James R. Whitley's Poetry Spot

Below are a few of my published poems and, to the right,  some links to others that appear online. Many are personal favorites. 

The literary journals and magazines in which these poems were first published are acknowledged.

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Piazza San Marco, 1996

 

Given the appropriate container,

a whole lifetime can be preserved—

 

an ancient beetle encased

in a solemn glob of amber,

a Cro-Magnon hunter trapped under ice.

 

And here:

a misplaced photograph I’ve yet to destroy.

 

In it, we’re feeding pigeons in Italy—

your dark hair windswept, your dark eyes shut,

a perfect halo of Venetian sunlight

framing your face,

 

your arms fully extended,

palms upturned in invitation,

me kneeling beside you,

gazing up,

 

the chaos of so many eager wings,

the two of us caught up

in the flurry of all that hunger.

(first published in The Pinch)

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Memento Mori

 

October is intent on having its way with us:

haughty glabrous moon glaring down,

bitter wind bossing us around like twigs,

your cancer still spreading like an oil spill

in the once-pristine waters of your body.

 

At the window, a gypsy moth is negotiating

between two compelling choices—

the path of blue moonlight versus the frail

glow from the lamp next to your bed.

 

Of course, the moth knows nothing of nature’s

cruel jokes, nothing of technology’s artifice

and its flimsy veneer of resolution, salvation.

 

Back inside the room, everyone hovers in

quandary, each pair of confused eyes soaring

to and fro, hoping to land on something painless

to talk about, something perhaps lost in a corner

or encoded in the scuff marks on the floor.

 

None of us has been given any directions.

No one knows exactly which way to turn next.

 

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        How to Talk Your Way through Abandonment         

 

Say affection, affliction, addiction.

 

            Then say unrequited, say it clearly.

 

Say several random acts of unkindness were perpetrated.

Say evidently, just a naiveté wrapped in the thinnest skin.

 

Say an ensuing grief weighty enough to bring a body down.

 

Say countless quarts of rum raisin to dull the sting.

 

            (Sprinkle liberally with the appropriate modifiers,

                                                like brutally or dour-colored.)

 

Say she was not without her imperfections

                                                            and yet…

 

Say at his most compromised, he would

            treat me with derision, without regard

                                                for my fragile nature.

 

(Don’t say wretchedness is the fated fuel of the crestfallen.)

 

Say hands clasped, desperately,

            in prayer,

            in hopes of...

 

            Then say render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.

 

Say endurable, say survivable.

Say I still believe despite…

 

            (Don’t say regret shall ever taint the days

                          of the hopeful.)

 

Say soft rains and the smell of the ground.

Say a formal feeling comes.

 

            (Don’t say regret.)

 

Say a species of grace hovering there,

                        and always available for the taking.

 

Say everything in its proper place then.

Say the party will surely have ended

            if we don’t shake a tailfeather already.

 

Say endurable.

Say survivable.

 

Repeat as necessary.

 

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Fallen, Falling, Felled

 

After guzzling down an entire bottle of tequila,

chewing apart that trapped worm with no mercy,

an excommunicated priest from South America,

his eyes red as ripe habaneros, swears to me

 

the whipped peaks of Machu Picchu are so high

you can almost touch the holy heels of God’s feet.

And then he proceeds to pass out—a faint sigh

spilling from his mouth like drool onto his seat,

 

his eyes glazed but still open, his face so serene,

his heretical smile intact as he falls, faith first,

into a waiting bed of guacamole and refried beans.

How I envy his drunken soul, his spirit’s thirst

 

evidently quenched now. How else would he

enjoy such freedom to revel in his apostasy?

 

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An Epilogue

That the crocus bulbs arrived dead

and so long after the recommended

spring planting season that fated year,

you insisted,

was not the biggest tragedy,

 

rather

that only five were packed in the shipment,

when you had paid for a solid half dozen,

bothered you to no end.

 

So much of what we would, tactfully,

later refer to as

“the unmendable rift between us”

was evident even here:

 

me and my stubborn focus

on usefulness,

 

and you,

always counting the many luminous disasters

that added up to our life together.

 

I dredge all of this up to confess,

in my typically roundabout way,

that I’m not handling loss well—

the brutal turns and startling bumpiness of it,

the unintelligible semaphore of faith.

 

Before that first kiss, I could already

taste the many flavors of uncertainty—

overripe kiwi-melon lip balm,

wintergreen mouthwash masking

mentholated cigarette breath. 

 

And still I dove—

discretion-first, knowingly—

into that experience, into that lush heresy

covered with such perfect skin.

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How to Write Poetry

(after Sue Standing)

 

Wherever you are, work.

