from Clangings
I hear the dinner plates gossip
Mom collected to a hundred.
My friends say get on board,
but I’m not bored. Dad's a nap
lying by the fire. That’s why
when radios broadcast news,
news broadcast from radios
gives air to my kinship, Dickey,
when radios broadcast news,
news broadcast from radios
gives air to my kinship, Dickey,
who says he’d go dead if ever
I discovered him to them.
I took care, then, the last time
bedrooms banged, to tape over
I discovered him to them.
I took care, then, the last time
bedrooms banged, to tape over
the outlets, swipe the prints
off DVDs, weep up the tea
stains where once was coffee.
Not one seep from him since.
off DVDs, weep up the tea
stains where once was coffee.
Not one seep from him since.
What, you wander, do I mean?
Except for slinging my songs
wayward home, how do things
in people go? is what I mean.
Except for slinging my songs
wayward home, how do things
in people go? is what I mean.
-Steven Cramer
From Clangings (Sarabande, 2012).
Used by permission.
Photo by: Thomas Sayers Ellis
Steven Cramer is the author of five poetry collections: Clangings (Sarabande Books, 2012), The Eye that Desires to Look Upward (1987), The World Book (1992), Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand (1997), and Goodbye to the Orchard
(Sarabande, 2004), which won the 2005 Sheila Motton Prize from the New
England Poetry Club and was named a 2005 Honor Book in Poetry by the
Massachusetts Center for the Book. Recipient of fellowships from the
Massachusetts Artists Foundation and the National Endowment for the
Arts, he directs the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at
Lesley University in Cambridge, named by Poets & Writers as one of
the top ten low-residency MFA programs in the country.
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