Joseph Ceravolo

Three Short Poems

Wild Provoke of the Endurance Sky

 

Be uncovered!

Hoe with look life!    Sun rises.

Rice of suffering. Dawn

       in mud,

this is roof    my friend

O country    o cotton    drag

of the wild provoke,

there’s a thousand years     How are

you growing?

No better to in a stranger.

Shack, village,

                 brother,

wild provoke of the endurance sky!

 

* * *

 

Caught in the Swamp

 

High is the dark clouds

and the harbor and

the egg as the antelope

frightens us through the

swampy harbor. We burn

our food, and the egg

has a seal of abandon

                    in its blueness.

Which are we humming at last?

It is the running of the shiny antelope

we smell, not love.

Is it the bed?

 

* * *

 

Warmth

 

There’s nothing to love in this

rice Spring.

Collected something warm like friends.

Sail glooms are none.

Your desire

rests like sailors in

their bunks. Have beaten you, lips.

Supply me

man made laughing.

Supply it flowing out;

are brute bullets in your back

because there is

in this rice Spring

Joseph Ceravolo

 Joseph  Ceravolo

Joseph Ceravolo (1934 - 1988), the first winner of the Frank O'Hara Award for Poetry, wrote poetry while earning his living as a hydraulics engineer.  The poems Wild Provoke of the Endurance Sky, Caught in the Swamp, and Warmth appear in The Green Lake Is Awake: Selected Poems by Joseph Ceravolo.


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