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Neither writing nor proofreading is completed.
The Jennifer Bosveld Sampler
includes a poem from each of her books,
either in print or in process, including
notes on the work in some cases.
Books currently available include prices and
may be ordered via check, cash, or VISA/MA
from Pudding House, (614) 986-1881 or
VISA/MA by email.
Grateful acknowledgement is extended
to the publishers where these poems first appeared,
as indicated at the end of each poem.
From
Turtle Watch
Saint Noodle
I took my dime store turtle for a ride
in the basket of my Schwinn around
the corners of my neighborhood—
his water sloshing over the side of his
Pyrex custard cup until an hour later,
after flirting with Steve Williams at the
corner of Brownlee and Eastmoor Boulevard
and an invitation for badminton from
Mike Gould and Bob McCombs. I took
him back
to his place on my bookshelf where
Ike and Mamie Eisenhower, our parakeets,
would not peck at Noodle’s head.
He smelled like rust and lemon pie, a mutant coin,
he couldn’t be spent or saved. He died
of the dreaded dime store turtle disease—
his eyes popped out. So Bob McCombs
who did all my dirty work,
gouged Noodle’s body loose and we
had a funeral for the soft remains
in Mom’s petunia bed where ten or so
other kids on the block joined in ‘cause
that was neat.
The turtle’s shell hung from my bike horn
like Lynn Crowley’s crucifix.
I finally had something to pray to.
Copyright 2005 Jennifer Bosveld
From
Elastic Ekphrastic
Man and Dog
response to George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925)
Man and Dog
oil on canvas, gift from collection of Everett D. Reese to
Columbus Museum of Art, 1998
blacks and browns at first glance
drawn in to a
sleeping border collie
round as a cake at the man’s feet
the man
waits for nothing
is thinking of nothing
all that matters is
the breathing of the dog, that it does
and the man’s long black coat
brown suede gloves
bowler hat are
shelter enough
as he waits on the stool for the dog
to have his rest
in this dark corner of an alley
that could be anywhere
the man’s only thought
is the dog
to watch over it
and will take no turn at sleep
will not close his eyes
though nothing enters them that matters
everything that means
means only in relationship
to the dog
the man’s leash on the dog
is his leash on the world
here, this moment, is all
and ever
Copyright 2003 Jennifer Bosveld
From
Box Games
Thus You Have Seven Yellow Cards
and Still Have Not Advanced
A Question of Scruples
The mansion you partially rent with five others was sold and you
must vacate. The new owner says
you can stay until you find your new place.
That last day you scour the bathroom sink, leave a tap dripping,
and cause a flood which damages floors, the new tin ceiling,
an original Renoir and Persian rug.
Who do you tell? Do you even tell yourself?
You are shown an old ivyclad house in a village far from the
world of information in which you deal; the old lady is moving to
Crestview Nursing Home,
offers you tea and white cake with lovely intentions.
You have checked the comparables
and she is asking tens of thousands too little.
Do you tell her the mammoth barn was
omitted from the appraisal? Do you rave about the
condition of the red tile roof?
Do you offer less, knowing she'll accept it?
Knowing, regardless, you can't afford this
unless you keep selling cars?
At The Worlds' Largest BMW dealership
a young man wants to buy the top line model;
the payments will take half his salary.
Do you discourage him from spending so much?
You are advised to invest in a monopoly doing well
with a poor product.
You are sure to profit.
The people who discover your beloved cat injured in a ditch
pay $150 for veterinary care and adopt it.
You discover what happened
three months later and Whiskers recognizes you at their door.
Do you let them keep the cat?
Do you pay the vet bill?
You realize that your brother is selling
secret information to a foreign power.
He will gladly provide your $50,000 downpayment.
Do you take his check? Or do you turn him in?
A friend offers to hook up your cable TV, save you $27 a month.
The risk is slight. It shouldn't affect your sleep.
It's not worth what they charge anyway.
