Spirit Cabinet [excerpt]

1953 –

. . . 

& how, o spirits, shall I invoke you, who cannot count himself
    among the chosen?
My writings & keenings are interior & treated by appropriate
    prescription drugs,

to whom my conversion is incomplete, for some days I devote myself
    solely to my dead
& in my error I do seek them & do wail. From the wire mesh
    I glimpse the chalk marks,

aflicker on a kind of slate. Here is the glyph of patchouli-smell,
    graven on a scarf
or silken dress. & here the character for a chin nicked while shaving,
    stubble edging a dime-sized birthmark,

. . .

Catawba Cotton Mill, 1908

Propping his tripod, Hine remembers
Childhood snowfall in Wisconsin,
Flakes careening in prairie wind,

A red sleigh skimming a frozen lake,
Curlicued breath-mist of two dappled drays.
But this is a blizzard of cotton dust

From the looms & thirty thousand spindles,
Gauze-air, whirlwind of innumerable floaters.
The thermometer reads one hundred & three.

David Wojahn

2014

For the Scribe Gar.Una of Uruk, 3,000 B. C.

—author of the earliest known signature

That arrow & life were homonyms. That his name
Predates all others, incised sunbaked on a slab
Of Eupratian clay. Stylus a broken reed, though it

Carries somehow the bedazzled opalescent mojo
Of transfiguration. The hand which holds it edges right
& reaching the margin circles back, right to left

David Wojahn

2014

Another Epistle to Frank O'Hara

On the Forty-Ninth Birthday of "The Day Lady Died"

It is 3:00 in the torpid New South, three days past Bastille Day & yes
        this is the form you fashioned,
isn't it? Exact & fast & haunted as the opening chords of "Sweet Jane"
        (Mott the Hoople version),
which pulses from the minivan as I drive from shrink to soccer camp, shirtpocket
        staining my new Rx with sweat,

the bank thermometer flashing 103, the day's new record. We still
        use Fahrenheit, Frank
(if I may call you Frank).

David Wojahn

2012

Poems

Spirit Cabinet [excerpt]

More by this poet

Catawba Cotton Mill, 1908

For the Scribe Gar.Una of Uruk, 3,000 B. C.

Another Epistle to Frank O'Hara

Poems

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Spirit Cabinet [excerpt]

More by this poet

Catawba Cotton Mill, 1908

For the Scribe Gar.Una of Uruk, 3,000 B. C.

Another Epistle to Frank O'Hara

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