Sample Poems by Stuart Friebert
Larynx
Voice box, in front of the windpipe,
just below the hyoid bone, connected
to the pharynx above, the pipe below,
through which every breath of air you
take must pass, but the most exciting
part's the thyroid cartilage, two plates
shaped like sturdy wings which meet
in front to be the Adam's Apple. Now
imagine getting cancer right there...
Better to wake smothered one morning
than to bear testimony to the nasty fight
I've got going with my own cells, mother
said, whose last words were, I'd not mind
so much if it were only called Eve's Apple.
Why would damn Adam get all the words?
The Little Clown
From mouth to mouth, lit by last sunlight,
what are they arguing about again, another
way of living? Something catches in your throat
at the sight of them, standing there in the dusk,
but by the time you arrive they seem happier:
house painted, furniture dusted, bed made and
table set for three. You’re the little clown who
used to change your father’s aging face, close
the hole in your mother’s throat. She washes it
twice a day; now all her body ripples, a lake
full of rain. It may be necessary to summon
the doctor again. Quite a nice man, he spreads
his hands over a large area. You don’t understand
what he says to your father, your mind drifts to
fishing with your mother, who’d make you a patch
for every fish you caught, boast about what a great
fisherman you were, then she’d disappear behind
her floppy hat, trying to shield her sunburned nose.
The last time you see her she’s pointing at some
loons she wants you to row closer to, But please
don’t frighten their chicks, she whispers hoarsely.
You knew you had to keep on rowing, just as she
knew they’d dive under in time. It’s the female doing
the feinting, she’d say, curving a hand into the water.
The Window as Canvas
for Robert Motherwell
Slowly, the painter lifts the long, red-stained
linen strips and hangs them against the window.
His eyes moisten a bit at my words. Was it prisons
you were thinking of? I said. You need not think
of them exactly, he said, standing cross-legged,
bent forward, resting a hand on the window sill,
lost to the light before him. The little Spanish cage
was my last, I don’t have any more in me, sorrily.
I was fond of that little space, that’s all, Amigo.
I’d just come from seeing it in the museum. It’s
so clean the mind fancies it sees just yellow, then
whitish rubber bands stretching for no apparent reason
from somewhere off the canvas to the left, past the right.
But what does that red bar, top left, actually do for you?
He turns back, caught in the window, a tiny patient with
huge cataracts, taking his time to breathe. For years, I gave
up hope, nothing makes me flare up as quickly as talk of hope.
Our feet aren’t bare, kitty under the chair’s not asleep
from hunger.
So said Marshal Ney, when Napoleon escaped
from Elba and landed on the coast of France.
Their armies marched at each other, Napoleon
saying when they met, Well, well, well, well,
so you’re a general now. I congratulate you
and yours, with which he gazed wickedly back
at his own generals. Ney took Napoleon’s hand
in both of his, but said nothing for the longest
time – Ah, errr, I blush, Mon General, to say
I’ve been boasting I’d bring you back to Paris
under arrest. Yes, yes, Napoleon said, Something
about a cage, wasn’t there? Are you perchance in
the circus business? But the question was so
kindly put that Ney blurted out, I only wanted
a bit of fame, Sire. And how much would that be,
pray tell? – Too much for a man like me to owe
a man like you! Ney fell to his knees. Napoleon
looked down with that little quiver to his mouth
that shows how much silence can cost. The rest,
as they say, is history, and happened very quickly.
Arm in arm they led their armies to the Tuileries,
but what ceremony there was was soon over. Not
much later, I read, everything was lost again, as
it seemed to be ad infinitum. Ney was then tried
for treason, shot dead, while, let’s see, Napoleon
sailed to St. Helena, quieted down, and slept a lot.
Some Wars Back
Up late, can’t dream, can’t even eat, will
my gold bridge hold, if only I could work
with lower molars, grind down some stumps
that stray into sight, how much did Dad pay
the Canadian Exchange to save the Jew?
Memories come and go, old bone aches, tent
worms and dewberry jelly all winter long;
inherited leather postcards of wise old owls
and boys wanting to be girls, and, incredibly,
a Mexican execution: erection, so very strict.
The kids come home from school past purple
and orange signs: “This is a helping house!”
Emergency phone calls, but remember, no
cookies; now tell me about the science project.
The Nile’s a pipeline, papa! I nod, and worry
about electrolysis a while, how much energy
should go into the war effort, ask your teacher!
No papa, she doesn’t like us to interrupt. Can’t
we just call grampa now, visit him on Sunday?
(Old actor, who’ll go on and on again about
making it via gigs in Berlin and London to
The Steuben Society stage in Milwaukee, ’44,
with a repertoire and a warehouse of nothing
to eat?) Go wash your hands, and practice
‘Some have meat and cannot eat’ so we can
sing it in the round as grace before we eat.
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