Sample Poems by Rush Rankin
Chekhov's Short
Life
The bodies which we handle we find
impenetrable, and thence conclude
impenetrability to be a universal
property of whatsoever.
Isaac Newton, 1687
1. Monumentalism
It turned out that making
love to such a huge woman
was too exhausting,
as though he'd been asked
to excite the entire world,
and so he felt sad for himself
and for that sadness he felt
in her. In fact,
her green eyes gleamed
in the bar that first night,
like a lush jungle full
of wild, redundant birds,
even though later in bed
she never moved.
2. A Pioneer at the Ocean
Say a large woman waited
like a buffalo the pioneer
had to kill before taking
its skin, as in a moral fable.
That judging man pointing
a rifle saw nothing
of himself at the moment
of touch, of consummation,
and so awoke each shiny
morning to a new world,
a view: dead fish
strewn about the beach.
Near the ocean's bottom
one gigantic squid sucked
at the darkness.
3. Newton's Clock
A small woman is scary
too, as though requiring
a precision set to scale,
the world compressed
to a dot, a core, that
under pressure explodes.
One must adjust a spring
in a tiny watch in which
all of time is wound up.
Even static matter moves
secretly at the speed
of light inside itself, as in
the moment of birth.
4. La Vie Triste
Say Chekhov, granted another
glance from the balcony
overlooking a garden in Nice,
savored an orange while talking
to another Russian tourist,
a bureaucrat who was oblivious
even to his own sadness--
that constraint, that vase
of flowers emptied at dusk,
that tip figured too precisely.
1860-1904. In a biography,
a life, a life is just that dash
between dates, a cough.
The orange rind discarded.
The coin fingered in a pocket.
Chekhov put on a play
within an even shorter play,
those clapping hands
still clapping in the darkness.
Yet Another God
in Mexico
Frayed palm trees surround
the white hotel fronting
the beach. The couple
passing by is old enough
to admire and savor
a consoling picture
of sadness. Large boats,
turned over to dry
on the sand, resemble
dead whales, whose ribs
shine in the darkness.
*
Of course, the real victims
of history must adopt
a new religion. Ghosts
float like dust in the shadows,
in the chapel, as tourists
watch modest people
kneel down to pray.
*
At the market a morose Indian
tries to protect her face
from his camera, which breaks,
thus pleasing his companion,
who admires real-life magic
and women who frown.
*
Of course, the real
victims of history succumb
to more than just
a new religion. Mexico,
too far from God,
they say, and too near
the United States.
*
Dazed American hippies
on the sidewalk sell beads
to the surfers laughing
and playing together
like seals. Waving
off every plea, the slippery
smiles, the couple leaves.
*
Of course, they're old enough
to admire and savor
a consoling picture
of sadness. Large boats,
turned over to dry
on the sand, resemble
dead whales, whose ribs
shine in the darkness.
Conquistadors
In everything natural there
is something marvelous
Aristotle, 345 BC
An intellectual in Florida feels obscure
when naked, but obvious, the ocean
shifting slowly, like a huge person
turning over in bed, like a pleasure
offered as you ease from sleep,
the smooth sand absorbing the shape
of each near-naked bather,
who's content, like the Spanish
who prayed when not praying
they'd find gold. That sobbing
you hear is not the only option
to that sobbing you don't.
*
Thinking about death as that
which negates thinking
an actor watches his old films
to see the kind of thing
he can't see now, as though
dead. In the odd regress
of each film, each person
he was now a stranger,
he savors, in that dissolve,
his own safe idea of hope.
*
Even God called out to himself
when dying, Why has thou
forsaken me?, as though
that death that might efface
forever the fact of death
meant perversely that he alone
must die, as though, being dead,
and thus blank, like a silhouette,
he felt that vacancy of being
he left behind, like a hotel bed.
*
Even the person who's unaware
of his peanut allergy, who eats
a peanut and dies, must briefly
endure the odd force of his own
small-scale cosmic wonder.
Contrast that modest idea
to religious people who fly
deadly planes without taking off
or landing, as though free of limits
and wonder and defecation.
*
A beach bar in Florida sponsors
a primal contest for people
who like beer. There are breasts
displayed in wet T-shirts. That
women smile at men who scream
and point seems a cartoon
version of something so intense
it's stupid. Still, those
glazed bodies thus squeezed
together and grunting, like seals
embracing, are really not much
stranger than two people shaking
hands. Knowing so little
we hope the circulation
of blood remains just another
dull fact we can ignore.