Impossible Chairs (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #531

Possible chairs. Impossible chair.

Thought prints like graphite on white stone,

No less real than drawing on air.

(One is the only one unknown.)

The rocker can’t stop and will fall.

Not every three-legged stool stands.

The bentwood arm chair has no front.

The best words, written with an awl,

Are those that no-one understands,

Like this, an impossible stunt.

Don’t tell me these chairs are not real.

You might as well say pairs won’t peel,

That a compass can square the wheel,

Or that what is dead is ideal.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:

My Human Disguise.

Boar Hound (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #434

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:
My Human Disguise.

No one knows the golden boar hound's mother,

If she’s boar or hound, or mythic Other.

He was found scratching at our farmhouse door

And though quick to accept a wooden cage,

Was soon released, being more hound than boar,

Nothing to fear, with his eyes of great age.

His eight fleecy legs (some seemed more like arms)

Caused him to stumble and sometimes crawl,

A monster, yes, though not without his charms.

His tusks could draw images, like an awl,

Scrapping planks or smooth stone, which he would hide

(Though we could always find them when we tried)

About the farm — scenes from the past, our past.

The day he left we feared would be our last.

Pileated Woodpecker (Alice Guerin), Sonnet #260

Complacencies of the dead tree,
Every inch of bark hiding ants.
In bare patches a filigree
Of rectangular holes. He rants
And drums, but always at a distance --
The hardest god damn bird to see.
I followed him once by a stream.
I could not get close until I
Stepped into the water, thigh high.
To him I ceased to seem to seem.
Above, he ripped a branch apart,
Hungry savagery, like art
From a chisel, mallet, and drill.
For hours, I watched him kill, eat, kill.

Multi-Dimensional Snake (Alice Guerin), Sonnet #251

The snake ends in a thinning tail
Of muscle, tiny bone, and scale,
A diminution of its head.
Like the forking of its tongue,
Its tails distend to seek, to flick
The next-dimensional-instead.
Can it hear the hissing songs sung,
Like fire from two extra wicks?
He tolerates the division
Until the fangs of other snakes,
Coiling beyond his vision,
Bite him once, again. He awakes,
Lunges, bites his own tail, angry,
Only to find not one, but three.

Cecropia (Alice Bea Guerin), Sonnet #203

This drawing (though freehand) isn't its symmetry,
Or the choice of Butterfly Bush or Rosemary,
Bleeding Hearts, Lily of the Valley, Lavender,
Or (seeming an afterthought) the signature bee.
"Cecropia," in its perfect detail, renders
What my daughter Alice, over weeks, remembers.
In cafes, on a bunk bed by Lake Tekapo,
She draws, on the far side of the world, a momento
For her mother, tapping all her creative will,
Love, intelligence, and her finest-tipped pencil.
Look closely. She captures mottled dust on each wing,
And a consciousness in the Cecropia's eyes.
Feelers tremble at the assault of everything
In the air, and if we should look away, it flies.

Please click on the image to see a much larger and detailed version.

Question, Sonnet #200

For Michael Antman

1
My daughter brought these stones from New Zealand.
At first we arranged them in a circle,
The white veins touching, mostly, band to band.
They seemed to me a kind of miracle,
Holding everything we know inside,
And all we don't brought in from far and wide.
But soon that seemed too pat an arrangement,
With a history, yes, and silent, but,
However Zen-like, it didn't hit my gut.
The circle must be cut open and bent,
As the thing it did not contain, allow,
Was questions (the world just is, here and now?).
The stones, like this 200th sonnet, speak,
And answer with a question what we seek.

2
To ask or not to ask, that is to be.
No answer has been satisfactory.
I can't know the secrets of my own soul,
Because, like Richard Wilbur's star-nosed mole,
I can only pass by the graves of men,
Whose own souls, if at last revealed to them,
May be whispering, like wind in the grass --
Language meant only for the dead en masse.
Instead, I'll ask for nothing but the sun
To answer with its rising tomorrow,
And listen to cicadas, one by one,
Respond with obliterated sorrow.
I love you all. That's an answer for now.
Someday I might learn more. I'll let you know.

Michael Antman has been the editor of this sonnet sequence
since I began it in February of 2011. His unerring ear, tact, 
and encouragement, are deeply appreciated, as is his friendship.
The stones were collected as a gift for me by my daughter Alice Bea Guerin.

Holy Blood (Alice Guerin), Sonnet #170

The raven plucked Man's pupil and holds it steady
So Limbo is still visible through its black lens.
Blind and po-faced angels live in holes, ready
To fly away the moment eternity ends.
Here is Purgatory too: vines and flowers
Extend from a woman's neck, but her legs wander
Away beneath a shower of black holy blood.
A chemo spirit struts, though she's lost her powers
To console or restore the faith others squander,
Lost all but her rage to escape the coming flood.
Little live hands reach through the clouds yearning to touch
What they can't comprehend, like the Klein-bottle-brained
Devil with the tied shoestring eyes, who knows too much.
He is no god, this clown, though he has often reigned.

Wing Song (Alice Guerin)

#139

The sand wasp and the cecropia moth
Pray to the ruby-throated hummingbird.
Each thrums its own avian oath.
It's flight they worship, swift and blurred
Almost wingless, their supreme art.
They envy throwing one's self like a dart.
The sand wasps stun cicadas and bury
Them deep in nests for their larvae to eat.
The mouthless cecropia must hurry
To mate, or their larvae become parasite meat.
But the hummingbird need only sip sweets
And build a nest with the first mate it meets,
Or, having some objection, speed away --
Freedom for which the wasp and the moth pray.

Untitled (Alice Guerin)

#77

We should all live in homes on stilts,
As I did once (and now again).
Officer's quarters in the Philippines
Like godown barns, were built
On cement pillars typhoon rains
Relentlessly surged between.
My daughter depicts our home
High above the ocean, a rowboat
Tied close to negotiate the moat,
Barely visible through foggy foam.
Will all be well when the storms
Blow in and the waves swarm?
She holds the image in her hands,
Raising her home above dry land.


Note: This stunning and unusual artwork, by my daughter Alice,
is composed of a drawing photoprinted on silk, then covered with
another layer of silk, which lends the work an ethereal atmosphere,
as if the house (which is our house) is visible only through rolling fog.