ORANGES IN THE MAIL, FROM AMAZONFRESH
Voltaire closed a famous argument by claiming that a ship of war and the grand opera were proofs enough of civilization’s and France’s progress, in his day; Whitman’s response considers fruit traveling across state lines via the postal service
What greater proof of passed time than ordering food online:
Proof of this instant want, payment, broad greed,
farmed America localizes,
To my tiny D.C. studio, July streets plywood
shut but for protesters,
Comes now safely a mere mile from
this Pleasant City Mountain
Grown from pesticide, pestilence, persistence since
their soil sprouting days
Sweet oranges full and round, bagged and
ready to eat,
Mouth unwashed, I tear open the fruits, laborless.
The Whitman Original:
ORANGE BUDS BY MAIL FROM FLORIDA.1
[Voltaire closed a famous argument by claiming that a ship of war and the grand opera were proofs enough of civilization’s and France’s progress, in his day.]
A lesser proof than old Voltaire’s, yet greater,
Proof of this present time, and thee, thy broad
expanse, America,
To my plain Northern hut, in outside clouds
and snow,
Brought safely for a thousand miles o’er land
and tide,
Some three days since on their own soil live
sprouting,
Now here their sweetness through my room un-
folding,
A bunch of orange buds by mail from Florida.2
DREAMING OF THE WOODS
like lines powerful I mute us
inviting, silence represents tone
You asked me to cut grapes
in halves, dress arugula lightly
tenderly folding silk tongues
double Windsor, neck stretching
morning bird coos deep-breasted
somewhere above microphones
our resonances buried in feathers
deep spinach green, oak yawns
at sunrise, maskless-mouths jolly OH’s
careless with their oxygen, laughter
I gasp, through cloth, choking dioxide
carbons giant boulder gulps gulley wide
while love falls around me with slender
birch waist bends leading to full leaves
breathless, I cannot touch, I unmute
myself: can you hear me?
RECOVERING A SENSE OF CREATIVITY
—for Nat
whippets filled my file cabinets
now glass to be cut laid row by row
intentional stains portion my life
prisms of light cast dancing hues
caw parakeet, as I cradling grozer
pliers wide mouths scoring curves
snapping straight edges grinder
deepening cracks copper foil
tacked together these tinning
seams solder myself, my sheen.
TRADITION IS THE PRISON IN WHICH YOU LIVE
after Duchamp’s Retrospective 2019, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
defaced urinal,
nearly your whole life
miniaturized
packed up genius
miniature pieces of Paris
lives you wished for
new facsimiles fake smiling
facts paling for new Eros
a lover’s mobile
hung in art museums
full canvas’s you hate completing
but the defaced urinal
makes you sing
love stories against
strangers tapping toes
spinning melodies into hit songs
while wasted, darling
bright bombs we write
burst over Hiroshima,
Nagasaki succeeding
communists full of American
copies, manifestos
for a world full of crippled
glasses, paints, brushes with
discarded clothing
stuffed into
the box in a valise
I saved for you—
for fear of this thing
that we might do.
Sara Cahill Marron, a relocated New York poet living in Washington D.C., is the author of Reasons for the Long Tu’m (Broadstone Books, 2018), Nothing You Build Here, Belongs Here (Kelsay Books 2021), and Call Me Spes (MadHat Press 2022), and is the Associate Editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Her work has been published widely in literary magazines and journals such as Gravel, Atlas + Alice, Meniscus, Cordella, Newtown Literary, South Florida Poetry Journal, Golden Walkman, Lunch Ticket, and other anthologies, available at: www.saracahillmarron.com.
