Letters to Yesenin #3

Last night, in a reaction to some new meds, all my joints exploded with a pain I can only describe as burning from within. I felt like shit and knew I wouldn't sleep, so I picked up Letters to Yesenin by Jim Harrison, a book I reread every year or so to remind myself to stay alive. Last night was the time; I grabbed it and a bunch of John Wieners (check out the new EPC page on Wieners) for my dark night of the soul. It's a great life-affirming read though every poem is more or less about suicide. I think this poem is from 1972 or 1973, as it describes events from the 1972 Olympics.

Letters to Yesenin

3

I wanted to feel exalted so I picked up

Doctor Zhivago again. But the newspaper was there

with the horrors of the Olympics, those dead and

perpetually martyred sons of David. I want to present

all Israelis with .357 magnums so that they are

never to be martyred again. I wanted to be exalted

so I picked up Doctor Zhivago again but the TV was on

with a movie about the sufferings of convicts in

the early history of Australia. But then the movie

was over and the level of the bourbon bottle was dropping

and I still wanted to be exalted lying there with

the book on my chest. I recalled Moscow but I could

not place dear Yuri, only you Yesenin, seeing the Kremlin

glitter and ripple like Asia. And when drunk you appeared

as some Bakst stage drawing, a slain Tartar. But that is

all ballet. And what a dance you had kicking your legs from

the rope–We all change our minds, Berryman said in Minnesota

halfway down the river. Villon said of the rope that my neck

will feel the weight of my ass. But I wanted to feel exalted

again and read the poems at the end of Doctor Zhivago and

just barely made it. Suicide. Beauty takes my courage

away this cold autumn evening. My year-old daughter's red

robe hangs from the doorknob shouting Stop.

Comments

David Oliver Cranmer

Not Just Another Playlist Often, I sit in my swivel chair looking out the window, while jazz, country, or rock music plays. This pleasure goes on for many hours a mystic trance of sorts streaming—the glue maintaining my soul. I turn the best songs into playlists (once we called them mix tapes) puzzling over the perfect order. Does Satchmo’s “What a Wonderful World” kick off my latest list or make it the big soulful closer? And does “Mack the Knife” go higher in the set than “Summertime?” That’s an Ella Fitzgerald duet! “Foolishness? No, it’s not” whether you are climbing a tree to count all the leaves or tapping to beats. These are the joys that bring inner peace and balance (to a cold universe) lifting spirits skyward. David Oliver Cranmer ’s poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared in publications such as Punk Noir Magazine , The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly , Needle: A Magazine of Noir , LitReactor , Macmillan’s Criminal Element , and

Corey Mesler

I think of you tonight, my Beats I think of you tonight, my Beats, and I am grateful. I walked the narrow lanes of Academia and never felt at home. There were men and women in the flowerbeds, their heads full of theorems and poems. There were teachers who could lift their own weight in prose. I was lonely. I was too loose. I was a lad from the faraway country of Smarting. But I had you as so many before me. I had you and I knew secret things. I could count on you like a percussion. And now I want to say: I love you. If not for you, what? I want to say. If Allen Ginsberg did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South . He has published over 25 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, The Diminishment of Charlie Cain , is from Livingston Press. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On , which won The Me

Amy Holman

My mother made herself the deer with a broken leg We saw a deer through the pane into someone else’s yard. The leg moved like a tube sock pinned to the hip and half filled with sticks. I did not like to see it suffer, either. She was upset —my mother —that no one helped the doe. Was it a mother, too? As if we were the first to observe the scene. We weren’t. All had been told to let her be. My mother had suffered a destruction of the self, a divorce, and no one cared. That wasn’t true. We were grown, on our own. I agree it was hard. Yet in those moments of a cold November day, we watched a doe, disabled and enduring, walk across a yard and eat a hedge. I wish she could have seen it like that. Amy Holman is the author of the collection, Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press, 2010) and four chapbooks, including the prizewinning Wait for Me, I’m Gone (Dream Horse Press, 2005). Recent poems have been in or accepted by Blueline,

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