Monday Dec 23

On Hiatus

Leah Umansky - Poetry

Leah Umansky’s first book of poems, Domestic Uncertainties, is forthcoming from BlazeVOX Books in 2013. She has her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems can be found in Barrow Street,Catch-up, and Ping-Pong. Read more here.  
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In Seventeenths*
 
 
 
I’m a natural networker; I provide an alternative,
when I want. I’m a natural ponderer;
I just know some things; the way ants know
their way home.          Knowing my psychology, I know
how to raster my thirst for glory; for what is tender;
for what buttons me to Truth.  I occupy what is round;
what is housed            here,                inside this body
 
            Nothing is perfectly nailed to the walls.
 
I have stolen the revolutionary experience from the past,
I have been strange, savage.                I know the heart.
How it goes on beyond the Social of the non-page. 
 
                                    Life’s rich pageant.
 
I crave the savory, the sweet. I feel certain
that it will all happen soon.  I will keep the singing
loud inside me. I will keep this song that makes all
other songs feel verklempt.
 
 
 
 
(*Inspired by "The Steins Collect" Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the poem borrows dialogue from Matt Hart's reading at KGB Bar in May of 2012.)
 
 
 
Killing is More Final
 
 
Killing is more final, noted the boy.
 
                But, it’s not that I couldn’t make something up about it. What is it about ourselves and                             the story? asked the man.
 
The boy had to think about this.
 
Speaking through the distances, through the thicket, the boy and the man decided that a natural beginning would start in the forest; in the green.   
 
They set up their camp and began to unfasten the night; button by button.          
 
                                                                They felt                                rustled.
                                                                They felt                               faded,                        
                                                                                                               
but then sound came out beneath the silent.
 
One word spilled into another and another and then began creation. The man settled into his story, graphing the terrain with his heart and his head.
                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                The boy’s eyes widened.
 
They turned on the radio.  The forest needed a tune. Then, they let the airwaves spiral out.
 
                 The story is the emotion.  What it suggests is lit by imagination, said the man.
 
The boy moved closer to the man. For impact and for warmth. Pressed his head against him.  He liked watching him tell stories.
 
                You see, said the man, any story can be repeated and altered, but writing, taking up  
                the pen, is a risk.
 
The boy understood.
*
 
The lesser things around them came closer: the leaves; the fire-dust; the moonshine.
The pine bent their needles down. Their whorled branches couched themselves on the ground.  Seedlings peeked through their dirt-holes.
 
                I’m ready now to begin, said the man, and together they assembled it.
 
 
 
 
Men Love Their Machines
 
 
Men love their machines and their marinated merriment. They learn from experience. It is true.  So briefly touched in the wild final stage of the heart that they progress and digress because of poor diet, and in spite of, rather than in lieu of, they end up doing very well for themselves    even in their so-called “lost decades.”                      The path not followed is mere presentation.
 
            [Frost had it wrong. It is all myth: there are decisions, and then there are decisions.]
 
We have done a lot better. We could model the man on a machine. Put him on a pedestal but wait,                       he’s already there. 
 
 
It gets so tired, here                                                                On the other end of, “It will happen.”  
 
[Have we all become demoralized?]
 
Man became a machine with the invention of batteries, but even before the charge,there was the imagination                             
                                               
                                                                                                     (which serves me   p  l  e  n  t  y).   
 
 
                                                 Ladies, we don’t need better health care. We need better men.
A betterment!  A buttered-up and you betcha  new version of mankind.                 
 
 
*
 
It is nighttime now. 
 
There is still a moon to tie a mast to.