Diana Gordon

Poems by Diana Gordon

Have You Heard The Microbes Sing?

I
In the Great Forest pigs snuff truffles,
white for cream sauce, black for shadows.
And after, tied with bibs and seated at table
for the annual employees banquet, they
taste caviar and endive as unique--
separate from sachertort--a revelation
when, for 364 days, all they've had is slops.
They're on their best behavior, powdered
and bathed, cleaning up their plates, touching
cloven toes together on the edge of their seats
the way schoolgirls cross white-socked ankles.
They sample truffles on arugala spindled with oil,

just enough to break their hearts,
the way we buy the lottery.

2 A dog lifts his leg on alyssum at Versailles, a different gold than gilt. You have a fuzzy notion of his past life as Van Gogh. It's the yellow. You notice he has one torn ear and smile to yourself, but he catches you and leers. He's ambitious, on his way across the continent from patch to patch of white tufty flowers, covering their perfume with his more important smell, taking control of all the world, a small brindled Bonaparte. Correcting for past mistakes, he thinks in horizons instead of maps. At the first great port he may stow away, or not--he is after all a mongrel, and hell may have choices--: he might start again in Brazil, where the scent
of white is different, yet identifiably other.

3
While biologists take notes in Land Rovers,
elephant matriarchs discuss social solutions
with rumbles as inaudible as the sound of dry
ground or deep sky. What if elephants are chatty
as a stomach you lay your ear against?
What if they're talking all the time, like trees,
and we just don't have the right stethoscope?
In my back yard a salt and pepper rabbit clacks her teeth.
Snails embrace with attention that puts Siddartha's
concubine to shame. And in a puddle on my tarmac
near the hot smell of rubber, National Public Radio
is recording microbes, who chatter

like a claque before an opera,
primed to clap after every aria.


		Poems by Diana Gordon
		Cultural Disobedience
		You say the peony slips, a tired prostitute showing everything. Dandelions, twenty children each, crowd the backyard projects--fuck, it's a trend, soggy bits of paper too demoralized to fly, the tough biology of a cigarette butt. In the cutting bed you see the rose uptight, or beetles gnawing like hyenas on the infant copper beech, a tiny mouse head left on a pike of grass--trailing a bit of esophagus, the Red,the Black, antish Ku Klux Klans. But the hornet comes from a perfect circle in the ground; wild tongues of iris offset your curtained rose. Beauty is uncontrollable. Now, when every perfect petal is an act of cultural disobedience, spin dervishly. For thin-skinned dusks and suspicious spills of leaf, spin. Snapdragons are waiting to laugh. Violence is the easy art, but at this late date, stars still hang above black meadows and you can lie back, if you choose, to be grass-soaked under a midnight husband; wind-bent fields shudder like shoals of silver fish, and butterflies migrate in single file--they know who they are, clicking past a midday moon. Here, as if called, an albino spider stops again on paper-whites. Without these admissions-- perhaps our one true job--what good are we? (Originally Published in Nimrod)

		Have You Heard The Microbes Sing?
		I In the Great Forest pigs snuff truffles, white for cream sauce, black for shadows. And after, tied with bibs and seated at table for the annual employees banquet, they taste caviar and endive as unique-- separate from sachertort--a revelation when, for 364 days, all they've had is slops. They're on their best behavior, powdered and bathed, cleaning up their plates, touching cloven toes together on the edge of their seats the way schoolgirls cross white-socked ankles. They sample truffles on arugala spindled with oil, just enough to break their hearts, the way we buy the lottery. 2 A dog lifts his leg on alyssum at Versailles, a different gold than gilt. You have a fuzzy notion of his past life as Van Gogh. It's the yellow. You notice he has one torn ear and smile to yourself, but he catches you and leers. He's ambitious, on his way across the continent from patch to patch of white tufty flowers, covering their perfume with his more important smell, taking control of all the world, a small brindled Bonaparte. Correcting for past mistakes, he thinks in horizons instead of maps. At the first great port he may stow away, or not--he is after all a mongrel, and hell may have choices-- he might start again in Brazil, where the scent of white is different, yet identifiably other. 3 While biologists take notes in Land Rovers, elephant matriarchs discuss social solutions with rumbles as inaudible as the sound of dry ground or deep sky. What if elephants are chatty as a stomach you lay your ear against? What if they're talking all the time, like trees, and we just don't have the right stethoscope? In my back yard a salt and pepper rabbit clacks her teeth. Snails embrace with attention that puts Siddartha's concubine to shame. And in a puddle on my tarmac near the hot smell of rubber, National Public Radio is recording microbes, who chatter like a claque before an opera, primed to clap after every aria. (Originally Published in Nimrod)

		Trivial Pursuit™
		What is the oldest vegetable? --The Pea How strange to think of peas as old, older than tubers or pale wild carrots, of fingers--sex unknown, square, nail-bitten-- snatching the first found pod, upping the pace in a rush of sweet, tasting flowers, then leaves till the vine was empty. How long for restraint to swell the pea, the well-kept nail to slice, the vessel to be forged, the soup sprinkled with sage to simmer, the woven sacks to bulge with dry winter peas, the tin cans to be stacked, the freezer doors to breathe worried clouds on waxed boxes in the Supermarket? And all this time, I, relying on the farmer, potter, weaver and tin maker, the electrician and truck driver, have learned nothing, but hungry this morning in the yard, spring-fevered and sugar-low, I ate the sweet thin pods, every last one, long before they could grow old. (Originally Published in Berkshire Review)