Poems from Vienna, June 2008

Gemäldegalerie

Still-life in other centuries
the watered wood smells similar
to public speaking
the clock hands cast mute shadows
swirling the cobble streets
like low-fat ice cream
in the stomaches of mothers

Tour guide voices vaulting
off the cloister
tongued, old Pentecostal saints
their flaming crowns recalls
drivers education
and airplanes failing
in alpine cross winds
the babies louden

The old lies spill through matte labels
the security has once again succeeded
dogs on fences dream of city lakes
the white square overflows with hoses
and denim

Stephansplatz

City readers
nesting in shady metal
a coughing loudness
(street repair)

and all their places lost

...as if tight leopard print returned
from the dead
with a vendetta against
the solid legging

"Although, could he
have loved her?"

rushed hair on old ladies
serpentine rims
rimmed with flowers
like famous fountains
made of lead

St. Stephen's clad in scaffold
The Russians fall to Spain
we all have broken legs
all of us in the Ringstrasse

But this is flying weather
clear, the faces of old friends
and their vacuumed homes.

A fine cellist on her laptop.
It is like a new Venus being born.

Pestsäule

The city wrapped slowly
and the rocks chipped in the coil
and then nails rusted over
as if to acquiesce
their squareness becoming distant
to the drifting darkness settling in
Turkish suburbs lit by new
crescents, whitely fixed.

The city yellows around
a column to the plague
which looks like a golden horn of bodies,
kings, baroque disease
Flanked by tourists in their shorts

The city yellows even though we hate it.