You hear a person screaming in the parking lot behind your office.
Do you try to help? Do you bother to look out the window? A stone
has been in your shoe all year. You never bother to turn
the shoe upsidedown and smack the rock loose though you limp and favor.
You walk this way all year and all the next.
Copyright 1997 Jennifer Bosveld
first appeared in The Sun
then in the chapbook, Box Games
a collection of poems drawn from
box, board, and parlor games and
written from played boards, directions, or game parts.
Book scheduled for publication Y2K or before.
From
All My Designs Turn Out
Crooked in the End
Repossess
Here comes all that traffic
through your long black hollow pupil.
Into the bay of you
arch their dump trucks and buses.
All of that traffic into your
repertoire of if-onlys.
O, onyx id, Dark One,
costumed for their hit show,
beware of resting under trees.
It will swing your performance
in front of you rhythmically. You will
be mesmerized into their you, and
you will dance out of yourself
into the flattering leaves.
The world is a hungry place
for your laughter.
Earth's applause is a volcano,
beautiful at first, then
smothering.
Stand as a bone--
undesirable to civilized eaters.
Copyright 1981 Jennifer (Groce) Bosveld
first appeared in the limited edition chapbook,
All My Designs Turn Out Crooked in the End
(Little Stone Books, 1981) unavailable.
from
The Pulling
--the title poem
The Pulling
For example,
at a conference
when the keynote speaker is
doing all that anything-but and you
turn to your colleague
invite her to see King of Hearts
the person behind you shuffles its
disturbed feet, clears its throat
and things call you
: from the projectionist's loft
unacceptable ideas
: from your colleague vibrates a
yes, you think you have
heard it before
these hintings you
may not fully be aware of like the
knowing upon waking and not waking and
not knowing what day it is
looking at the color of the
gray on blue, seeing the way it
responds to the wheelbarrow
it just tastes like Thursday
and you know
simultaneously
are-you-kidding-me signs and something
is calling you, something is
pulling at your blood, it is pulling
the dead hair out of your head
you begin to examine your hairbrush
more closely
you begin to see it as a planet and you
hear a star whisper
yes, you are
nearly there but you sit at your
conference wearing your hello badge
brushing your hair with the planet and
the yeses sing louder and louder, you
begin to sing along and the
shuffling feet shush you
you rise like a holy roller saved and
scream, of yes, I hear you
living planet I run through my hair.
And the disturbed feet gather themselves
and confiscate your shell
you
lower case y
You Awake
in a ward of crazy people who know
exactly what you are talking about at
group sessions and the
unbusy gray prison wall is a blessing
where you project what you will
You are the Creator
The Great You Are
in your mind where lives the only things
that are real, a waterfall takes you
down to a pastel orbit of what
and it has been calling, calling
you know, something you cannot
articulate, like the knowing
whenever you're dreaming that you are
dreaming but totally into the dream
the horn from the car down the block
you don't hear but you hear the
blue blanket sky that you know can be
lifted or planed through or thought
through--the other
stuff, that lies against your head like a
hard pillow is there but not there
when you're dreaming--a flash
a flash, it is gone and even you think
they are right
until the next time
for example,
at a conference.
Copyright 1981 Jennifer Bosveld
first appeared in the chapbook, The Pulling
(Little Stone Books) Taken over by Pudding House. The Pulling, $7.95
from
Jazz Kills the Paperboy
The Jo Jazz Proceedings
She exhibits at Panache's glassy bar,
orders a tropical fruit drink,
considers the poptalk of those around her like a panelist.
"Market yourself every minute of the day!" (She replays
the tapes from last month's YOU CAN TURN YOUR LIFE AROUND
shortcourse at the Park Hotel).
She is dependable as a committee chair--aways there to dance
with the newcomer, to pull him into her glittery little empire.
She leans to hear herself question the loner
three barstools down. She has her rules taped
to the inside of her skull. Jo's therapist says
she should consider each night an experiential workshop.
