tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87544732869525301622024-02-02T15:28:34.165-08:00Loose Leafdrafts of poemsRyan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-32109629226359669272013-08-06T06:46:00.000-07:002013-08-06T06:46:03.751-07:00Cross-PostingI obviously haven't posted any poems here since starting grad school nearly two years ago. Of course, I can hardly believe that so much time has elapsed so quickly. I also can hardly believe how little I've written creatively since the academic study of literary history and theory took over my life and reading habits.<br />
<br />
But in the meantime, I started a more general-purpose blog with my dear pal, R2, appropriately titled: <a href="http://rrrrrrr.org/">rrrrrrr.org</a>. I've recently posted a few poems there—not new ones, mind you, but scraps and drafts recovered from the dustbin of history (that is, the dusty boxes and folders crammed under my bed).<br />
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<li>"Derivative" and "Serving Fish Sticks to a Procession of Kindergartners at Covell Elementary," in a blog post entitled "<a href="http://rrrrrrr.org/2013/08/10/old-scraps/%20%E2%80%8E" target="_blank">Old Scraps</a>" (August 10, 2013).</li>
<li>"Television on Mute," in a blog post entitled, "<a href="http://rrrrrrr.org/2013/03/17/strange-images/" target="_blank">A Series of Strange Images</a>" (March 17, 2013).</li>
</ul>
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For what it's worth.</div>
Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12157089159782052292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-55014252726672916912011-03-30T12:33:00.000-07:002011-03-30T12:43:50.854-07:00Terminal HymnThe outline of a bright<br /> fish sprawls on the land-<br />ing strip,<br /><br />The cadmium lines<br />of it conduct vectors<br />and vehicles.<br /><br />What ichthus<br />could gain this audacity,<br />this security<br /><br />clearance?<br /><br />One of myriad constellations<br />emblazoned on tarmacs<br />in the Midwest.<br /><br />Who am I to catch<br />the declensions<br />of this, your airspace,<br /><br />vacant, stentorian.Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-50318078661010707252011-03-17T16:03:00.000-07:002011-03-17T16:04:29.865-07:00PartwayPut on the slick moss<br />and cold water.<br />Lie down in the stream’s center<br />and be a rock<br />upon which the waters divide<br />and then rejoin.<br /><br />Or be the bird that lands<br />upon that rock,<br />ascending at night<br />with wet feet<br />to who knows where,<br />what warm and dirty nest<br />in trees or caves,<br />softly breathing,<br />all alone like the wind.Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-64388942138926418992011-03-03T12:14:00.001-08:002011-03-03T12:14:57.781-08:00John WayneLike Julian of Norwich knew,<br />belief is something<br /><br />you wear—there<br />but forgotten,<br /><br />the khaki shoes<br />of my grandfather,<br /><br />too tight but I keep them on,<br />the ancient plaid<br /><br />and flannel, still pristine,<br />his bolo ties.<br /><br />Not certainly for him<br />a career, simpler<br /><br />more culinary, perhaps even the daily<br />bread and eggs<br /><br />he never prayed over<br />or thanked<br /><br />my grandmother for<br />or completely finished.<br /><br />Homes and warehouses he built<br />couldn’t hold him.<br /><br />His mother looking over<br />his bones<br /><br />with the solemn gunfire behind<br />seemed like familiar war.<br /><br />So what about clouds<br />now around the barn?<br /><br />Wind, stench, dinner<br />scents all bend<br /><br />in the bushes at nightfall,<br />and ancient aquifers<br /><br />bubble into shale<br />beneath the lichen<br /><br />and broken branches<br />of his apple trees.<br /><br />My mother’s<br />father, is this you,<br /><br />there, climbing in from<br />the reruns<br /><br />to take back<br />your place, your workload,<br /><br />your clean shirts?Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-26283691703089641872011-02-02T13:58:00.000-08:002011-02-02T13:59:41.554-08:00After BashōThe frog and the pond<br />in the haiku are in<br />the haiku.Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-15336541371163377882011-01-26T20:06:00.000-08:002011-01-26T20:40:08.224-08:00Earthy Anecdote: An ExplicationA good group of good friends in Brooklyn started a <a href="http://peopleherd.blogspot.com">blog</a> last summer featuring music reviews, poetry explications, and wonderfully bizarre reflections on science, language, and "Stopping Pleistocene Repopulation!"<br /><br />As part of an ongoing poetry explication contest, they recently featured my <a href="http://peopleherd.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/earthy-anecdote-explication-by-guest-contributor-ryan-weberling/">brief, freestyle interpretation</a> of the poem "Earthy Anecdote" by Wallace Stevens. It's whimsical and melodramatic—hope you like it!Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-25351008470477919252011-01-24T18:55:00.000-08:002011-01-24T19:06:44.336-08:00Untitled CirculationA voice in the loaf murmurs of sedimentation,<br />sandwiches, screech owls. These echoes,<br />disseminations of sound—owl pellets, oak bite,<br />mingled blood—the squirrel bone at the center<br />of the Milky Way spins slowly, ordering the orbits of nutrients.<br /><br />In my neighborhood, trash is the singularity,<br />our codex, a double tree-helix marking<br />out history as yeast, crust, crumbs of the remainder<br />of spirit, sealed airtight in Tupperware.<br /><br />Occasionally the helpless rising comes to bubble in our skins,<br />timorous, hearty, a vitamin lacking an alphabet,<br />the conversions within or beyond digestion<br />petrified, then eroded or erupting the processes<br />of which we know, of cherries, of talcum, of lifespan.<br /><br />[another old one]Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-32731481097381481342010-12-16T15:24:00.000-08:002010-12-16T15:43:10.213-08:00If Then WhatA recent poem, "If Then What," is part of the mass of poems (I like to think of them as stones in a sort of digital cairn) that make up <a href="http://poetsgulfcoast.wordpress.com/">Poets for Living Waters</a>. Curated by Amy King and Heidi Lynn Staples, the project is an online "poetic action" in response to the rupture of oil in the Gulf of Mexico this past spring—though it also speaks to the circulations of water closer to home (wherever you live) that pass through your watershed, your backyard, your cellular membranes.<br /><br />You can find it in their collection under "W" in the <a href="http://poetsgulfcoast.wordpress.com/open-mic-s-z/">Open Mic </a>section—good luck finding it—or just read on below (but be sure to check out some of the fantastic poems they have posted).<br /><br />*<br /><br />If Then What<br /><br />The sun’s reflection smears like an oil spill,<br />lost in sea or air, who knows.<br /><br />The sun and then the moon are altars<br />of light and stone.<br /><br />A voice in the alley said to speak<br />the names of the creeks:<br /><br />sewage, soda, ocean spray.<br />Move into the flow, it said,<br /><br />press salt upon your forehead,<br />upon your wounds in the surf.<br /><br />What if we uncovered the waterways<br />beneath highways, watersheds in our nuclei,<br /><br />if we used our new names to remember the old,<br />or became the taste of iron?<br /><br />If the images have sunk beyond recovery,<br />what new waves will remember the history<br /><br />of ferns and dinos?<br />We can sing and drive<br /><br />home facts and morals,<br />from delta to Dakotas.<br /><br />Mississippi and Great Lakes<br />will part our greasy hair.Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-85547349862057330882010-10-16T17:01:00.000-07:002011-01-26T20:40:49.575-08:00Ingress #1Don’t recite the unwritten histories of sediments<br />or instruct me in decoding the script of the moraines<br /><br />until we’re deadlocked in rush hour and you can sing<br />the anthems of third shift to the syncopation of a train track.<br /><br />We can lie out in smog and fog, drift through fluids wherever,<br />if we’ve heard the same one song that rocks the San Andreas<br /><br />and determines the curvature of magnetic fields at the outskirts<br />of the visible sky, sailed across event horizons into the vortices<br /><br />of gopher holes and storm drains and all creatures’ resonating tracheae.Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-79260553886375770372010-09-28T20:46:00.000-07:002010-09-28T20:55:00.684-07:00UPDATE: The Hard WayA poem I <a href="http://looseleafcollection.blogspot.com/2010/08/kingdom-come.html">posted</a> a few weeks ago is now available in <a href="http://www.catapultmagazine.com/weight/poetry/the-hard-way">Catapult</a>, along with a companion (prose) piece, "<a href="http://www.catapultmagazine.com/weight/article/heavy-artillery">Heavy Artillery</a>." The rest of the issue is also read-worthy (as usual).<br /><br />Let me know what you think.Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-6738104877417822952010-09-21T14:01:00.000-07:002010-09-21T14:17:14.712-07:00Earth SongO circulating cell,<br />wrapped with dust,<br /><br />all rests upon a root,<br />life rushing beneath.<br /><br />I press two feet to you,<br />soles in osmosis,<br /><br />and my mouth shapes a seed.<br /><br />If I rest against the trunk,<br />a gradual spine,<br /><br />the bend of shade reaches<br />down, your hands over my eyes.<br /><br />Then I see our horizon, swaddled<br />in skin and bloodstreams,<br /><br />turning into turning.<br /><br />*<br /><br />[This is an old one that has, for some reason, stuck with me for some years. How do you weigh your own attachment to a poem against the more objective sense of its "worth" or "quality"? Writing for myself for so many years gets complicated when I imagine a public audience, even if only an unread blog.]Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-16083281116493046972010-09-15T22:11:00.000-07:002010-10-04T21:16:45.364-07:00What Can You Do With It?A poem can pop<br />like a turned-on vacuum.<br /><br />It can wag a finger<br />like any old adult.<br /><br />But most often it sits,<br />a slim shadow on its page.<br /><br />Its fox-eyes follow fingers<br />to stalk, turn, scavenge, bite—<br /><br />or just play along.Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-81726008549043359362010-09-01T10:15:00.000-07:002010-10-04T21:17:28.075-07:00Nocturne in Computer GlowMonitor, speak<br />of the world<br /><br />in its breadth<br />and largess.<br /><br />Repeat the codes,<br />the jpegs of old,<br /><br />those pathways departing<br />from tongue<br /><br />into broadcast<br />beyond broadcast.<br /><br />The pixel mind<br />turns corners<br /><br />in the dark<br />soirée of the soul,<br /><br />and I who abide<br />in flesh, to hear<br /><br />the risen tones<br />of blowing wind,<br /><br />would unturn the keys<br />in their locks.Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-56431374714792494812010-08-30T12:00:00.000-07:002010-09-17T13:03:44.822-07:00The Hard WayI've never seen violence,<br />never had to raise my fists for anything but soccer,<br />though I can imagine—<br /><br />more sweat than blood,<br />but the wound so opaque<br />with nothing to see in it.<br /><br />What you don't know can devastate you,<br />translucent swords abroad<br />sharpened in your name.<br /><br />I've never considered myself a violent person,<br />though I can imagine,<br />rising from my armchair in the cinema of war<br /><br />to sample it, train in it,<br />conjure a dream to take this world<br />and become it, love it with pain.<br /><br />Whose moment of comprehension precedes death,<br />besides the historians? Who knows the light<br />beyond blindness, except the blind?<br /><br />Take, for example, any person you might know,<br />confidante or otherwise, and what can happen<br />provisionless on a long road.<br /><br />What good then is a tincture of love<br />as gunfire flickers in the woods<br />like a campfire?<br /><br />*<br /><br />[My thanks to friends at the <a href="http://thelitribune.com/writing-workshops/">Litribune workshop</a> for their thoughtful feedback]Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8754473286952530162.post-54833935566950414482010-08-18T22:53:00.000-07:002010-08-25T17:10:55.670-07:00Trash HaikuBottle caps scattered<br />down the cracked, salted sidewalk.<br />Rains wash these sharp, dark seeds.Ryan Weberlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14328284260583504932noreply@blogger.com0