Timothy Houghton
(USA)
Boy Dreaming During the Sermon
summer
Sunlight covers the stained-glass windows, bright arms and halos
he copies on blank pages
at the front of his Bible. What exactly is the meaning of thick smiles
and downturned heads?
They are one thing always,
yet hard to pin down. And these!— maybe the same birds
at the edge of his back yard, where trees host kingbirds
and finches of searing and absolute gold.
He wants out of here—
his wool pants shine on his thighs like ice on blacktop
where hands rub with impatience. He thinks about frosted windows,
trapped light—not quite human but warming the house
and saving money.
The whole family wears starch and wool
because snow inhabits every air. At this moment, flakes light up
with oratory and memory
and spread apart like slowly spoken syllables.
He catches them
in quiet hands cupped together on his lap
and fashions them into a globe. Black Bibles surround him like space.
Now Down
elegy to Jack
The way cats die—eyes open—is the way I’m going to bury you.
Surrounding me and you
and seven pear trees in leafless January:
weather,
as though a friend is trying to get my attention from a distance
without disturbing others.
Down you go, through ten thousand wings
you studied from various perches
inside and out.
With a slight bite
to my ankle, you’d let me know the score. My blue sweatshirt
wraps around you to keep you buoyant, as if you needed that.
Italian Cook
at the island retreat
With angles and momentum,
his Roman nose
amplifies
the mighty force below it:
his gut—stuffed
with happy negligence,
pulling him forward
tilting him backward
at the same time—
projecting, one might say,
command, or (at the least) unbudgable
balance.
Giorgio is the kitchen.
He talks English like lobster claws
clicking above his grip.
He spits rocks from his mouth. Once only
one of us touched a knob
in his kitchen
(a little knob, leading to cereal bowls):
we learned about transitions,
we saw his finger
shake with violence in front of
his screaming
mouth—Leave me alone!
Leave me alone! We stepped outside
the open door,
guilty, perplexed, punished
in the shining fog.
The Windmill Machine
off the grid
Lightning struck it
and burnt the circuit dead. Soon the wind
driving it
stopped
and birdsong, too,
in needles of spruce:
stillness, like white-feathered seeds
stuck on a window screen.
The truth came clear under the settled dust:
I’m a passenger
in a big machine, the windmill
an engine,
nature
an alien thing. Such a weird universe.
If the captain brings his boat to this island,
I’ll go back to the mainland
but what will it be that I’m crossing
and what trick awaits me on the journey back?
The windmill exists
between the pulses
we feel in our necks.
It used to answer
the questions we’ve wondered about. Fixing it
is our lives.
Killing Art
11,000 BCE, the Clovis People
In their minds
picturing
ideal facets and deadly lines,
they knapped phosphoria
—a rare and brilliant killer—
holding it up to the sky
to gauge the precision
to penetrate mammoth,
their fingers
bloodied by edges
that cut with a touch.
Other good killing machines
were drawn from the earth at this time
—agate, jasper, opal—
and shaped into more
than practical art.
Knowing the dangers
of facing the beast,
their pleasure was deep
tying point to shaft:
symmetry of handwork,
luminous rock and its power to kill—
they did it to live.
Like crumpled pages,
spalls lie in heaps
in the courts where they worked,
but the final lights
tore into flesh.
________________________
Timothy Houghton, from the United States, received a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Modern British and American Literature from the University of Denver. Many organizations, including Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and Hawthornden Castle International Retreat, have awarded him 28 fellowships to work on his writing. His fifth book of poetry (The Height in Between, Orchises 2012) has just appeared. The two publishers of his books—Orchises Press (Washington, D. C.) and Stride Press (England)—are well-known and internationally respected poetry presses. His work has been favorably reviewed in a number of venues, including The Literary Review and Chelsea. His poems have appeared in numerous national and international journals, including Chelsea, Malahat Review, Quarterly West, and Stand. He teaches at Loyola University Maryland. For years he has been active with Audubon, mainly as a leader of birdwatching hikes.