Poetry: Selections from J Kramer Hare

Four Seasons

Ritual was born of necessity.

We ringed around stones to see the sun

shafting through a magic gap, and sang

to make the wheat grow.

Nowadays,

the Easter Bunny works

a make-work job—

his uncle’s well connected,

made a call and set him up;

Santa Claus kills months

puffing cigs behind the mall,

then sits atop a throne atop a bed

of plastic fluff, quite warm.

It hasn’t snowed

Christmas Morning since the days

my mother had to dress me for the cold.

I can picture, looking back,

lawns of dead brown grass,

hard as concrete lots,

but every year, growing up,

“White Christmas”

would loop in the aisles of Kohl’s.

It’s February now.

Someone said to me, yesterday,

why not sell

pumpkin spice lattes

all year long—cinnamon

grows in the tropics,

after all.

Today,

my inbox greets me with the subject line:

New Riviera Shirts That Say,

“It’s Springtime, Baby,”

despite the fact that now,

at last,

I do see snow

whipping by,

horizontally,

past my window—

the pane is cold

and groaning with

each gust.

I’m looking through a magic gap—

the way those druids did,

the sun floating just-so

to part the lips of stone

and warm

their worshipful tongues—

my laptop screen.

An artificial sun illuminates

a flowerbed. The seeds were sewn

into a button down, perfect

for winter vacation

on an island where cinnamon grows.

Through the window,

through the screen:

an artificial sun;

plastic sacraments superimposed

on a patternless world.

But ritual was born of necessity,

so here I am,

whistling Vivaldi

to make the flowers grow.

Pax Solis

I keep telling myself this rain

will be the rain to vanquish heat,

expunge the ardor of the sun,

throw summer into exile.

But several times the clouds have massed

like glowering troops, tightly knit

and poised like Romans weaving shields

into a dense shroud, concealing

all but their spears and steely eyes;

and mustering his tools of war—

electric whips and rolling drums—

Big Jupiter has legions spurred

to pelt the shingles and the streets,

weigh down the limbs of wind-beat trees,

and goad a hundred thousand blades

into a furious two-step

on the windshields of harried cars;

yet summer, brooking no revolt—

the summer has emerged unharmed.

Our Labor Day has come and gone;

the leaves, their faces rouged, can wait

no longer for the season’s change—

they drop amid the heat and land

in thick heaps upon lawns or pressed

against a curb. The rain then comes

and soaks them through—congeals each heap

into a single mass of rot,

so eager to fertilize fall.

One sees this change and tells oneself,

behold the power of the rain—

water’s alchemical power!

What could resist this primal force?

But then the sun returns and bakes

the water from the heaps, and wrings

the water from one’s brow, and sets

the clock of autumn back again.

Our Labor Day has come and gone,

and I must reach for white again.

Would it not better suit the leaves

to turn to white (these ruddy hues

are too much like those shields of Rome),

signaling, without condition,

surrender to the mighty sun?

The rain has bashed its bulwarks once,

twice, thrice, several times—many times!—

and won no lasting victory.

The imperious sun stands firm;

its cringing cirrus courtiers

can grant no shade—cannot defy

their master’s adamant decree.

I reach for white—I must concede

that it’s this reign and not that rain

that’s fit to be identified

with those tenacious centuries

of Pax Romana. Here, below

its haughty gaze: barbarians

perspiring in the wake of storms.

Anti-Sibilance Sibilance Club

Another ode upon the scent of hyacinths?

Look: I get it. I hear—I feel—the sibilance

oh-so palpably: sssent, ssscinth. It’s all well and good.

I must admit that I myself have, here and there,

halted on the sidewalk so as to smell the sweet,

fleeting aroma of the flower suspended

by the delicate branch of some shrub most worthy

of all the slick similes those Great Romantics

could ever call to mind; I’ll grudgingly concede:

not every poem needs to grimly versify

the final, frightful, painful, dreadful, fateful beats

of John Brown’s raid or Aaron Bushnell’s flaming plea,

but scent of hyacinths… it makes me want to sneeze

and shower all that lovely prosody with snot.

Half-Shut

“It’s getting late,” she says;

the daylight’s fading through

a small window, half-shut,

which half-reflects the room.

The daylight’s fading. Through

the mirror of her gaze,

which half-reflects the room—

what’s there? A silent space.

The mirror of her gaze,

reflecting and repeating

what’s there: a silent space

between the two of you.

Reflecting and repeating,

“it’s getting late,” she says.

Between the two of you:

a small window, half-shut.

Masks

Some hang them on the coatrack by the door—

someplace close at hand—while others set them

next to smooth ceramics in the cupboard:

the place where polished things go. There are those

who prefer to neatly alphabetize

their collection in drawers, or sort them by

the days of the week or months of the year.

Some nightly bury them in fenced-in yards,

exhuming them under twilight, day-in-

day-out. I trust you are familiar.

I trust you’ve seen them in the shops, propped up

on delicate plastic stands, readymade,

adjustable, one-size-fits-all, and soon

discarded. Others are inclined to spring

for bespoke handiwork with all the bells

and whistles, or they confine themselves deep

in cellars and—with sedulous mettle—

by candlelight contrive their own design,

worried they will detect resemblance when,

at last, they strap it on and step outside.

Some leave one on for many years, until

they’ve forgotten that it’s there: come to see

the hard surface no different than skin

when they observe themselves in the mirror;

come to believe that the stiff, fixèd knot

at the nape of their neck is quite simply

and odd, innocuous outgrowth of hair.

And no one ever indicates to them

that they have something on their face; none leer,

for all have grown accustomed to that face.

And then there are those who will exchange one

for another, midway through a sentence

or with each fleeting thought, and if they’re short

a spare they will—with permanent marker—

make the necessary alterations,

shamelessly, right there in front of your eyes.

I trust you are familiar with all

these disparate types. I trust you have one—

just now—strapped on as I—just now—have mine:

the one with “POET” written on its brow.

J Kramer Hare is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he lives and writes. When not reading or writing he enjoys rock climbing and listening to jazz. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Jerry Jazz Musician, Untenured, Quibble Lit, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Clackamas Literary Review, the Oakland Review, and elsewhere.