Heat & Other Poems

HEAT

This is not a place
where
Henry can come and go
as he pleases.
His movements are
monitored
by hundreds hiding
in huts and haciendas.
Those hibernating
in history
and hospitals
know his whereabouts.
In the hermitage,
hipsters and hangers-on
note his habits
and hounds track
 his trail.
He is armed only with
abstract ideas.
He has no defence.
When
it gets out of hand,
Helen hurries him to
her hideaway.
Hypnotized,
then humanized
by her heat,
Henry hobbles
 Into the helicopter
happily
homebound.

BURNT BEANS

That woman wearing
a babushka
and holding a baby is
waving a banner.
Behind her a brass
band plays.
In the barn boys sing
ballads.
Under the bridge,
beggars, bullies and
bards ball
babysitters and
bank tellers.
That woman
wearing a babushka
bares her
breasts but not for
the baby.
Butlers bring
barbecued ribs
to barons
while
bureaucrats buff
their black
boots.
Brian waits at the
box office
to buy a
ticket from the
blue-eyed blonde with
bad breath.
Best to see the
butterflies first, she says,
before the bigots,
bibliophiles and
brontosaurus.
Beware the
Brotherhood,
the brown-tailed moth,
and the woman
wearing a babushka.
But Brian is
no longer listening.
Blown away by the blazing
bathhouse
he drops the burnt
beans.
Perhaps there is a better
bomb shelter
for the blind, he tells himself
as his dog Bruno
leads him to the boat
in the bay.

COLD

This is the wrong
corner!
Connor cries out.
But the
car door slams shut.
They conspire
to keep him
from the
compound.
He can’t climb the
steep cliff.
And he can’t find
the cobblestone
stairs.
Curious chorus girls,
clergymen,
clairvoyants and
clowns
gather round.
When a caravan
of convicts and concubines
in cars and on camels
appear out of
nowhere
he discards his
chronicles on cowardice.
Crammed
between crooks,
they confiscate
his clothing,
his coins,
his clipboard, and
his clarinet.
Though he cons them
with cocaine,
they conveniently
collapse
from the cold
but not before
bequeathing him their
calvary, their colonies,
their catacombs
and their cats.

DINOSAUR BONES

A dreamer and
his daughter
dig for dinosaur
bones in a desolate land
but discover instead
documents
the prior inhabitants
left behind.
Detectives flown
in on dirigibles
decipher
coded descriptions
of daily life.
Delegates in Datsuns
and daredevils
on donkeys
try to determine
the reasons for their
departure after
reading the detailed
data.
But even the delegates
and daredevils
who duel
for the dreamer’s
daughter are
distracted
by swarms of dragonflies
and by the arrival of
developers
who divide and
distribute
the land occupied
by debutants
with dalmatians,
dermatologists,
actors named Dean,
and surprising
everyone,
some former
inhabitants
who return just long
enough to
update the discovered
documents
while the dreamer
and his
daughter continue
to dig.

Leave a note for Roberta below; they’ll be notified.

Roberta Allen

A Tennessee Williams Fellow in Fiction and a Yaddo Fellow, I am the author of nine books, including three story collections, THE TRAVELING WOMAN, CERTAIN PEOPLE and THE PRINCESS OF HERSELF; a novel, THE DREAMING GIRL; a novella-in-flash and a memoir. My stories have appeared in over 300 magazines, such as Conjunctions, Epoch, New World Writing and upcoming in Evergreen Review. Also a conceptual artist, very active internationally through the 1970s-81, and still working, my art is in the collections of MoMA, The Met Museum, and The Smithsonian Archives of American Art. My writing papers have been acquired by the Fales Archive of NYU. www.robertaallen.com