Spring 2009, Volume 6

Poetry by Lorine Parks

a curse on the neighbor who cut off the limbs from my tree

I broadcast this on high and low frequencies
to the small squadrons of the air, asking
the colonies of wasps and black-bellied banded hornets
who foraged here for tree sap and tinier insects
to buzz you attack you inject your hide with their irritating poison.
May the hummingbirds who nestled at night in the crooks of these branches
squeal and aim for your uncovered head and dive at you.

I call upon the Earth's other tiny tormenters,
for the ants who crawled up the bark of this tree to get resin,
to infiltrate your pant legs and nostrils,
and the spiders who spun their filmy traps from these twig tips,
to swing down and alight in your hair and bite you behind the ear,
causing extreme swelling and excruciating pain.

I ask the forswearing of amnesty for you as a prisoner
when you wish for evening dew to soothe your eyelids,
when you desire the reservoir of night,
then may you learn that this incandescent globe—the sun is never NEVER going to stop glaring at you.
You may squirm
but you will find yourself tied to the chair
by gardening ligaments fixed in the stare
of that sky-hung bulb.
You may beg for the black hole of an oubliette
but they will not drag you back to a cell.
No darkness no dreams no surcease;
you may pray for it eternally
but you have cut down Shade at its roots.
May you never have peace


BIO:  Lorine Parks was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in Boston and New York, getting her degrees from Wellesley College and Columbia University, before discovering California. She has been writing poetry seriously for the last eight years. She values the workshop experience here at LBCC.