Poetry
Sapphire & Soda
The lights combine above us,
chaperones, white elixir. Three
days alone end now. Bright
stars mix in the surface of your
glass: blue, softblue, nightblue.
Immortal glasswork, tender
and dauntless: your eyes
as they ask me why I never
came back. The bridge collapses
over the river. Nothing returns,
not even me. I am always away.
Accusations descend from the
tar-breast of night sky. My hands
haunt museums of the past as they
touch you gently. Sapphire and soda
spills onto your dress, and no one
moves as the wetness spreads slowly,
the same way I am insinuating myself
into your life again, blue gin on white cloth.
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/stories.html#poetry
Evan Stephens
Evan Stephens
Persona Poem
Jorge Luis Borges
In the labyrinth of black walls, full
of statues of blindfolded women,
you find him at the center, at his desk.
The surface is etched with crude minotaurs.
The area between you seems saturated
with invisible beings.
You discovered him by following
the strange thread on the floor -
all the words he has written are laid out
in one long sentence on the floor,
a distinctly Borgesian version
of Ariadne's method of defeating a maze.
Conversation lasts a few minutes,
until he tires and must lie down
on a cot you didn't notice before.
Leaving the way you come in, you
notice that backwards, the words
create new stories. As you exit,
you nearly trip over a book
of the writings of Thomas de Quincey.
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/stories.html#poetry
Evan Stephens
Knoll, Brook, Pear Tree
The knoll yields the strawberries slowly,
in bunches of small red bells. I am ten
years old, and picking them with friends.
We delight in finding the bleached skull
of a deer, covered in briars and grape leaves.
A brook lies on the other side of the hill,
where the handsome ghost of Narcissus speaks
to himself in the form of a melancholy lily.
The water doesn't reflect his voice, only his shape.
Beyond the water, and farthest away,
is a lone pear tree. It embodies the deep silence
of impending adolescence. Running home,
I pass it, my basket heavy with strawberries
and the skull. A final look shows me that
the sweet blood has stained the face pink,
like the gloss of an unearthly half-broken shell.
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/stories.html#poetry
Evan Stephens
On Willie Stargell
The endless fields, the new and clumsy dusk,
the sudden bright lights: he has entered
a larger stadium than ours. Those who gathered
where the three rivers meet light small candles
in their minds, memories of the long shots which
would thunder up and out, like skulls of angels,
growing distant, epic in their scope, antique
lamps extinguished one by one, some quick hand
removing from the world these mammoth works.
Listening over the radio in 1979, he appeared
more than alive as he sent another long white bird
from his gentle hands deep into the cheering night.
Now we mourn not for the giant himself,
but for the footprints he left around us, within us.
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/stories.html#poetry
Evan Stephens
2/10/01-2/26/01
A Parable
A river is frozen, sheets of dark lapis lazuli
in severe latticed angles. A single gem, a ruby,
lies on the bank amid white sand, almost hidden.
Some trees hang overneath, enclosing. Bitter-
tasting twigs swaying in a gentle melancholy.
By the shore lies some old metal furniture,
out of place. They are lost in another time.
Silence: everywhere there is murder and rust.
Walking into this scene, my breaths fly
out and become small caves. I must think
of my dead brother and how his arteries sank
against the tunnels of wind. Where is he now?
Without meaning to, I leave the grove where
all these things converge. I already forget.
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/stories.html#poetry
Evan Stephens
Ghost Town
The old greenhouse
is in ruins. The gardenias
mingle with crystal dice.
Those yew trees? No children
remain to hide under them
with pails full of ghosts.
And the hillside theater
is overrun with stones,
King Lear is long gone.
The town is empty except
for a rusty train which
stopped here, never moved on.
Buildings fall into the ground
like Narcissus into the pool:
everything becomes history.
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/stories.html#poetry
Evan Stephens
Chopin in London
1848
Mouths are rusted shut when he appears like a magician
on the long black wing of the stage. People fade in from
the deep gray manifold of fog which which is
a giant ear as it presses against the windows. Built from
wire
and paper, his footsteps are soundless. He bows stiffly,
and coughes into his fist, then holds his hand closed,
trapping the death-air. He lowers himself to the piano
and releases the vapor onto the keys, which rattle
like bones as they usher forth his lament. The notes burst
like grapes turning into a sudden frothy bitter wine,
fermenting
to a dark violent blue, similar to the hue of the coarse pulminary
blood
which is choking him a little more each rainy London day.
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/stories.html#poetry
Evan Stephens
Abstraction: Suicide
"Nami no oto shigurete kurashi" - Santoka Taneda
Cleaved from you by the black wall,
absence clots within me like sour blood.
Lingering in the hope of seeing you,
I have become a pale avalanche of desire.
Heaven mirrors earth: the clouds are sullen too,
pregnant with regrets. Bitter lemon-blossoms
sleep in my veins, waiting to bloom
into their bitter watery petals of grief.
Behind my face something revolves:
a dark and silent carousel of thought,
decorated with flurries of horses
which are painted mint green: your echoes.
This carousel is gigantic
and reveals my coldness.
So I send little kisses in the brooding
soft tinsel of dawn, little kisses cast
in the shape of swans. There is sawdust
beneath the virgin gallows, and men are smoking,
the black cigars: These gestures, too late.
Long streets end here. True letters from you
I pray will come. You, fallen into guilt
because of your tongue, killer of killers.
The unsweet truth: We will never be
as young as we are now. Then:
a drop into the darkness
wet with the sound of waves.
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/stories.html#poetry
Evan Stephens
Sketch in November
Our breaths are black balloons
drifting upwards towards the sun:
What is their purpose?
They sprout into the air
as if the air were earth,
tenebrous orchids, reaching
underneath the blue armor of sky,
straining to feel a heavy breast.
Then their true motive is revealed:
with a broad sweeping motion,
they gather to form a hand
and force the sun to set.
Darkness rises like fresh bread.
The heavens become a giant coffin
constructed from the wood of tupelos,
lined with a silk interior, the color of
lemons
or canaries, whispering myriad secrets
in a shadowy hiss of air:
they rise, these, our slow silent
breaths,
as we bleed them into the glowing dark.
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/stories.html#poetry
Evan Stephens
