Ros has written poems for as long as she has written anything.
Coming Home
Rosalind Brackenbury
The plane tips, the townlies beneath me, all the streetsand yards I know, the small rowsand intimate glow of houses,blot of trees; after the dark rushof so much ocean, this patch of land,and everything I wantgathered there: my husbandin our car driving throughlakes to meet me, my daughterstanding at the stove tasting dinnerfrom a wooden spoon,her head under the light.Friends in these fragile boxesthat I rush down to; love, meals,arguments beneath tin roofssluiced by rain. Rain slideson the plane’s glass its longdiagonals; we shudder,land in a puddle; on the stepsof the plane breathe firstthe salt damp island air.
Coming Home, as it first appeared in SALT.
Selected poems
Poems first published elsewhere, kept here in full with a link to where each first appeared.
Poetry in Time of War
Academy of American Poets, poets.org
The Joy of the Nearly Old, Hanging Loose Press
I want to forget their names, the generals,advisors, puppet rulers,the puffed-up and the brought-low,
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I want to forget their names, the generals,advisors, puppet rulers,the puffed-up and the brought-low,I want not to know them,not hear their plans, their excuses,the President and the President's men,the Pope with his white smoke for voodoo,the suits, ties, teeth, insignia,the guns, the names of trucks and weapons.I want to forget them all,to be washed of them,to begin again: where no one knows who anyone is,or what he believes.To give my attention to:frangipani leaves uncurling,the smell of jasmine,one person helping another across a street;to the seeds,to the beginnings; to one clear word for whichthere is no disguise and no alternative.
Grass grows in the nightand early the mockingbirds begintheir fleet courtships over puddles,
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Grass grows in the nightand early the mockingbirds begintheir fleet courtships over puddles,upon wires, in the new greenof the Spanish limes.Their white-striped wings flashas they flirt and dive.Wind in the chimes pulls musicfrom the air, the sky’s clearedof its vast complications.In the pause before summer,the wild sprouting of absolutelyeverything: hair, nails, the mango’spale rose pennants, tongues of birdssinging daylong.Words, even, and sudden embraces,surprising dreams and things I’d neverimagined, in all these years of living,one more astonished awakening.
On account of my kneesI thought a camel would be appropriate:I could be helped on
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On account of my kneesI thought a camel would be appropriate:I could be helped onand eventually off again.Have you evergot on a camel?They go down for youon their own padded kneesand close their eyes while they waitfor you to be set in place,like priests waiting for all the communicantsto be done, in some high church.Then they rise, tipping you,heaving beneath youbut you don’t fall,you are suddenlyfeet up in the air,carried forward on the long swayof their stride.They will carry you across deserts,across days and datelinesuntil you arrive one far-off dayin the city of Tamanrassetwhere you have been waiting all your lifeto go.
You know itwhen you feel its nearly unbearabletouch, the electric blue tentacle
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You know itwhen you feel its nearly unbearabletouch, the electric blue tentaclereaching through water you thoughtclear, on a day you thought calm.Bob of the poison sac merryas a balloon, and you whipped,drawn on, flounder through shallowsmarked with its signature,back to the safe land.Pain works its flowerand bloom in youand won't let up, you will walkfor days with its tattoo'dnecklaces upon your skin,saying here it is, what waitsthis spring in the heated seaswhere too much nutrientfeeds these creatures tillthey cluster and swarm,here is the sign at lastof what hooks the heartto bump unevenly, to tell usin the flesh, what's wrong.
We borrowed that apartmentlike clothes: remember,no underwear, a silk dress
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We borrowed that apartmentlike clothes: remember,no underwear, a silk dressfound in the market,the flying white curtains.Mirrors; walnuts in basketson the kitchen floor; loavesbigger than your hand;a geranium in a pot outside the windowneeding water.All the parts of others’ lives,their habits like soft shirtshanging in a wardrobe.The low bed, for us to practiceliving together, sleeping, dreaming,love-making, lying awake.The table’s yellow oilclothto wipe daily, as if we lived herealways.
Bonnard’s Dog → The title poem of her 2015 Hanging Loose Press collection, read in the courtyard at Arles with Geneviève Liautard’s French translation.
Thresholds → Poems at Flores, ten poems written on the Camino de Santiago.
Poems in the letters
Poems Ros set down inside Notes on a Writing Life, kept where she placed them.
An evening at Carolyn Fuller’s bottle wall house in Key West.
Salt: an indigenous journal was the island’s own literary and arts journal for a time. Created by Kim Narenkivicius, with editing magic from Cricket Desmarais, it was brought to life by the voices and spirit of Key West’s old salts: artists, writers, poets, fishermen, sailors, and dreamers.
This is our story.
Ros reading to us on that wild, magical night.A copy of the journal by candlelight.
With the late, beloved Dianne Zolotow.
A poem from a friend, printed in SALT
in the dust that falls
Jennifer O’Lear
Life is found
in the dust that falls
between moments
of concentrated activity.
In loose tooth
and skinned knee
still water’s reflection
and risen sun.
In the subtext
of everything
that is broken.
In sagging gate
and shattered glass,
dog-eared page
and fallen branch.
Across country,
across town,
other lives are lived
like this one.
Look for them
in the dust that falls,
in the words that rise
on geysers of silence.
