New MorningJim Culleny First I check to see if the sun's up –yes.There it is in the sash of the second window from the righta third of the way across because it's the 25th of March.It blazes in blue beyond imaginationradiating like a lover's heart. Then I look left for you –you're there.You under the…

HydrantJim Culleny Steel sentinel on our street.Its domed yellow cap topped with a wrench-ready fitting,its three short blue arms wrench-ready too, its stumpy red torso squat in the snow ringed round its base with brown March mushin late winter when our longing for sunis most poignant; when it hallucinatesbuds and birds; when it wants to…

“It's all just one big lie … basically a giant Ponzi scheme.” —Bernie Madoff Life in the Fast LaneJim Culleny A crow atop a phone polelike a cocked hat –a selfsure birdeyeing a white line lunchwho understands the nuances of trafficwaits, patient as a tick,until the last ten-wheeler grinds bythen swoops down quick.Caaa! he says,…

Hormones in LoveJim Culleny Only one can have this thought.Did you think your thoughts were mine? We lie apart as close as this:thinking still alone combined. Two skulls each with a budding brain.Two “I”s distant as two moonscatching light from somewhere elsetoo bright to be too far and soon we come together touch and kisswe…

///Past PrimeJim Culleny Knowing I once could whiptwo 2 by 12 by 12s to shoulder heightfrom a ground-level stackwithout ripping a ligament; or haul two sheets of drywallat a time across a room alonewithout reaching for the liniment, I’m pissed at being humbledby a mere rock-salt sackI strain to lift and lug and spread so…

//Black Sunday ShoesJim Culleny Grandpa was stiff and starkas the handle of an old world hoe but grandmother must have had her dreams……………………..At a window in a stuffed chair she satfingering a rosary gazing down Roessler murmuring Hail Mary’s through the pane bead by bead……………………..At other times in that chairshe stroked her long greyblack hair…

///House of an Evil JinJim Culleny Smoke snakes from house roofsin lazy loops of loose thought as idle as the wisps of dreamerswho burn to know why god has wrought I drive by with windows openthe smell of char comes drifting in It's more like March than Januaryso odd the way this year begins Malingering…

///Where Buddha WasJim Culleny I thumb down the pile of books: Paper Dance, 55 Latin Poets Wislawa Szymborska, PoemsNew and Collected Poetry Like Bread (maybe the waymy mother made), Poets of thePolitical ImaginationAnd Billy Collins Sailing Alone Around theRoomwhich is pretty much what we all do to a great extent until, at the bottom: Precise…

////../ Kneedeep as LeavesJim CullenyToday, in a java shopamong caffeinators, wired, Ireceived a poem from a friendwhom I've known sinceit didn't seem importantto understand friendship But now I doand appreciate his calling me into the world of this poem(which is not his, but hisanyway because he saw some truth in itand supposed thatI might see…

///Pythagoras and me @ 2 amJim Culleny I could be up all nightwithout a single line to write;………………………I might be ass-in-chair till 1st lighteyes propped with toothpicks.………………………Open, I might sit with digitspoised over a keyboard………………………like condors on thermalsscanning the earth for a bite ……………………… the desert page dry and white. I might even catch some…

///The HunterJim Culleny I hike up a hill at a clip just to keep this heart alive. The Hunter’s over my left shoulder with arms raised, always in his almost-never-ending black place in the sky surrounded by blazing stars in utter space. Skirting single Cheryl’s I wonder again, what is it she does.In summer her…

//Dear Joe The Plumber, In E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, Emma Goldman explains to character Evelyn Nesbit why Evelyn (having become recently newsworthy) has become such a celebrity:“I am often asked the question,” says Emma, “how can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them.…

///Bread, House, Salt, God —the family of simple monosyllabic words.–from Another Country, a memoir by Adam Zagajewski; Bread House Salt GodJim Culleny The tsunami scent of yeast flooded our housein the mornings my mother baked bread. Up through floorboards it came;up the stairwell.  It spreadstirring our dreamselves awake. Baked bread A bell for the nose,…

///Two DeathsJim Culleny 1. Mirror Under cover of light the moon disappears;goes just like that, following my mother;travelling not by casket, but insteadby memory and dream, alikeas death and birth, so alike there’s just this mirror between them. 2. Da’s Marker In a cemetery overlooking what used to be a lakemy father’s stone’s a tiny…

/// Death is the least we have to fear.We are all in the hands of God,Whatever happens happens by His Will.             —Attention Please, by Peter Porter Until the Sacred Cows Come HomeJim Culleny Vishnu reclines and sleeps dreaming up the world. He lounges upon a coiled snake in the image of…

///What is Mind?  No matter.  What is Matter?  Never mind.–Bishop Berkley A Meating of MindJim Culleny If my braindoes not tell my arm what to donothing much will happen.Without a brain my arm isnot much smarter thana leg of lamb In fact, meatwithout mind is never going to get much done, whilemind without meatwouldn’t have…

///Don Q. in Mahattan–Biting the dust of ’01  Jim Culleny Dining in Soho alone, a manserved by a girl with lip studs, nose ring,and serpent tattoo uncoilingfrom deep cleavage,sees the new man of La Mancha,in dim light across the room,seated with his back to the street: He topples a pepper mill with his forkgesturing to…

///From the Indictment and Abjuration of 1633: “Whereas you, Galileo, son of Vincenzio Galilei … were denounced in 1615, to this Holy Office, for holding as true a false doctrine … namely, that the sun is immovable in the center of the world, and the earth moves … We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you…

///Humor and LightJim Culleny Even in gloomyshuttered rooms one beammanaging an invasionthrough impossible slitsreaches to whereshadows rule one joke, a laughone light remembranceand dis-ease for an instantdisappears Punch lines and photonscomedians and brilliant sunstake us as close to godas anyone need be //

///CommunicationJim Culleny A short-haired yellow muttstanding at the side of the roadwearing a day-glo orange scarf around his neckso as not to get whackedsteps boldly out as I approachas if to test for interspecies respect. I slow and stop, roll my window down, and bark, “Cool scarf.” He looks me in the eyeturns on his…