Poetry: Selections from Ray Corvi

I’ve Seen

I’ve seen more shooting stars

These past few months

 

I can no longer tell the difference

Between dream and wakefulness

 

Meteors pass through me

As thoughts briefly ignited

 

Even this: A flock of birds

At midnight glimmer

 

In the moonlight

Like sardines in restless surf

 

Someone might pose

A difficult question here

 

But I would preempt them

With the image of a bird

 

Flying through the dead of night

As if to flee an Act of God

 

Which would negate its being

“The image of a bird in flight”

 

The very premise

My argument suppresses

 

An image of a bird

Catching fire as it flees

 

A bird whose wings have flames attached

A bird no one’s ever seen

Now

The crows are scattering their cries

Across the sky like ashes on a field,

 

Lilies at a marriage on a graveyard,

Or rose petals in the intersection

 

Where I would one day lose my life.

Years ago I walked with an old woman

 

Barefoot on the shore at dusk.

There were crows there too

 

But they were all hidden

(Along with everything that is meaningful).

 

We walked around a rock

Which protruded into the sea.

 

The tide began to rise.

I imagined the sand was mixed with snow—

 

Like ashes

Mixed with flower petals.

 

I wondered if it would be possible

To make a mask out of the mixture.

 

I wondered what it would mean

If the mask never took shape––

 

If the rite

Would still take place.

 

I saw a woman wearing a platinum ring

Set with a kidney stone instead of a diamond.

She wore earrings made out of

The corpses of seahorses.

 

Tears of black ink

Ran down her face.

 

As night fell we watched her swim

Out into the sea and disappear.

 

When we made it back to the parking lot

Our feet were covered in tar.

 

Don’t tell anyone I’m guilty.

Beneath every fiction is a mystery

 

Where the poem seeks its rest.

Meet me there.

On the Corner

On the corner of a numbered street

& an avenue

You had a fifth of midnight

In your hand

My mind was rife with platitudes

I sought to understand

 

I wanted to debate

What hasn’t yet ever been said

I.e., what we couldn’t say

But the dialogue was halted

In thought-ending cliché

 

Sola dosis facit venemum—

 

The final fire of the day

The fifth of midnight in your hand

The clouds like leaves in autumn

The look fleeing your face

Posthumously recognized

Gone without a trace

 

The word I seek has slipped my mind

[…]

 

Oh here it is––

I nearly lost my faith

A Given Day

 

1.

 

Looking at the clouds,

I somehow know that my heart

Is a pariah.

 

2.

 

I saw You standing

One hundred yards from the sun

Reading Spinoza.

 

3.

 

Now fraught with moonlight,

I feel my flesh turn to dust.

The night breeze flays me.

Sometime in the 1980s

My “father” had sex with a woman

In a car parked behind a grocery store

 

At high noon amidst all the traffic

Of housewives and housekeepers

 

There to buy toilet paper and bread.

I put the word “father” in quotes

 

Because I never met the man.

So it must be true I wouldn’t know it

 

If I ran into him in the street.

But that will never happen.

 

He committed suicide after writing

A long poem which will never be published.

 

I too know what it means to want to write poetry.

Though I also know it was poetry that killed him.

 

Thus, I don’t write poetry anymore.

My alter ego does.

 

The one whose father was a poet.

That is, the one who writes not to keep death at bay,

 

But to be close to the lightless flame

In the heart of every fallen figure.

 

Which reminds me,

I should’ve told you something by now.

 

Bertrand Russel was right.

Your whole existence actually started

Around thirty seconds ago,

Right around the time you read the line:

 

“I too know what it means to want to write poetry.”

The angels have assured me

 

That was the beginning of Creation.

Everything else is just a memory

 

Made up by the mind of God.

Ray Corvi was published in The Seattle Star (07/2021), OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (Aug/Sept 2021), The Penmen Review (07/2021), FRiGG Magazine (May 2022), DASH Literary Journal (May 2022), Neologism (June 2022), and Triggerfish Critical Review (July 2022).