The Poetry Section: The View Finder and Two Other Poems, by Terese Svoboda

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Oh yes. Here are three new pieces by poet, fiction writer and librettist Terese Svoboda.

Holofernes

Surrender does turn up.
She takes him in her arms
and crushes him to her.
How could there be such fools?

Scrabbling under
effort’s Other-love, say-
she ingredients a stew
with all that’s leftover.

He’s cute. But how long
can she hope to have a head-
in-a-basket, a heroine’s
happiness, hot for later?

The chorus wets themselves,
they cry, they wave their arms-
We’re alive.
Betrayal never fails.

Wife as Boat

Crab victuals slither and suck the undersides
-they like the paint, the wood, its age-
where he scrapes, in a suit so ragged
he could be propulsing or waving a set of
rubbery valves himself. Nevertheless,
happiness hovers with its on/off

not the least broken, the scrapes long
when he’s holding his breath, so long
his headache vanishes. I’m a crustacean,
he sings, faux gruff across the waves.
I eat little girls. He spits out salt.
The scrapees sing back, subsonic.

His chest hair moves with their wee-tailed,
their mouthed. Some foetal, some chained in sex,
none thrilled to be adrift, and so cling mightily
and writhe. Itchy? He scrapes himself, he’s glee
and jelly, he likes the alive part, its husbanding.
He dives, hands out, following the boat’s curves.

The View Finder

Drips off icicles
reshape the sand
where the driveway’s bare-

the movie coughs,
the one where you’re alive, so young.

There’s a pullback, the drive
runs into a spring-high river,
the sand is a dune of salt,

many dunes for such snow.

Walk-ons huddle beside
a period phone booth. Ring-ring!
Don’t call me at work.

But over and over:
the same call, the ice, the drip.
You take a bullet while the writer is out.
Damn

good character

. The light never
fades like that again, the car
motor stops in such silence.

Weapons Grade, Terese Svoboda’s fifth book of poetry, was published in 2009 by U. of Arkansas Press. Her sixth book of prose, Pirate Talk or Mermalade, will be published this year.

You can reach the editor at [email protected].