PSH: Poets of the Week

Bio (auto)

Christopher Mulrooney (Los Angeles, California) has written poems and translations in City Works, Merge, New Translations, Vanitas and Guernica.

the family of togetherness

duplex A

let's drown the cat why not?
you sit or think

the cat thinks about things
you don't know about

let's go out the screen door
and make merry on the lawn awhile

the sky is blue the grass is green
there are fireflies in the sunset
after the housemates are gone

the breakfast oatmeal and milk
with apples and of course tea
the screed of any journalist

Wonder bread around the lunch
with the missile site on the hill
and the great expanse of tarred dirt

the clinging of one's shadows
in the daylight walking to and fro

the city in which you are lost
and wandering or following the sidewalk
or walking on a wall to school

the great entertainments the baths
and pools for drowning cats in

duplex B

the singsong radius of the old gift
for treacheries comes upon one who says
encore encore une fois and do not forget
your lunch in a bag the glad times sweet times
you would have forgotten but for this reminder

ah the trees they are spoiled now
fruits are springing unripe
it isn't the fashion now maybe
if all this discourse were to spend itself on you
it might pass for a wood beam over the fireplace
like a movie set

you would have enjoyed that
you would have thought
hey nonny nonny
you would have enjoyed that

Bio (auto)

I.B. Rad is an irreverent civic poet who uses a variety of styles that he thinks are suitable for civic/satirical poetry. His sometimes-controversial work has been published in a number of electronic and hardcopy publications. I.B. and Mrs. Rad live in New York City with an adorable dog, who allows them the run of the house.

The following work is Copyright © 2007, and owned by I.B. Rad and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

Even the Smallest Stone*

I've read
"even the smallest stone
in a riverbed
has the entire history of the universe
inscribed on it"
and, in view of modern cosmology
and the Earth's geology,
it's true,
there's something to it.
So who'd ever dream
I'd leave
a stone unturned?
Yet, curiously,
I seldom stoop
to scoop up rocks
and if I do
all I can ever see
is a missile
to skim over water,
to fling at a pesky dog,
or, at best,
a hefty lump
to pose as a paperweight
- such is our basic
metaphysics.

*Written after reading Hikaru Okuizumi's marvelously crafted, "The Stones Cry Out."