Poems

by Gareth Lee

In Exstinctio

Words like despicable are going
out of fashion. Despise all you want,
the cables aren't plugging into the root word,

that kind of hate isn't lighting up.
When I brought roses to my love
last night, I half-expected them to sweat

colors and become pale, a symbol of surrender
that I could use, once I rubbed my shoes
on her welcome mat. Our love isn't aureole, lemon,

or marigold. It is nothing perishable, one would hope.
Neon signs burn out often and, should I try too hard,
the same might happen to me. Romance

dies--no surprise there, even with the help
of line-break. For her birthday, I gave her a perfect pair
of mandarin oranges, saying I bought them in Ithaca.

She said, "You're lying, Greece is too far away.
Get me a big, fat shot glass instead," and she toasted
to age. If I get to teaching again,

I'll bring back the dunce cap, a warning,
a looking out the window at gusts bending trees,
and children will wonder if there's a ghost

they don't see, a wrinkled
man chasing his hat, spinning in a dust-devil,
colored like each leaf stranded by the whirlwind.

Pendulum

Coarse strips of kelp, jettisoned scrap metal,
good and bad litter our shorelines. The former is nature's
rough scrub, scouring the waters clean; the latter,
a sign that buoyancy saved a sinking ship. When

a supermodel clips her fingernails, shedding nail polish,
she can't flaunt as much, but she is milligrams
lighter, a petite size sexier. Pigeons, for all their lack
of social grace, are always only a wingspan apart from their next

conversation. What to call this phenomenon, this
strange balance in the world, the sliding
across of an abacus bead, calculating zero
debit, zero credit? To prosper, businessmen, stressing

their positions in the tightening of their ties,
try roulette, hard work, religion; and in meditation
their prayers to own Berkshire Hathaway or /
Starbucks might pile up, unanswered. Sugar cubes disappear

in hot coffee, but really remain, dissolved in the mug.
You can't hide a frosty winter in herbal tea,
brewing and steaming in its porcelain cup, even as
you warm your hands over it, but you can drink up until
you feel warmth, a pulsing, temporary, nagging oven-heat:
even if you haven't earned it, you can at least pretend.

-- GL
©2000 Gareth Lee

Gareth Lee's college background is in English literature and Latin, but presently he teaches computers to K-8 students. Correction: He teaches to students through computers: examples are short units on Beowulf, Civil War music, etc. He lives with his dog, a Springer Spaniel, and spends these days learning html and JavaScript for keatsian.com, a new website he plans to launch by late December, with the help of friends.