Portrait of a Friend (name witheld/female) 3 Feb 2008

(note, I cant get the spacing in the text to work the way I'd like.)

That white flutter chancing just above the roiling water is a Brazilian Swallow crossing the Rio Negro in a rainstorm.
Between each wing thrust the bird dips towards a wet oblivion;
Her hard grey tongue shape shouts her life forwards
into the
crosswind.

Hesitant, she is half-way across the wide channel.

Her tail, the most delicate thing, forks
and tapers to points like the Christmas time candy cane that you sharpened to a white spike between your teeth and the rolling lathe of your teenage tongue.

You held it there, suspended in your mouth
hesitant to try on your hands the sharp point
that your young tongue had fashioned
from such sweetness.

Aaron Allen

Self Portrait 23 Feb 2008

We were waiting for the sharpened tramp
To rumble from the lumber camps
His purpose in his arm like a two sided axe.

Here, where there is timber, we have been expecting him
to come sing songing across a meadow or at night
like a specter to tap on our misted windows.

We even spotted a plume of white smoke
Twisting on the mountain side and rejoiced
There he must be, one last campfire on the long journey
From the east.

Jinney marked the trees, cleared the debris from the
Woodshed, said she’d made the perfect hat for him
White enough to keep him seen and tight enough not to
Spin with a swing or an impact.

We’d waited for the TIMBER shout, the winter’s warmth,
An icon man. When we’d waited far too long
The old men, creaky shouldered, did the job.

He hasn’t come.

Aaron Allen

Portrait Project

I realize its easier for me to compartmentalize my writing into projects. Right now the Thesis project is dominating my writing time, but there are 4 or 5 other projects that really have me excited. One is a series of portraits of my friends/acquaintances here in Brooklyn. Not painted portraits but "word portraits" as a friend suggested I call them. The idea is to have the subject physically in front of me while I write, and for the genesis of the poem to come out of some insight into or energy recieved from the sitting subject. I'm shooting for minimal revision and a sense of "capturing" the moment of the sitting, the interplay of themes and psyches that would create the nexus for art in that moment. The sitter then gets a chance to interact with the poem in some way I havent thought up yet, maybe colors on a printed copy, or something of that nature. I am very enthused by it, and although i haven't had the chance to physically sit people down (thesis), i have completed some preliminaries, or "studies" of a few people (with their permission of course). I will post them here.