* Please note that these poems are part of a web-log poetry experiment in progress at http://patersonproject.blogspot.com
Kenneth M. Camacho
Kenneth is a Ph.D. student at the University of South Carolina studying twentieth-century American literature. A life-long South Carolinian, Kenneth is interested in the ways locations shape and are themselves shaped by individual identities. He also dabbles in film, photography and music, all of which have influenced the direction of “The Paterson Project.” He currently lives with his wife, two cats and dog, Ulysses, in Columbia, South Carolina.
Graham Buckner Stowe
Graham is a Ph.D. candidate in twentieth-century American literature at the University of South Carolina. His academic interests include the urban landscape in American poetry and the transformations of the epic genre in the twentieth century. He lives in Columbia with his wife, Jen.
The Haitian President to His Women, on the Sight of Swallows Flocking in the Waters off Fort Dauphin
Quite often from my house, I see swallows
moving in a wide sweep over the harbor
as one, the denseness of them somehow
flat and twisting as a loose ribbon or
flag might, if wrested from its mooring and
blown haphazardly in rough gusts of wind.
It is the sameness of motion that most
delights me; the hundred bodies turning
in tight unison, wrapping around ghosts
of invisible up-drafts now churning
in the late day heat of the western shore -
and with them, a lone thought rises, and sings:
my beauty is in this rushing chorus,
this doubled beating of separate wings.
Women to the Haitian President, upon Gathering at Dusk near Point Croix
We
who have been your lovers
have talked this through:
Yes,
our beauty is collective.
It is spun
from the sameness of our contours,
it is outlined
in black, gathered
and flocking against
the background of our dusk,
where we have been threaded
over that losing light,
crossed and woven
in darkest silhouette
upon the loom;
and Yes,
the shape of breasts we know
are enough, more than -
doubled and doubling
the smaller joy of your
heart,
so much of us
in pairs
you'd say;
we say
your conclusions could only be
reached this way:
multiplicitly.
But Man,
who loved us each
divided, parts of
a whole seen so
distantly,
great God, what you did not know
in this shadowed shape,
What!
Our eyes;
twinned depths
of night, suns each
setting on waters paired
and equally bottomless.
Dearest man,
I say,
as I, as
I, as
I:
what love,
love,
for this beauty
has been lost?
The Skeleton of Peter the Dwarf
It’s hard to be a hydrocephalic.
54 inches, head to toe
(27 from my chin to scalp alone;
That makes me a marvel.)
Washington came to see me
(the man, not the city; or, maybe, the city is the man).
He looked at me; marveled at me;
I answered with inactivity.
I floated along, day to day,
endlessly rocking,
loving Jesus and preacher’s conversation,
swelling with pride at the show I could provide.
It was hard for me to move,
my head being so huge,
but I got by without going out;
keeping to the cerebral.
my head's got its own box now,
it's lost all its water!
and now they say my skull is a marvel!
but they say nothing of the parts of me everyone's had.
What I never told in my time
was that, more than theology or phrenology,
all I ever wanted out of life
was to not shit in my cradle.
A tiny outhouse with plenty of headroom,
straps to hold me up and a stand
from which I could read
my Bible or a dirty magazine.
Oh that would be marvelous.
“A marvel indeed,” they would say,
as they tied me in and
sang of my tenacity.
The Murder of John S. Van Winkle and his Wife by a Robber in the Winter of 1850
He stole through the snow,
he stole in the night,
noiseless wheels crunching.
Walking wheels—walking, so
circular, a sine wave rolling
endlessly step after step—noiselessly
wheeling footsteps
toward an old housewife,
her husband, his house. There
to rob, with a chop, to end
Van Winkle’s sleep with
a hatchet—a hatchet!—in a
sternum sounding
—curiously—
like a hatchet in a tree.
The Van Winkles awake, spill
and he steals back home
considering his wares as fallen
leaves.
