you — a curve of golden hair through windshield,
- pile of bright bedtime books reduced to ashes,
- your green voice from the corner of a field.
- Whatever happened happens every day.
- I haven’t checked the churchyard yet. I may.
Present Infinitive
- He come up to the house the other day
- is what we’d say, a persisting present tense
- of arrivings never leaving that other day,
- a slip of usage, less important, say,
- than slipping fan belts or a fading sense
- that I come up to the house the other day.
- A well-greased come-along might make me stay,
- the clicking gears aligning post and fence,
- arriving, never leaving that other day.
- On the steps I scraped my boots free of their clay
- and clapped them twice together. Here are hints
- I come up to the house the other day.
- The door sticks crooked in its frame. In its way
- it tells me where but never quite the when
- arriving, never leaving that other day.
- I checked the shed for tools and their intents,
- the saw’s division and the hammer’s dents.
- I come up to the house the other day
- never arriving, leaving that other day.
Paul Bone is the author of two poetry collections, Momentary Vision of the Assistant Meteorologist and Nostalgia for Sacrifice. He has published poems in 32 Poems, The Cimarron Review, The Iron Horse Literary Horse Review, Unsplendid, and other journals. He teaches writing at the University of Evansville and is co-editor of Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry.
Here's something you might be interested in.
He come up to the house the other day
Three poems by Paul Bone
He come up to the house the other day
Three poems by Paul Bone
APGAR
- When you were born, you didn’t make a sound
- until they put you on the warming table,
- cold chick, bluish and mute. The reddened gowns
- the nurses wore were soaked as in some fable
- in which the father (that is me), on seeing
- his daughter’s eyelids shut against the world,
- her mouth a seam the waxy vernix seals,
- head a neglected fruit, the fine fists uncurled,
- moves in a kind of dream. The iron tang
- of blood on the elemental floor, the mother’s sense
- of something wrong draining her face, all hang
- in some between-time as he wonders when
- he’ll have to tell. But then the light goes on,
- blood rises under your skin, you raise your arms.
- You squeeze life in your fists, you sing your song
- wide open so to break the tale’s dark charms.
Daughter
- I glimpsed your purple backpack in the woods,
- looked back and it was just the autumn leaves
- flickering like fish. The pinkish hood
- you took your angry shelter in, the sleeves
- you pulled up to the elbow, even in cold —
- all gone, only the shadow of the yew
- that said I gave you up. By now I was old
- and had forgotten how it happened. Clues
- came and went like the seasons, more like flashes
- of you — a curve of golden hair through windshield,
- pile of bright bedtime books reduced to ashes,
- your green voice from the corner of a field.
- Whatever happened happens every day.
- I haven’t checked the churchyard yet. I may.
Present Infinitive
- He come up to the house the other day
- is what we’d say, a persisting present tense
- of arrivings never leaving that other day,
- a slip of usage, less important, say,
- than slipping fan belts or a fading sense
- that I come up to the house the other day.
- A well-greased come-along might make me stay,
- the clicking gears aligning post and fence,
- arriving, never leaving that other day.
- On the steps I scraped my boots free of their clay
- and clapped them twice together. Here are hints
- I come up to the house the other day.
- The door sticks crooked in its frame. In its way
- it tells me where but never quite the when
- arriving, never leaving that other day.
- I checked the shed for tools and their intents,
- the saw’s division and the hammer’s dents.
- I come up to the house the other day
- never arriving, leaving that other day.
Paul Bone is the author of two poetry collections, Momentary Vision of the Assistant Meteorologist and Nostalgia for Sacrifice. He has published poems in 32 Poems, The Cimarron Review, The Iron Horse Literary Horse Review, Unsplendid, and other journals. He teaches writing at the University of Evansville and is co-editor of Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry.
Comments