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From section 3, Desire, of Saltian
Catching love
By Alice Shapiro
Happiness is a butterfly, which when
pursued, is always just beyond your
grasp, but which if you will sit down
quietly, may alight upon you.
–Nathaniel Hawthorne
Malaysian stew, too oily for enjoyment
is pushed aside.
She leaves the table
and the day–rain cannot stop her plan.
With great speed
she organizes artistic work in sections
labels, stacks, orders drawings
but the shelf stays sweeter than sweated-over painted dreams.
Mid-life, mid-career
this frantic phase spans years
long away from him
and a peace once afforded two.
To think about the battle
to change from human love to hobby love
one wonders after having lost them both
which love is best to hunt?
Too young to sift though
a gold-weave basket of inherited traits
too old to labor for elusive truth
the ocean-tossed decade
stays a cache of passionate yearning.
Critique
By Ray Sharp
Sister Poet, they seated us at this small round table at the edge of the crowded dance floor, knee to knee so that we both see the whirl of shadow dancers. They know we are alike, two poets in their middle years, too wise or just too damn tired for chasing love. You place before us the apple (the French pomme and the English poem, fruits of different roots, but entwined branches?) and gesture for me to pick up the knife. I cleave the shiny red thing to expose its white flesh and five-chambered heart. You arrange between us the five dark seeds, and I take each in turn, and chew and swallow their bitter truths:
The first stanza is for setting the scene. Who has not pushed aside the oily stew and fled alone into hard rain? I hear the tropical downpour drum so loudly on the tin roofs that it’s hard to think, so you just react. Your madras dress is soaked through but there is no relief from the steamy midday heat.
The second stanza sweeps us up into the action, the pace, and we are running to keep up with the poet who is running for her life.
The third stanza connects the immediacy of the present tense with the bigger story to be told. It is her story, so we think of our own stories, each unique and yet every one the same.
Everything hinges on the problematic fourth stanza. These are the questions that haunt us as we pivot from past to future, young to old. And yet, the poet has chosen the impersonal–archaic?–“one” as the subject. It is a matter of meaning and also of style. Another poet might have said “she wonders” referring to the protagonist from the opening lines. Or “you,” the modern form of “one” which this poet uses to connect the poem to the reader and vice versa. Or “I.” Each word we choose makes a different poem.
The fifth stanza, full of poetry–traits/truths, cache of/passion. This stanza has five lines instead of four. Why? Because the last line gives us closure, resolution, as much sense as we, or she, or you, can make of that stormy period between young and old.
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Ray Sharp writes poems that come to him on walks through the wooded hills of the rural, rugged and remote Michigan Western Upper Peninsula region. He knew he wanted to be a writer when he read Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion while spending a wet and miserable winter in Oregon; he discovered poetry reading Federico Garcia Lorca’s Bodas de sangre while earning a B.A. in Spanish with an emphasis in literature at the University of Colorado.
Ray juxtaposes the details of the natural world and personal narratives with fragments of interior monologue that transcend the textural surfaces to expose the raw human qualities that lie beneath. His poems have been featured at vox poetica, Caper Journal, Eclectic Flash, Spark, qarrtsiluni, and Astropoetica. He posts new work at raysharp.wordpress.com.
