Four Poems

Mary Ocher

Issue 25 * Fall 2009

Proper adjustments

Big blue veins
I wish they'd be any other color
but blue
But they don't care, see -
Opposing your wishes
they grow and spread and take hostage
of the body
as it opens,
and the blue veins conquer:
We have always been"
the emperors,
We have always ruled
this waste-place,
and nobody else but us.”

 

Firsts

Will you then admit?
And babies are not different from
And blushes are not different from
And turning plates on dining floors
Are not too different
not at all
And hands, they burst through thick earth-twigs
And roots, and vanity,
And many firsts.

Lots and lots and lots.

 

The 3rd

Goodbye, tremendous sull
It's been an honor just to be near you
to smell your feet as you run, to breath your dust
as you're descending.

 

Electrocution

To the chair,
To the gas, to the gas,
to the fire,
To the gulling grip of the mass.
be it shameful, be it rare.
The all-consuming hell,
And the flames, small, they turn
Laughing jauntily, at our paralyzing roar,
powerless, slimy, morose,
The fire laughs, then so it goes
A flair streams up the spine,
To the head, to the mind,
To the chair,
To the gas, to the ground.

 

Mary Ocher was born in Moscow, grew up in Tel Aviv and is now living in Berlin.