She targets the gray suit who limits himself to the
pleasantness of a hearing officer.
They call her Jazzy, all night long
she accepts compliments about her complicated hair,
her llama eyes, her voice like a rock star.
Tonight the young Governor is here to eliminate one more
Capital City popspot from his make-an-appearance-there
checklist. Elections are won in places like this.
She walks to his party like a troubleshooter, snaps his
plaid suspenders as though they were married,
offers him a bite.
He is hazardously dressed, almost worrisome, but
forgets the agenda. In an innovative dance of straws they
become inappropriate as monkeys--side-poking,
supervising the curious, entertaining the awestruck,
heating up a new history.
A topical seminar, this is the place to be if you're
middle management. These consultations require skill and a
favorable benefit-to-risk ratio: to coordinate all this
happy hour then walk to the Porsche with
sixty dollars left in a Gucci.
Copyright 1992 Jennifer Bosveld
first appeared in the demonstration chapbook,
Jazz Kills the Paperboy
(Pudding House, 1994, 1996, 1998)
the manuscript for which Jennifer received an
Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship of $5,000.00.
The book includes criteria for writing
Virtual Journalism poetry and has been
required or recommended reading for
several college creative writing classes.
Jazz Kills the Paperboy, $7.95
from
The Unitarian Universalist Poets:
A Contemporary American Survey
Starley Travels Difficult
He says, Jazzie, on that bell curve of travelers,
you're way beyond the clapper.
Starley entertains himself on the rockin' porch with self-
generated mail from calling America's 1-800 travel numbers.
Jazzie tells him year after year, he needs a vacation, but
Starley is paranoid someone will break in and steal his
antique trunks full of philatelic postage or that
the hurricane will come.
He says driving is fatiguing, he doesn't like strange restaurants,
and he's frequently misled onto state routes marked east that
surprise you with a sourthern twist down the other side of some
hillroad gone dirt lane landin' you after sundown at a shutdown cafe
with ripped awnings as though it had been aplace.
Starley won't drink the water if he doesn't know where it's been
and he won't use the bathroom unless it's just been Lysolled.
At home he can make himself a milkshake in the middle of the night
but Motel 8 won't let him raid their refrigerator.
Without his computer he's disconnected, at loose ends.
He needs his mail every day, says the screenwriting lab might
want his script, and he wouldn't be there when the letter comes.
Starley won't let the Gillis sisters take his mail in; says
"They'll see those political envelopes and think I'm a fanatic."
And he won't let the post office hold it even for a day since postal
workers throw bagsful down the sewers and take the mornings off.
He's afraid he'll forget to shut the blinds and someone will read
the sign on his Hewlett Packard Desk Jet Plus, "Focus
on how much you hate the job" or they'll covet his 1950s
gray Formica kitchen table polished so bright you can see
the room in it and strong enough to hold a Ford Festiva.
Starley stays close to home where he knows the
aisles of Piggly Wiggly and Winn Dixie blindfolded.
When he ventures out beyond his neighborhood,
he sings...be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
Sleeping in his own waterbed, paddling out like a
reluctant surfer on his stomach, always within view of shore,
he clicks his heels and repeats all through his lucid dreams,
There's no place like home, there's no place like home.
Copyright 1996 Jennifer Bosveld
first appeared in the anthology,
The Unitarian Universalist Poets:
A Contemporary American Survey
(Pudding House Publications 1996)
The Unitarian Universalist Poets: A Contemporary American Survey, $18.95
HOMELESS MANUSCRIPTS
The Typical Man of the Growing Village
He inhabits a scientific era
he is boundless
he is awaiting a belated tribute
lodging termless
a ghost continent
circled by legislators and
licensed professionals.
He seeks a place where
his bones rattle with excitement where
the bees are for his keeping where
something for him exists in excess where
the towel and soup are his
He is a yearning man out of practice
He is on the evening news and he is
headline and bottomline
He is bone fragment flung like a
bird hit by a power-mower.
