Gillian Conoley

Lincolnesque

Peace does not appear so distant as it did.
Nor legs so long

as if to ask,
is this a marriage or an allegory?

Enter do you want
            a Negro woman for a slave
            or a wife?
            
"I could just leave her alone."

War next     next/next
over in less than a week, sure thing most excellent
chief, high hat with no man in, death close-walking--

Enter Captain Lilac
brought the enemy
down
but
enemy
resurrected
through
dooryard
last--

                          a laughingstock, the green states,
who once had his
"persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion."

*

One spiritualist, two spiritualists, three spiritualists,

four

dust off   black topcoat of history,
lilacs, lilacs, you and me, 
we always got the histamine.

Sparrows nest
near the eyes, flee bearded Death,
concrete example:
"I am not reading.  I am studying law."

Enter      
             "a specious and fantastic
              arrangement of words,
              by which a man can prove
              a horse chestnut to be
              a chestnut horse."

		*

Money to make beautiful sound 
in school children's pockets,

money to know all their addresses, ordinary terrors
to keep under one's hat, muy tired.

Does poetry matter?  

A cloud clearly seen is stranger than country,  mystic chords and patriot 
         graves, 'copter guard.

If Colossus could have sat down, I bet he would have.


Free verse is "Ladies and Gentlemen:   I appear before you merely for the 
                     purpose of  
             greeting you, saying a few words and bidding you farewell.
              
             I have no speech
             to make, and no sufficient time to make one if I had; nor have I 
                     the strength
             
             to repeat a speech, at all the places at which I stop. I have come to 
                     see you and allow you to see me (Applause) 
             

Enter the lawn from the rear,     grey/green, windless, eerie.
Unsifted birds layered low

lift to the oracle's ear, whippoorwill intoning over rio.  (Great head above 
             crowd,     
brow in the cirrus,  that's you, 
   
spoken man)    
Imagination to state:

concrete
over the dead, piled-high.
The country makes the scene
a wonder.


                     and now I believe I have really made my speech and am
                     ready to bid you farewell when the cars move on."

---

Gillian Conoley's four collections include Lovers in the Used World, Beckon, Tall Stranger (nominated for the National Book Critics' Circle Award), and Some Gangster Pain. Poems from her new manuscript are forthcoming or in recent issues of Fence, Colorado Review, Electronic Poetry Review, 26, and Jacket. Les Ferris will soon publish a chapbook of her new work, and Tall Stranger, long out of print, will be reissued as a Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary in 2004. She is professor and poet-in-residence at Sonoma State University and the founder and editor of Volt. contents | next