Sample Poems by Bobbi Lurie
Suburban Hermits
suburban hermits
like to tinker in their tool sheds
dream of the Ever-Present Listener
like a thin blouse barely covering
the Innermost
Weeding
aching of wrist/ tingling of skin/ scratched by the plants/
bitten by the bugs and the bugs are a pestilence/
multiplicity of insects not flapping in the backdrop
but buzzing and burrowing while the grass is suffering
from a chemical burn and the hands are bleeding
and the old neighbor behind us is bent over weeding /
watering / mowing/ hoping the grass might turn emerald again
but the crows are picking at a carcass in the distance
and the night blooming jasmine doesn’t stand a chance
against the filaments of chokeweed choking it
and the hands in the dirt and the acreage is an army
to feed and defend against for Nature
has a greater love of weeds than of flowers
Hill Behind the House
The dried blood of the cut hand
Stuck to the interior pocket space
Nervous wind thoughts
The word flannel the word wool
Dark as the hill behind the house
He walks the soft loam sinking deeper
The smell of earth moist and dark
The stiff curve of back against the moon’s distance
Squares of light
Imagined horizon
Voice like stones dropped entering
His wife had looked up inhaled from her cigarette
Exhaled crushing the butt in the cut peach
In the round dish she looked down
Turned the page of Cosmopolitan
He stands now beneath a tree he planted
The garden the dark square
The bright light of the neighbor’s yard
Blackness of grass
His hand sticking to the flannel
He kneels to smell a rose planted long ago
Leans sinking deeper into the soft loam
Only at Dusk Is It Possible to Love the Landscape
cows chewing their cud/ backlit/ burnished view of the netherworld at dusk/
eternity is the landscape’s theme/ part of the wheat rising through
cooling sun/ corn stalks/ thoughts keeping time to the cacophony of language
from the insects/ cicadas/ mosquitoes/ the peskiness of the pestilence does
not bother me at this hour.
the walls of my efficient kitchen are papered in prettiness. the prettiness
of the kitchen increases when i think of the neighbors who hate us. the hatred
of the neighbors can be felt through the windows of the kitchen. i gaze into
their opinionated houses and tool sheds.
i dread the days.
the nights so fearfully quiet.
Letter From The Lawn
Dear Green,
I sit in the back with my book.
Without words rising up, I’d be stuck with
just these lawn chairs and the shrieking gardening machinery: mowers, edgers,
wedging the patches of grass into segments.
The separateness is so intense.
Love,
B.