He is a voter without precinct
gets no mail marked occupant
opposes but has no voice
endorses but it doesn't matter
loves but cannot live with her
hates because we taught him
He walks past my window and I see magic--
a black hole death we are saying Yes to
The alley is camouflage, it conceals his chaos
beckons me--peripheries of broken houses, crumbled
streets, not necessarily him
His brothers and sisters wash up on downtown sidewalks
like Coke cans by the abandoned steel mill on Lake Erie
He is a brunt soldier, retired cook, an Uncle they call Stumpy
He is the missing item on the federal agenda
whitespace
He is the terrible question
and the silence afterwhich.
Copyright 1988 Jennifer Bosveld
first appeared in Among Friends,
Newsletter of the Friends of the Homeless, Columbus, Ohio
while the author was executive director there.
From HOMELESSNESS MANUSCRIPTS
one of a multitude of poems written from her work as an advocate
for people currently homeless or at risk...
from
Free With the Purchase of
a Spaghetti Fork
Field Manual 21-5: Sunday Ceremony
Weekend warming up
seller
strident buyer
seller
war game tables sewn in speaker rows
third day of a cooling-off period
from the Ides of March.
This spring military things soldout
the first ten minutes,
a sellers' market shortly before some
major breaking.
Picture
one old relic rests on his war injury
flips through stained surplus catalogues
trigger finger snapping like a mind
leans on Function Lot Nav L 111-93 until
the knee reminds him and eyes fall behind
on machine-gun belts Big This Year
shells hooked together like that
hand-chained family--
well-staffed troupes whipping
through foxholes for the
public buying,
parading privates drilling,
sporting paramilitary pants.
They leave Pentecostal tables and
cellars filled with Bicentennial bottles
redeemable in 97 years.
Now the stirrings:
Recruits feign attention to olive
drab against last year's
Elvis posters
They move out, Food Word haversacks
packed and tents
precision-folded,
helmet dents hammered out with
bayonets,
new rations, new rationales.
For effect
Rickenbacker sends it's penultimate helicopter
scouting.
Copyright 1979 Jennifer Groce (Bosveld)
first appeared in The Best of 1979: Ohio Poet Day Awards
available in Free with the Purchase of a Spaghetti Fork: The Flea Market Poems,
$7.95
from
2:36 A.M.
Junkman
Old man walks the gravel isles of the flea market
making secret treasure music
for his silk-tuned ears: clinking watches,
buffalo nickels, war medals;
practiced hands play belly-sagged pockets.
Dr. Hook screams over drive-in speakers.
Church bells chime in the village.
Old man whistles Clementine.
Sunday morning dissonance.
Round wise eyes scan tables of Avon and Heisey
Glass, look for "Made in Occupied Japan,"
rusty blowtorches, and bent train track.
Leather hands light a bent cigarette, pulled
from the crushed pack, sleeve-folded in a
week-soiled t-shirt. Chief Round Eyes
puffs a one-man peacepipe, surveying
his reservation.
Covered like a flood-stained collector's
magazine, he rewrites his own short story,
every single weekend. Old man owns history
in his pricelist head, knows where
Crooksville is and all her pots. He flips
the end of a tape-measure, looking for things
at length. Crated, covered, boxed and
bagged treasure awaits his scouting.
Clouds slide overhead and threaten the day
like huge sliced onions. Old man grins at my
skyward glance. I smell the sun-spoiled
makings of a sandwich. "Don't let the weather
intimidate ya. Don't let it boss ya round.
Clouds," he warns, "are always good omens
for the purse."
The porcelain sky cracks and drenches us.
Women share umbrellas But. Old men
love to deal in the rain.
"I'll give ya '2'..." he examines the basket
I marked '4'.
