Dear Poetry Monday Readers:
Irene Willis asked me to go into our archives and repost this previous Poetry Monday with the poetry of Jeff Friedman for your reading pleasure.
Thank you,
Tamar Schwartz
InternationalPsychoanalysis.net

February 7, 2022

Good morning everyone,
I hope you’ve all had a successful Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and  New Year holidays and that this morning finds you all fully vaccinated and some even with the third shot.
Our poet today is Jeff Friedman, whose work was last featured here in 2008. I’ve always enjoyed his work fully, especially its humor and warmth, but with his new book The Marksman (Carnegie Mellon University Press) he seems to have reached a greater depth.
It’s our pleasure to share three of his poems here. All are from the new book, although they were previously published in journals and magazines.
;            –Irene Willis
POETRY EDITOR

Marksman

I shot the points off a star
dangling in a window
and I shot the lies
off the tongue of a liar,
who then spoke sweetly
about the pleasures of the truth.
I shot a spider before it could eat
a blue fly caught in its web.
When I blew the web apart,
the blue fly said a prayer for me,
then flew off as though on a mission.
As a bald man rose in front of me,
I shot the last clump of hair
off his pate, and he thanked me
for freeing him from the tyranny of hair.
I shot out the eyes of an old shoe
who stumbled to the river
and fell in, floating for days in the reeds.
I shot the fringe from black feathers
falling from the sky.
While the clouds bulked above me,
I riddled them
with bullets until the rain fell
and then I shot fat holes
in the raindrops
until the rain became drizzle.
When the fires came,
I shot holes in the throats of flames
and I shot the smoke too,
even as it blinded me.
And the echoes swallowed my bullets
and the holes grew lonely.


What Happened to the Country

Some say the president declared the country his and took it home. Some say the country was wild turkeys waddling under the blind blue sky, deer leaping into the foliage, but hunters dispatched them into the next world. Some say that even though hundreds of trucks cranked their winches, the country sank into the quagmire and pulled the trucks down with it, bubbles bursting on the surface. Some say you can still find the country if you have the right map, but so many have followed their maps, disappearing without leaving behind a note or a sign. Though many remember the country with tears in their eyes, and many salute when they hear it called by name, though some decry the country as a false brotherhood, others believe it was an idea, and ideas evolve into other ideas or evaporate like rain beaded on window frames whose glass has been shattered. Without a country, without a piece of land, there is nothing to fight over, and now all of us are refugees walking in twos or threes toward nowhere anyone can imagine.


What My Father Heard

Nearly deaf in both ears,
my father heard the clocks
ringing in another deal,
ringing out big bucks who clamored
and clanged like chains
|dragged from a car bumper, who bellowed
laughter in their extravagant palaces,
who snapped their fingers
and whistled for service,
and strutted on wingtips. “Give me
that,” he said to no one
who could hear him. At home,
he called for room service.
He called his son the names
of bellhops, called his daughters
to change his sheets.
He heard the wind rushing
over the wings of his Buick,
the yammering locusts falling
out of the trees, splatting his windshield.
He heard his hearing aids buzz
for him to listen, but he removed
them and stuffed them in his pocket
so he wouldn’t hear his wife repeating,
“Be careful and don’t spend a fortune.”
He heard his own drunken laughter
with his clients. He heard them say “yes,”
though their lips and bodies said “no.”
“If only my damn legs
would work right,” he said
as he stumbled toward the car.
He heard the automatic windows
going up and down, the voice
of Dean Martin singing
“Saw a dollar yesterday
But the wind blew it away,
Goin’ back to Houston, Houston, Houston….”
He saw the sticks crossed,
the crows lined up in trees,
the faces in the clouds,
but he didn’t hear the warning
coming through the leaves.
He heard the sky cracking as his foot
pressed the accelerator down.
He heard the rush of speed
and then the sonic boom
of his body crashing the sound barrier,
the crisp crackle of cash
dying in his ears.