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Colma: City of the Dead/Elegy for Skeptics
To celebrate the fifth-year anniversary of FutureCycle Press's first poetry chapbook publication, COLMA has been released as a full-length edition with new content and photos of the massive city of 18 graveyards that is Colma. The original chapbook of the same name was printed on a laser printer and hand-bound and trimmed on a kitchen table by now-director of the press Diane Kistner, who says "We've come a long way, baby!"
70 pages, Paperback
First published January 29, 2008
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 15, 2018
We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us. Excerpts:
—VII—
THE MILITARY CEMETERY
A field of close-trimmed green
with rows of cold white stones
immaculate as dominoes
set straight at regulation distances.
The graves march up a rolling hill,
then lap over, vanishing below the crest
as if they might go on forever.
Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines—
their ranks all equal now,
they lie in strict formation
under these extreme conditions.
As wars repeat,
entrenched battalions of the dead
forever hold their dark positions.
—XV—
ONE LAST LOOK
How dazzling when, at dawn,
under red and rolling clouds,
the cemeteries stand
thick-glazed with light,
dew still on the grass,
the long sun shining.
Hands that will never hold
the colors of dawn
tighten into fists,
their tendons drying rawhide;
feet curl in darkness;
lungs grow leathery as punching bags.
The relatives we touched,
kissed, fought,
all lie here quietly
shrinking into nothingness.
It is so difficult to say
there is an end:
no more lusty loins,
happy thoughts or angers;
only the dark unfeeling dissolution.
Underneath each grassy mound
water gropes for union,
universal solvent
processing the essences of man.
No casket can withstand
its entrances forever.
Our rich flesh will end
as innocent solutions
seeping downward
far beneath the living lushness
of the surface.
We shall be free chemicals,
remains of cancelled lives,
separate elements
in dark, obscure,
but ever-flowing springs
and underground rivers.
—VII—
THE MILITARY CEMETERY
A field of close-trimmed green
with rows of cold white stones
immaculate as dominoes
set straight at regulation distances.
The graves march up a rolling hill,
then lap over, vanishing below the crest
as if they might go on forever.
Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines—
their ranks all equal now,
they lie in strict formation
under these extreme conditions.
As wars repeat,
entrenched battalions of the dead
forever hold their dark positions.
—XV—
ONE LAST LOOK
How dazzling when, at dawn,
under red and rolling clouds,
the cemeteries stand
thick-glazed with light,
dew still on the grass,
the long sun shining.
Hands that will never hold
the colors of dawn
tighten into fists,
their tendons drying rawhide;
feet curl in darkness;
lungs grow leathery as punching bags.
The relatives we touched,
kissed, fought,
all lie here quietly
shrinking into nothingness.
It is so difficult to say
there is an end:
no more lusty loins,
happy thoughts or angers;
only the dark unfeeling dissolution.
Underneath each grassy mound
water gropes for union,
universal solvent
processing the essences of man.
No casket can withstand
its entrances forever.
Our rich flesh will end
as innocent solutions
seeping downward
far beneath the living lushness
of the surface.
We shall be free chemicals,
remains of cancelled lives,
separate elements
in dark, obscure,
but ever-flowing springs
and underground rivers.
Displaying 1 of 1 review