Poem for Camille Martin & Beginning with a Line by Her
Mark DuCharme
There I tender prayers to images
& Consult with starving birds
Whose brittle voices cannot reach the sea
Were I on a raft— or if
Some other sense of wonder overcame
The similar, botched stars
Like a prayer, relentless in the vivid world
In which we no longer believe
If you hang your head down far enough
The blood will enter your speech
& You’ll hunker for a millisecond
In breath of song— in song as canticle
Until the Sea Hag tells you, “that’s enough, now, dearie;
Stop dreaming.” & So you enter then
The grim crucible of life’s demands
Which, though far away
Can yet be heard, despite the menacing
Cries of true believers
Or of a citizen-alien encountered
In false listening
While the native/ naïve tongue is menaced
On standby, by passersby
Who fear but cherish your mouth
Whether you’re an aged fatalist or a redundant newcomer
Like that photo of young Niedecker
With a bit of youthful optimism
That hadn’t yet been crushed
Still lingering about the eyes.
But neither of us are newcomers
& Fate is always guessing
Going further out to sea
In hopes that mere flotation can save us
All from dull encounters
If you promise now to whisper
I still won’t fall away
Although I may option a perfect story
In the feint history of what isn’t seen
But felt, when we were never
On the jittered blue
Who knew, but seldom ruptured
Diamonds as subplots
To render all anew
Mark DuCharme’s sixth full-length book of poetry is Here, Which Is Also a Place, new from Unlikely Books. Also new is his chapbook Scorpion Letters from Ethel. Other recent publications include his work of poet’s theater, We, the Monstrous: Script for an Unrealizable Film, published by The Operating System. His poetry has appeared widely in such venues as BlazeVOX, Blazing Stadium, Caliban Online, Colorado Review, E·ratio, First Intensity, Indefinite Space, New American Writing, Noon, Otoliths, Shiny, Talisman, Unlikely Stories, Word/ for Word, and Poetics for the More-Than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary. A recipient of the Neodata Endowment in Literature and the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, he lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.