For National Poetry Month: "O Tree (Borassus)," "Passenger Pigeon," "After the Murder Ballad"

By Hoa NguyenApril 21, 2014

For National Poetry Month: "O Tree (Borassus)," "Passenger Pigeon," "After the Murder Ballad"

O TREE (BORASSUS)


Bud that chops the hill
I was there      I clock
foolish making a leaf soup


Napalm is a jellied gasoline


This makes sense: bombs &
the sappy will swings


“Wars are more fun with money”


Pine swung     oak-aloof
branch down       chainsaw down
Father burning the tent caterpillar nest


What do you see in the fire?


Isolated trees
Palmyra tree
Green blueish leaves


 ¤


PASSENGER PIGEON


“Martha,” a passenger pigeon named after George Washington’s wife,
was the last of her kind. Immediately following her death in 1914 she was packed
in an enormous 300-pound block of ice and shipped to the Smithsonian.


Turn the metal shoe ring
Sing    like the swallow swollen
I mean    men


            Be the little sparrow


Martha— why “passenger”?
Why wife sew-er?


                              Darken


like a storm
to pass by


“Your teeth & bone were once coral”
(Niedecker)


and A.C. unit pause    and rifle fire


o    no     Canada Day             with Asian
fireworks effects    a sovereign dominion
for               you know                colonial


I pollen


I liveliness and chirp


The poet Juvenal declared
“I hate a woman who reads”


The quick big water changes


                Die
in Cincinnati zoological gardens


Afterward:


In June 1974, she returned to the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens for the dedication of a new building named in her honor. Both times she was flown first class, with an airline flight attendant escorting her for the entire trip.


¤


AFTER THE MURDER BALLAD


Bringing some other fine things
hard full life     atoms springing


No money      No fine things


Flatteringly     we are the cave
It will be OK in disgrace


She jumped    Came to the river
deep water    Thou restless ungathered


orphan     Tell me your mind
to mend   to drown you in despair


         Let me sing gone
If I can live kicked & chocked


Turned around in deep water


¤


Hoa Nguyen is an American poet, editor, and publisher. She currently lives in Toronto, Ontario where she teaches poetics at Ryerson University.

LARB Contributor

Hoa Nguyen is an American poet, editor, and publisher. She currently lives in Toronto, Ontario where she teaches poetics at Ryerson University.

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