Sample Poems by Philip Memmer
The Language of Sorrow
Acquaint yourself first with its alphabet—
the usual twenty-six letters
and countless others—the characters
between the characters, always silent,
shaped like faces, dark houses, fruit.
Next, the words. Familiar, yes,
but you must learn each
again, with new meanings. Snow:
a form, often brief, of comfort.
Peach: flavor of remembered joy.
Can you be taught? Maybe.
But the only course is by correspondence,
and who would answer such letters?
There is no six-cassette set,
no Dick & Jane, no Strunk & White—
there is no grammar. Some are fluent,
but in places where Sorrow is spoken
there are no native speakers
save the stutterers—masters
of their language’s cadence—
and those eloquent others who talk
in their sleep, but sleep alone.
Tabletop World
Blasting a note to the crisp flags of Main,
the toy train hisses through fields of felt,
then over a painted stream by way
of an intricate matchstick bridge.
It passes the mill, the painted toy men
posed in their toil near the mine’s closed mouth,
and curves through hills, the pinecone forest
crowded with horses and soldiers.
And now as the engine dips into the tunnel
the fluorescent sun goes dark with a click,
the song begins at Ye Olde Saloon,
and the rows of streetlamps snap on.
If by day you shoveled coal, you shovel now by night.
If you washed clothes, you wash clothes.
If you had no legs and sat alone
in your chair by the glassless window
you sit there now, and wait for the sun
to flicker back, for the looped tune to stop
as the engine zips through the station on Main
and the boy in the boxcar waves—
his motorized arm like a metronome,
his hair blown wild by an unseen wind,
his mouth a silently shouting O
as he tries to skip town yet again.
Seven A.M.
after Hopper
If you want a reason to stop
there’s not one here. The clock
is stalled, the bookshelf
is bare, the window’s been left
with only three bottles,
two prints. No Sale,
the register almost whispers.
Though the storefront is lit
like a church, this isn’t light
you can rest in. No doubt
the door is locked. The owner
twisted the key, slipped it
to the floor of his long pocket,
walked the three small steps
and turned to the woods—
as you yourself now turn,
following the narrow path
where you’ll never find him.
Three Poems for Point Breeze
I.
February. The barber curses
his furnace, his text for night school,
the cars lined up the block for inspection,
their coughs and hisses, scrapes and dents.
He sweeps my hair into the morning’s pile.
Outside, the scrape of a metal shovel,
the grocer’s stockboy clearing the alley,
pounding ice from the bent downspout.
When the doorbell rings, it’s the Witnesses.
When the mail comes, it’s for RESIDENT.
II.
Closing, the grocer calls neighbor
because he can’t remember my name—
he’s Bob or Rob, or Ron. His mother
naps by the candy, forgets
the days of the week. Eighteen months
I’ve lived on this street, Saturdays fading
like soul from a passing car
into the skyline and river, the exhaust
of the leaving-for-good—
I still don’t know where North is.
III.
Street empty. A warm day ends
with sore-throat wind, chimes
from the next yard. Their Dalmatian
sniffs at the chain-link fence, cocks her head
to the school lot’s dark, the slow clock
of basketball, backboard, blacktop.
In the glow of their draped windows
shadows walk, wave their arms—
unshaped, unaged, unsexed,
numbers on doors, numbers on mailboxes.