Two
poems from Cody Walker's Shuffle and Breakdown
followed
by a note on the author
"The
Mould of a Dog Corpse"
a
l'Antiquarium di Boscoreale, Pompeii
It's not a promising title.
And his legs straight in the air: they give pause.
But I will swear this dog is laughing.
Mouth open, ears back,
doubled over
like a drunk watching late-night television,
he is hysterical,
he is funnier than a volcano.
And
he's a visionary:
he sees me, immortal at 32,
and cannot, cannot stop laughing.
from
Breakdown
Hephzibah
Cemetery . . . April 1889
Hephzibah means my delight is in thee
but dah light is gone, Walt, dah light's been
snuffed
by the rain clouds. The headstones warp open,
they're plundered by snakes – Zanna half-saves them
with chalk rubbings. Why come to Hephzibah?
the magnolias moan, with their sickly
sweet blossoms I taste in my sleep. Why spread
dumbstruck ashes at the creek's fat mouth?
Why do anything, Walt? It's a direct question.
Zanna sends you love she doesn't have
to spare and decorates our tent with epitaphs.
"Dead forever" reads her grandmum's – sadly
I'm lying. Write me some way to recast
this sky, rub the clouds to blue slate, wring pulp
from the sun. Let jackdaws be mourning doves,
let mourning be delight, let ashes be snow, dust
sweet enough to eat. Make me take back
the comment no love to spare – Zanna's
a copperhead angel, a sage-mouthed blossom,
something to press against in the rain.
Wrecked,
moored in Georgia –
Caleb
©
Cody Walker was born in Baltimore, Maryland
in 1967, and was educated at the University of Wisconsin, the
University of Arkansas and the University of Washinton, where
he obtained his BA, MFA and PhD, respectively. He lives in Seattle,
where he works as an Instructor of English at the University
of Washington and is Writer-in-Residence in Seattle Arts and
Lecture's Writers in the Schools Program. His poems have appeared
in Best New Poets 2005, Shenandoah, Prairie
Schooner, Margie, Mare Nostrum, Light, The
Cream City Review, Harper's Ferry Review, and elsewhere.
He received the James Boatwright III Prize for Poetry (from
Shenandoah) in 2003, the Harold Taylor Prize (from the
Academy of American Poets) in 2004, and was a Pushcart Prize
nominee in 2004. He also received a Teaching Academy Award for
Excellence in Teaching from the University of Arkansas in 1995,
and a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Department of English
in the University of Washington in 2005.
"The
Mould of a Dog Corpse" first appeared in Mare Nostrum,
and "Hephzibah Cemetery ... April 1889" first appeared
in Shenandoah.