Whether at home lounging in outdated

velour leisure clothes or in some foreign place

where no one seems to know your tongue,

be a tourist. Keep your ears open

at least as wide as your eyes, at least

as wide as your heart and mandatory mind,

and cross-connect wires. 

Get to perception’s core and expose it

like the tender kernel of a nut freed finally

from its stubborn shell, or ripe pomegranate,

its multiple sacs pregnant with juice.

 

Become an alchemist, searching

for something golden hidden inside things

considered dull, creating something durable

out of more fragile substances.

Be a stingy vessel.

Hold tight and let experience swirl

inside you and ferment like the conception of

fine champagne or hard cider. Then

when the elements give their cues, when

the virgin space in front of you yearns

to be something other than pristine,

explode!

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The Art of Tragedy

(for Leni Riefenstahl)

 

I. Triumph of the Will

"Hitler’s whore?"

"Nazi cheerleader?"

Ach!

I am an artist!

 

They saw hatred, demons, evil.  I saw patterns,

unrelenting repeating symbols and figures:

torches burning holes through the wall of night,

red armbands boasting transmogrified crosses,

the hardened young soldiers goose-stepping 

in stiff formation, women and children blithely

lining the roadside like white lace bordering

a dark curtain, so many right arms raised together,

so many forty-five degree angles,

a tyranny of unity, and all of them cheering

“Heil! Heil!” 

as the Führer passed by. 

 

Like snowflakes to a microscopist, fractals

to a mathematician, I saw something

for my art to speak of,

a something worth the showing.

 

          But if they could have known my horror

as I fled Paris after seeing his handiwork...

 

But perhaps this is our curse:

taking sides by not taking sides,

making statements even when silent,

the condoning implied in the showing.

 

It may be inescapable then, but fate

has made me an artist.

II. Olympia

A lit torch throws shadows everywhere--

shadows in time, shadows of bodies

arching upward, perfection contorted

against the coliseum wall, on the hot sand,

shadows of victory and defeat,

joy and tragedy.

 

I will set the camera here as the discus thrower

winds up and around, as he becomes the cyclone

his will demands he must,

then I will send it diving into the pool,

chasing alongside the sprinters

as if begging for forgiveness.

 

Then if I focus on the sweated brows,

the clenched teeth, the strained grimaces,

on the underside of Jesse Owens’ crotch

as he soars to victory, his thighs

like triumphant pillars, only the sun above him,

then maybe they’ll see what I see:

 

not just sweat, sun, sand,

but visions and shadows,

shadows of joy and tragedy,

shadows of bodies contorted,

shadows

in time.

III. Tiefland

          What is bad does not belong to us.

                             -Adolf Hitler

 

I saw wan unsuspecting clouds penned

by stern mountains, heard the terrorized bleating,

imagined the wolf strangled finally

and began to film. I had no Guernica to render,

no Uncle Tom’s Cabin to build, just Tiefland

and needed extras.

 

And I knew they were imprisoned gypsies but

their faces were perfect--so full of angst

and anguish--and I wanted to show how living low

could hurt you, how it could kill the soul’s golden glow,

so I didn’t ask any more than how long

I could use them.

 

But tell me, if you look only at the scene

through these restricting lenses, focus

solely on what is immediately before you,

how can you be held responsible for the rest,

forced to account for what transpires

outside of your devising?

 

IV. Black Cargo

Deep in the bosom of Central Africa,

these people, unspoiled by the sins of machines

and money, the sins of war and greed,

 

with bodies like living chocolate

and cinnamon, so sweet

to the eye, so respectful of the sun,

 

these people, the Mesakin Nuba,

accepted me and I was happy,

and my camera and I rested there.

 

          Little more than a month here and already

I hear whispers I am making a slavery epic

as atonement.

 

          Let me add to the gossip then

and not complete it.

V. Diving

What?

Well, yes, I did lie

to get my scuba lessons, but how absurd,

just because of my age, to deny me

the opportunity to go on living,

to continue exploring.

 

Yes,

whether in Africa or under the Pacific,

I can still hear their captious clamor.

And although it is dulled now and

my ears can tolerate the pressure,

it bothers me still.

 

          I have always been plagued by red devils.

 

No!

I am artist, not politician.

I am chauvinist for the image only.

Some brand it a “fascist aesthetic”

without even viewing my work.

 

          I have always avoided black cats.

 

Ach,

if I could grow gills I would never resurface,

never return to that accusing air--

Susan and so many others

jabbing at me relentlessly

with their sharp weapons.

 

          I have always followed the blue light.

 

No,

I have no trouble sleeping, no blood on my lens.

Still, it seems I’m expected to apologize, as though

it were not entirely human to notice these fine points.

Say what you will but it is fate that has made me

an artist.