"Three and it's yours!" I impulse. He plans
a turn to walk away and come back;
Old men love to
come back.
I tell him the basket came from Salem,
Massachusetts. Pushing his cheek up pulls a
smile on his weathered face. One hand gives me
two dollars; the other hand places the basket
on his head. He winks at another oldtimer and
bounces on tooting, "Don't let the weather
boss ya. Clouds are good omens
for the purse. Old man
deals in the rain!"
Copyright 1978 Jennifer Groce Welch (Bosveld)
first appeared in the book 2:36 A.M.
(Avonelle Associates Ltd.) Available for avid collectors only, 2:36 A.M., $7.95
A Sampling from
LITERARY JOURNAL APPEARANCES
Loving War
"...to root out from themselves the love of medals and
decorations.
We must create more honorable activities for those who try to conquer
in themselves their fighting instinct, their subconscious Hitlerism.
We must compensate the man for the loss of his gun."
--Virginia Wolf
from Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid
War gives us art, so we love war
it drives us to pallet-knife the foxholed soldier
in the muddy trench and keeps his
shrapnelled face against the bloodied gunbutt
War gives us cherishables, so we love war
Dad's World War II coronet and letters to Mother,
discharge papers rest in the fold of his
drab blanket in the cedarchest,
Nazi radio headset mounted on the study wall,
Japanese sword in the guestroom closet, you
saw one like it at the Wintermute Antique Show,
And artifacts from John Brown's Harpers Ferry are
in lighted cases at the town museum.
Remembered, bid on, lost and found again,
we capitalize recapitalize on war. Revered,
War gives us our religion.
The Pentecostal God loves war
pastor Parsely says
as much as Jesus Loves Me.
Onward, Christian Soldiers marching as
before, God gives us war religion.
War gives us music, so we love war.
Songs to wonder where the flowers have gone
the public TV fund-drive Peter Paull and Mary songs:
I'll tie back my hair, mens clothing I'll put on
I'll pass as your comrad as we march along
War gives us family so we love war.
Someone to welcome home, someone to come home to,
someone to write, someone to frame.
War gives us folks to frame.
War makes us think of uncles,
makes us brothers of the tankbelly--
Holy Fathers proxying last rights to dying conrades.
We are better sons when we come home from war.
War gives us jobs, so we love war.
Prepares us for the corporate ladder,
lectures us on perfect grooming, power ties and
spitshined shoes, chains our command, trains us to
peel potatoes and return to places you can't come home
again to Munks Corners Ohio to launch missiles.
War is Parent, Savior, and our entertainment.
Dungeons and Dragons and
little boy weekends with the reserves,
Pinball, Nintendo, and Balley Wars,
Movie, block, and gang wars--it models survival.
Comes in handy when we marry and divorce.
We could not act had we not learned war.
War gives us hope, so we love war. Sunflower-sized bows
droop on waistlines of street maples, withstand
a hundred rainstorms, outlives the name "In Memory of..."
at the portable blinking sign at the Sunoco.
War is more than the total of its parts. It has eternal life.
It offers all its players immortality
in history books and obituary columns.
first appeared in Negative Capability
Copyright 1994 Jennifer Bosveld
DUUUUH
I relish most that I don't understand.
Coursework, get behind me, and Connections, Cosmos, these
will not fool my enchantment.
Discovery Channel, Knowledge TV,
tease, distract with clues and attitudes. No subject has
its questions answered. They will argue but I've been there
and know. How arrogant professors, egotistical the authors.
Mystery, live with me like a sister.
The common nouns move through my mornings and I
know them least. How moon instructs the sea, why whales
come to beach themselves and we tug them to the tides again.
Photosynthesis and the sudden bean, corn fast up its stalk like
Uncle Ed's tree-art pulled from a Sunday paper.
A Sunday paper overnight.
Miracles abound and dazzle me, I unlearn,
unwind the strings-attached education's quick-dry
ink and wait for a lucky break from clarity.
