~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of September 2024 ~
Tag: Le Hinton
Three Poems by Le Hinton
Requiem for a Friend
After Max Richter and Danielle Rose
Dear Mercy,
Where have you been since the lockdown?
I used to love your lightness and charm.
Your optimism and hope. Where is my invitation to tea,
my respite from grief. You always listened
to my stillness, at least for a while.
You missed my son’s last steps.
He couldn’t walk any farther
on a bad heart, falling short
of a bed just out of reach. A finish line at 35.
Where were you, dear one?
I think of Zawinul calling your name
three times on a Sunday morning, the choir
hoping for forgiveness after Saturday night
secrets. Their world will be all right
come Monday. I hear only silence.
This is dead Wednesday morning, coffeeing
months after Mom and covid reached an agreement
at her bedside. No witnesses. No documents
to sign. No one to hold her hand. Mom loved
your reassuring voice. Where have you gone?
I stare through my window searching for you,
but I see nothing. No you. No light. No kids
playing games. I whisper, “Please.” A surrender,
a loss, a ghost for a sister. There are mercy rules
in baseball and carved bats made in woodshop.
They don’t get used much anymore.
Leukemia is ruthless. Dialysis never ends.
Monsters crouch in the corners of intensive
care and wait for weakened prey.
I wanted to show you Pat’s pastels,
her use of color a revelation.
We should have listened to Lawrence together.
His tone a cross between Bird and Desmond,
but you weren’t around. Now it’s too late.
There are rumors that you moved to Paris
for the brie and Bordeaux, staying out all night
and never getting up ’til noon.
That doesn’t sound like the person I know. A friend
of a friend thinks you’ve gone to Tibet to spend
your days in meditation. A Bodhisattva
in the making. I don’t know. I don’t know much anymore.
So, I’ll sit here and listen to Richter a while
before I head off to the hospital again. I miss you,
old friend. I just hope you don’t have cancer, too.
*
Roots of Gratitude
How did this thankfulness
become a loss — a hopeful acorn falling
through the night sky? Tell your long-dead
mother that you always told the truth
on Sundays but never any other day.
But that’s a lie, too.
When you pinch the cheeks of your curly-headed
nephew, the caramel-skinned one-year-old,
whisper to him that he needs to have his diaper
changed just like you. We don’t stay potty trained forever.
Tell the family ghosts, the lonely ones,
there isn’t anything new on the topside of this dirt.
The leaves mirror the roots. The roots envy the leaves.
I’ve confessed to more than one tree.
How like my mother to sit under this birch
and look down. How like my son
to rise and peel the bark.
How human of me to wish for more.
*
2700 George Street
This is a charming Cape Cod built in 1920. A thousand square feet
with 2 bedrooms, large enough for mom, dad, 2 tiny girls, and 3 active
boys. All the children no older than 10. There is space enough for dreams.
There are no bathrooms in the home, but an outhouse, pumped, cleaned
and newly painted, is situated near the back of the property
and equipped with generous ventilation.
The eat-in kitchen is large enough for a galvanized tub
and Saturday night baths. The oven can accommodate
dozens of homemade rolls on Sundays and biscuits during the week.
Imagine a cozy living space, place where a 5-year-old
hugs his mommy after her day of diapers, a wringer washer,
and a yard full of clothes hung on lines in the sun.
This could be your life and the beginning of someone else’s.
*
Poet and publisher, Le Hinton, is the author of seven collections including, most recently, Elegies for an Empire (2023) and Sing Silence (2018), both from Iris G. Press. His work has been widely published and can be found in The Best American Poetry 2014, the Baltimore Review, the Skinny Poetry Journal, the Progressive Magazine, Little Patuxent Review, Pleiades, the Summerset Review, and elsewhere. His poems have received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize and have been nominated for Best of the Net. His poem, “Epidemic,” won the Baltimore Review’s 2013 Winter Writers Contest. In 2014 it was honored by The Pennsylvania Center for the Book, and in 2021 it was featured on the WPSU program, “Poetry Moment.” His poem, “Our Ballpark,” can be found outside Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, incorporated into Derek Parker’s sculpture Common Thread.
Three Poems by Le Hinton
Meditation on Rain on a Blue Porch
This shower speaks of Evans’ piano.
A light touch on the roof —
a remembrance of the bleeding—
a dampened cry and the blunted
hope that “We Will Meet Again,”
knowing we won’t.
*
Meditation on Rain on a Black Porch
The drops echo Trane’s
“Impressions Live at the Village
Vanguard.” My grief keeps pace
with the velocity of the music and my heartbeat.
16th notes flow skyward like Black
bodies in a summer of tempests.
*
Meditation on Rain on a Red Porch
The thunder calls first, then the flash. We comfort ourselves
with lies: We’re safe here. We’re not afraid of ghosts
or what we owe them. It’s the ozone scent
of lightning that reminds me of Cage’s “First Construction
(in Metal),” the iron in a blood-red stream,
the scream when it overflows its banks.
*
Le Hinton is the author of six poetry collections including, most recently, Sing Silence (Iris G. Press, 2018). His work can be found or is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry 2014, The Progressive Magazine, the Skinny Poetry Journal, The Baltimore Review, The Pittsburgh Review, and outside Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Sunday Morning Service by Le Hinton
Sunday Morning Service
Kneel, then touch the white blaze on your border
collie’s black face. Absorb her expansive
eyes that hold the world’s kindness.
For today’s scripture, turn to 1 Mary Morris,
read her words slowly with intention. Most
of life is sacred, most meaningful moments are missed.
Listen to Tyler Barton’s sermon, his praise
to the those who have gone before,
for those who will be absent soon.
In your hymnal, turn to “A Love Supreme,”
the holiest of psalms. Sing out. Sing with the clouds,
the ice cream, the stillness of your own breath.
Go outside to the collection plate that is our world.
Tithe to the birds, the squirrels, the worms in the soil.
Bow your head in prayer. Pray for this very earth.
*
Le Hinton is the author of six poetry collections including, most recently, Sing Silence (Iris G. Press, 2018). His work can be found or is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry 2014, The Progressive Magazine, the Skinny Poetry Journal, The Baltimore Review, The Pittsburgh Review, and outside Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
A Poet’s Mother Dies from Covid by Le Hinton
A Poet’s Mother Dies from Covid
No one inherits eloquent words nor leases the brilliance
of a perfect sonnet transcribed onto parchment in blue ink.
I speak no language that elevates each syllable so that every
word will be remembered alongside the dead.
It is a myth that poets possess inexhaustible grace
and passion, or feel more deeply than other human bodies.
There is no hidden box, dovetailed jointed, stained and polished,
that holds the perfect magic of metaphor and meter.
There is only a man standing mute over granite,
only a boy who misses his mom.
*
Le Hinton is the author of six poetry collections including, most recently, Sing Silence (Iris G. Press, 2018). His work can be found or is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry 2014, The Progressive Magazine, the Skinny Poetry Journal, The Baltimore Review, The Pittsburgh Review, and outside Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.