April 2005
Two poems by Deanne Lundin
(and an interview with the poet)
Orange Bang
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April's a hat made of rain and an anchor of cloud.
The Santa Monica sea waves goodby and goes back to its sewing.
I bought a small quilt by the pier, it was covered with ants
 bearing needles.
Some of us feel this way and some of us that, but mostly
otherwise.
He said, Just who do you think you are, and I said, Exactly.
They sent me a small brown scrap as proof that my box had
exploded.
Such an agreeable color, like snails sliding over leaves.
I have reassembled my life in another body, one without sin.
In another city, inside a tunnel of wind.
The Ginseng Hunter Thinks About Oranges in October
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Cats are like clocks.
In the window, they tick and whirr to keep traffic moving,
winding the cars in counterpoint
over the sunslicks
and into the candied crunch of leaves.
New air unwraps each appointment successively bitter
or tart. Everything hurries to get. Even my hands
smell like pennies. We know that disasters
are timed events when we hear so much brilliance harden and
swerve
the instant we pull down the shade.
Clouds take us in like manna.
Clouds spit us out.
Winter approaches Lake Tyner, ashamed to be seen in Orlando
as the bloodoranges mass in the grove like malignancies
and memories swell like Billy McPherson
who swims, a drowned face in my dreams, because once
he believed I was wearing a bra and I kept my shirt on,
which is all I regret.
Each day repairs itself, hurricanes pass,
and the neighbors install a new generator.
All they ask is a really deep freeze.
Each night the envelopes steam themselves open.
Each night I rise through the ceiling like rain in ascension
And still have not broken the bottle.
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi was the frenchiest song we knew,
teaching our bodies tricks with the metronome
so that soon we could rinse our teeth clean
in faultless rhythm, timing the sky's
rehearsals of bliss.
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