|
|
|
How the Trouble Starts
Laurel and Hardy carry an upright piano
through the streets of New York, American
mongrels nipping at them, avoiding street
vendors and cops, passing between
horse carts and trolley cars and model A’s,
across the Brooklyn bridge, down to the harbor
and its fish markets and teamsters, finding their way
up a ramp and onto a freighter,
across the Atlantic, making their
way through the lower decks and
cargo holdings, through cattle and farm
machinery, until they reach the upper
deck, rollicking with the waves, as a sailor
pecks “Daisy” on the piano, while
Laurel and Hardy keep their grip of it, as the
freighter passes through the Straits
of Gibraltar, and deep into the Mediterranean,
and then marching off the ship onto some sunny
Italian port, winnowing between fat men and women
selling bread and pasta, children playing soccer,
with Florentine dogs nipping at them,
through the southern Alps and onto
the roads of a snowy Tyrolean village, amid
goats and men in lederhosen dallying
about, a small oom-pah band, all brass and
drum, shadowing them, as a pretty Swiss Miss,
all blonde and busom, plays a little
Für Elise on the piano, and then
quickly up the Matterhorn, thousands of feet
above some Alpine field, dotted with
chalets and sheep, to a wooden bridge,
suspended all the way to Mount Blanc, with
missing and broken planks, frayed
ropes, but they don’t miss a step.
Mid-way on the bridge is a gorilla.
Poem © Dr. James Brock 2004. All rights reserved.
|
|
James
Brock has won fellowships for his poetry from the National
Endowment for the Arts, the Alex Haley Foundation, the
Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Idaho Commission for the
Arts. He's filled two books with poetry: The Sunshine Mine
Disaster (University of Idaho Press, 1995) and Nearly Florida
(Anhinga Press, 2000). He's also appeared in journals like,
Northwest Review, Seattle Review and Permafrost.
He teaches creative writing at the Florida Gulf Coast University.
Apart from that, he's just trying to "go native" in Fort Myers,
Florida. He's into birding and nature walking.
|
Portrait
of Dr. James Brock © Henry Denander 2004. All rights reserved.
|
|
Poetry
Michael Rothenberg
Diane Thiel
Nick Carbo
Mia Leonin
Michael Hettich
Campbell McGrath
Kelle Groom
Steve Kronen
Kemel Zaldivar
Pris Campbell
Michael-Earle Carlton
George Murphy
Howard Camner
Geoffrey Philp
Terri Carrion
Nancy Knutson
Jonathan Rose
Barbra Nightingale
Ian Krieger
James Brock
Amy Serrano Zorrilla
Denise Duhamel
Virgil Suarez
Micro-Fiction & Shorts
Terri Carrion
Diane Thiel
Artists
Artist Intro
Ivonne Bess
Diego Quiros
John Canning
Jeff Filipski
Arlene Magloire
Cassandra
Gordon-Harris
Holly Picano
TRES
Mia Leonin
Terri Carrion
Richard Blanco
Interviews
Campbell McGrath
Previous Volume
Volume 16
MastHead ~ Submit
South Florida Reads
PUERTA
|