The world is a magic shop; I came for the show
even trite curiosities--how bumblebees and jets lift
and Sandhill Cranes convene
above Nebraska's North Platte River.
Scholarship is a giftbox, not gift which is unboxable.
True study is the Tao and untextable.
I relearn reading only to forget to read, for all these things
when I was twelve I had an answer and now I doubt.
We walk on water daily without knowing
sink only when we think of surface, weight, and physics.
Learning does not satisfy. Awe does.
Party my ignorance.
Blow out the candles on my need-to-know cake.
Stare stupidly into the sky.
Do not explain blue.
First appeared in Wind
Copyright 1995 Jennifer Bosveld
The Other Hand
The other hand does not respond
to right side left side talk it
is solely painterly one moment
soulfully mathmatical the next--calculating a crowd or
foundation for your next mansion you
want to live inside and choose not to you
always choose
The other had is the hand that would do but
you won't let it draw a lavender watercolor pine crossing a
crimson landscape when there are papers to grade
The other hand is explosive
dangerous to the core you
fear its big bang, never go near the button
The other hand is the hand unextended
now that it's been rejected--the one
withdrawn from volunteered time
This is the hand that did not clear the field or plant
a bouquet of carrots like
Mr. Nobody blamed in a childhood rhyme for all that
you didn't do it is
guilty if you don't let it-- let it
This hand is the only hand over the heart during your
personal anti-national anthem
the only hand on your sacred text to swear
on the book of blank pages inside you have to write on
write on
but you're busy choosing up sides within yourself there's
no more space to be central
The other hand will shrivel and curl
your franklloydwright-picassoesque-renoirlike would-be lived
most its life in the dungeon--your abused child--
miracle angel, listen and move to
the door now open
first appeared in Psychopoetica
Copyright 1998 Jennifer Bosveld
Open Windows
You imagine yourself in the side yard of the Queen Anne house
overlooking the Atlantic Ocean on Martha's Vineyard,
white wooden lawn furnishings scattered on perfect grass;
you're swinging there in a lawn glider under an aqua canopy,
large yellow beach ball on the slope toward the water,
thick novel face-down on the lemonade table, an exciting
dust cover on the book pulls all the colors of the premises
into one tiny explosion of concentrate Here.
You can hear your personal anthems playing through the open
windows--lacy curtains billowing with sound. An ultralight
airplane approaches in the distance with its purple and pear green wings.
You smell the experimental cherry tree in bloom, your
black border collie romps on the lawn with an old red kerchief.
You know your dearest friends are driving off the ferry in their convertibles,
light-hearted, with tapestry luggage, bringing peach pies and French breads,
cheeses, and a barrel of small strawberries sweet and bothersome to prepare.
This is what you want. All of this, that is here and has been
beating like an east coast wind in your chest.
Truthfully, how little you linger in the yard--you have not practiced.
You do not watch the sky or invite friends for supper.
Meanwhile, back at the dream, someone mowed that lawn,
went to Sears, paid $20 per gallon for the Weatherbeater paint,
got off the island to purchase books at Borders and
beach balls at Kmart. Someone weeded, has seen no end to weeding,
sifted the washed-up trash off the shore and cleaned off their shoes,
pressed those perfect curtains. You can't simply buy it this way;
it also take labor. Collies need brushing and
white bathrooms like this require constant sanitizing,
lunch won't simply prepare itself and sit long to
maintain this picture. All gets stale but work.
In your living room in the suburbs, the townhouse, the projects,
tonight, set the table with your four cloth napkins, any old candle will do.
Open the windows and play whatever music is near.
Toast those who are present.
Take one photo and have it enlarged; paste it to the cover
of Country Living. It is never a typical Tuesday.
Your dreams have come true.
Copyright 1998 Jennifer Bosveld
first appeared in the anthology
Prayers to Protest: Poems That Center and Bless Us
(Pudding House Publications)
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