Steve Kronen

Black Stone on a White Stone

steve — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 16:32:40 +0000

– after Vallejo

I will die in Paris in a deluge
on a day which, even now, I recall.
I will die in Paris – I do not begrudge
it – on a Thursday, like today, in the fall.

Thursday, yes, as today, Thursday, as I commit
these words, I’ve assembled - all wrong - the bones
of my arm. All of it wrong, and I pivot,
looking back on the road. Then forward. Alone.

César Vallejo is dead. They beat him, beat him good,
all of them, though he meant no harm.
With a stick, hard, and a rope.

There are witnesses, too: the aching bones of his arm,
and Thursdays, and the solitude,
and the rain, and the road….

first published in Witness

Chemistry

friendlywebconsulting — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:30:05 +0000

Whatever synapse-leaping chemical
triggers response—finger from the hot stove
or the memory of a friend twenty years
dead—would, if poured from a beaker,
eat a hole through pig-iron. Quicker
than rust but slower than the sheer
beam of laser, it’s searing, chimerical,
thorough; in many ways resembles love.

first published on The Drunken Boat

On the Doctrine of Pre-emption

friendlywebconsulting — Thu, 20 May 2010 20:49:43 +0000

– Matthew 2:1 – 18

Of the Books and exegesis,
to have missed the words of Jesus
and from all those pages ferret
but a lesson from King Herod.