Saturday Dec 21

On Hiatus

Ben Doller - Poetry

BenDollar.gif Ben Doller (previously Doyle) was born in Warsaw, New York, in 1973. He completed his undergraduate education at the State University of New York at Oswego and West Virginia University. His first collection of poetry, Radio, Radio, (Louisiana State University Press, 2001) was selected by Susan Howe for the 2000 Walt Whitman Award. He received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was awarded a Teaching-Writing Fellowship. His second collection of poems, FAQ, was published in 2009 by Ahsahta Press. Doller has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, West Virginia University, Denison University, and was Distinguished Visiting Professor at Boise State University in 2007. He is co-editor of the Kuhl House Contemporary Poetry Series at the University of Iowa Press, and is vice editor and designer of 1913 a journal of forms and 1913 Press. He lives in San Diego with his wife, the poet Sandra Doller (formerly Miller). http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/261
http://www.uipress.uiowa.edu/search/browse-series/index.html
http://ahsahtapress.boisestate.edu/books/bdoller/bdoller.htm

 

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The Widow Ching Poems
 
But the battle did not begin. The sun rose peacefully and without haste set again into the quivering reeds. The men and the arms watched, and waited. The noontimes were more powerful than they, and the siestas were infinite. 
–Borges
 
 
 
But most miracles are very bad.
 
Don’t remind me.
Remind me
telepathically or in spine-
signs or in. Remind me
later, in dialectic seizure.
In strings of fives
tallying days inside.
 
What storm is this story
what shape has all these names.
 
Remind me of the hold in the hold.
 
 
We were holding an emergency
on the quite long side of a green gate
or an intervention.
 
I promised I would bite
out the sun’s white part:
 
just change your name.
I will eat every organ.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
There is the miracle of the opening eyesore,
the white field paved long before you

were there, the field raining. Sheet lightning
in the pinhole. Storm-swell in the big nerve.
 
 
And when we kindled the coastals,
they went deep in & seeded the steppes.
 
 
Master of the Royal Stables, I tried it out.
 
 
You sure got cut by the catamaran,
cut bad. I do not have what you have
why should I take what you take.
 
 
 
 


 
 
 
              
 
Bad rice.                     
Dead greens.               
Dog rain.
 
Rain cues a cart of sods,
new weeds pushing out new weeds.
Roots in the muck of the slow decompose.
 
Remind me of the wooden acrobat posed
in the elephant’s nose one leg perpendicular
toes stained the chartreuse color.
 
Hands stained seagreen.
A smarter monster. A head.
 
 
I am 40,000 alone.
 
 


 
 
There was really no progress
ever made on the basic boat.

Which reminds me now like certain scent:
holeblack peat, where the seed goes,
the seed, where the stem goes, the stalk
and the shell.

The way what they used to call censored
makes the weeds to grow, fronds flare,
fronds fill the big bay, fronds fix
in the oarlocks of our basic, semi-abandoned
boat, with a man and a woman
impersonating sleeping, balanced
atop a––for these purposes––a bottomless.
 
There is not enough time enough, nor world.
Perhaps world enough. Not time enough though.
There is not enough enough, nor enough time
enough to tally. But if still the sun could reason
 
with the rest it allows
with the digital dragon.


 
 
 
Which reminds me of a curtain sound:
 
 aches that throat that makes that red cloud.
 
We were favoring one side like an obelisk
in the shallow cave shade. An obelisk
obviously made for living.       Halloo!
What’s the average color down there?
 
 
I don’t know. Neither do I. I do, but I can’t tell you.
 
Me too. I’d love to tell you but I can’t tell you enough.
 
 
 


 
 
 
white wave
 
yellow label
 
green ensign
 
red rag
 
purple pennant
 
black bunting
 
 
 
 


 
A coin. A rock.

a rock-coin. A rock
I skipped
thrice across
the swollen sea
when I found you
wearing a hole.
 
A coin my eyes wear so as
not to surge north.
 
A rock I worked a hole into
to tie a rope to me
to skip into the green sea.
 
 
 


 
 
 
 
The miracle
 
the chain of accident
accident emits
the miracle of a stray shot
entering the window
of the parlor
exiting the window
 of the kitchen
 
allowing the woodsmoke out.
 
 
 
 


 
 
 
 

The vixen seeks the wing.
 
 
 


 
 
 
 
 
One morning that’s all that
that whole day.
 
Then & finally
I Shall be Some
Body Else.

I Should Send You
off alone
in our own sure skiff
You, your stagnant blood
 
the sea shrugs
stacked flags.
 
The sea takes.
Galleon blood.
 
 
 


 
 
I was water once well beyond.
So was I. Me
too. Point A,
where things
send sends from, starved
loudly. Me
too.

Was where the formula goes.
Unlike a stone.
We have not met enough.
 
Which reminds me enough
enough
of the song cast
in the nod of the one
playing her silver behind the kitestrains
of yellow stormlife.
 
 
 
 


 
 
 
 
 
Shall I sing
of the patina
of promotion
the name unlike the name
that going you gave
 
green
 
the promotion
that came relinquishing the fleet
 
The Lustre of True Instruction.
 
 
 
 
 
 


 
 
 
 
Sunk enough.
 
Sun enough.
 
There is sea enough.
 
And space.

There is just now
 
flood enough
 
to take.