The Circus and the Play of Candle Light
the whistle blows,
closing down the mill
of the National Manufactory
as I listen - hard -
for the cracking sound
of my father's boots
on the stones outside our house -
walking heavy down
Ison,
swallowed in the broom-
sweep sound of the Falls
and it's the third night
of the the wide, striped tent
set up on Main
for passing circus clowns,
their
thin horses
waiting outside on Market -
hitched in a circle
to a post,
shoulders huddled
in the darkness.
The tent flap is closed
as we walk by it outside,
passing near the top hat man
four feet tall, standing on
a deep red box,
waving my father
to pay him -
ten cents for
us both,
eight for a man
on his own
and the seams (the seams)
are glowing in the candle light
and shadows
roam, from face to face
and through the cracks in my fingers
and men inside are walking
with legs eight feet high
and taking turns
tossing three yellow torches,
crackling with the sound of their burning -
with the sound of their burning.
Seeds, or Ideas Spilled by the River into the Sea
You want to talk about seeds? How’s this:
Two nights ago, rain fell in the middle of the Paterson, New Jersey night for just over an hour and a half. After it funneled down defunct gutters and cascaded over the twist-torn corners of tar-flat roofs, it splattered down on brown-grey piles of week-old frozen winter shit and knocked loose bled-grey newspapers, fast-food bags, crushed packs of cigarettes, and a used condom caked in the crease between sidewalk and storefront and then carried them all in a flash-flood stream to the park adjacent to the S.U.M. building. There, in the dying-dead carcass of Hamilton’s America, three dry-cold weeks of detritus slipped into the crawling current of the long-spoiled Passaic and made their way, soggy and broken, to an estuary on the Hudson and, one-half week later,ut to the Sea. If you want poetry, look at the condom: coagulated, left-over semen in a flimsy-yellow bit of latex sank in the current and rolled hesitantly across the riverbed, sending over the course of an hour its contents in sporadic pollen-bursts of wasted spunk into the filth of the long-named River in the unnamed night.
The Trial, Conviction, and Execution of the Murderer John Johnson
John Johnson, from Liverpool, England, was convicted after 20 minutes conference by the Jury. On April 30th, 1850, he was hung in full view of thousands who had gathered on Garrett Mountain and adjacent house tops to witness the spectacle.
I.
John Johnson son of son of John hanged for his hatchet work.
Johnson, John, son of son of John hanged for his hatchet work.
John Johnson son of son of a grandfather hanged for his hatchet work.
His hatchet work was among the best in the business.
His best work was his hatchet business.
II.
After twenty minutes it was his head for which they called.
The passive voice removes responsibility.
After twenty minutes they called for his head.
The jury has decided the active voice is best.
III.
Some hinges are terrifying.
John Johnson’s hatchet work was killer, but some hinges are truly terrifying.
Verily.
IV.
They gathered (like they would some years later at Wrigley) to see just how terrifying two
simple hinges can be.
And they all said, “Verily, verily. Terrifyingly true.”
V.
A wild chant rose up
while he rose up
the crowd rose up:
“Now is the time when all good men come to the aid of their country!”
And to its aid they came.
Spectacle of spectacles!
Look at how those hinges glint!
VI.
There comes a time in every executioner’s career that he removes the hood or hopes he isn’t
shooting blanks.
VII.
“Any last words?”
“No.”
VIII.
But blanks will be shot.
IX.
X.
I would like to think (I would like to
think to you I am thankful I think.)
Such thoughts are fruitless; I really ought to forget
all this fruitless thinking.
But perhaps I should have said something. (I would like to think for just a little longer, though.)
XI.
Late that evening in Liverpool, England, John Johnson’s brother another John Johnson was seen entering his home. He was seen lurching at the sound of the hinges on his front door. And with a sickening snap and a gurgle he was seen felled at the feet of his two excited young daughters who had run to greet him when they heard the sound of the hinges. They looked at him—curiously—and asked in unison, “Any last words?” His snapped neck was seen lolling around in reply. The coroner listed his cause of death as a blank hanging. The first such case to be seen in Liverpool in many years.
