Books

I AM AN EMERGING POET

I am emerging from a previous fiction where I was Condoleezza Rice
            and I made all my own clothes.

I am emerging from the clutches of a cigar-chomping impresario. Stick
            with me kid he would growl hocking up spittle from deep in his throat.
            You could become another Annette Funicello.

Once I was a gloomy medieval fortress that imprisoned poems, The poems
            were a beautiful princess longing to escape. The villagers crept by
            in fear of me. Wagging their heads they would mutter she is the evil
            monolith who keeps poetry prisoner.

When the poetry-princess broke out she was the daughter of Rappaccini’s daughter.
            Pure poison. How would you feel if you’d been locked in a tower
            for forty years? Say hi to a pisspot of escaping poems.

That’s how I became an emerging poet. That’s how I oozed forth into the clutter
            of my own bibliotèque where the pagey effluvium of my books
            hovers in the air. I loaf around here composting until Sloth
            implants her word on my heart.

Sometimes I emerge pale and blinking into the streets where the neighbors
            are still crawling around in search of food. They don’t seem to mind
            sharing the fat-of-the-land with an emerging poet.

One day I will leave the ’hood for a fancy marina where I can dock my ark.
            I intend to line the gangplank with sassafras. From the safety of my
            chaise longue I will contemplate Cassiopeia’s ever-receding navel.

I wonder if they’ll let me keep all my animals.

—Ellen Wright

From Family Portrait with Oilwell (Kelsay Books)

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LEAVING JAMAICA STATION

What catastrophe spared this one brick wall with its belfry?
And what dream preserves it to front for nothing

but a crowded cemetery whose tiny headstones herald
the straitened expectations of a poor people’s hereafter?

What baritones bereft of a church that once resounded
with “Blessed Assurance” and “His Eye Is on the Sparrow”

still bring 2 x 4’s and plywood to shore up its porous façade?
What altar guild comes to rake and prune

and haul the beer cans away from its unprotected sanctuary
so squirrels and grackles can hymn along

with the railroad’s rumble, so Queen Anne’s lace can nod
to asters and daisies in its breezy vestibule?

And who released me to the stubborn care
of this phantom congregation

till the Gothic enclosure of my skull could admit
an omnipresence of windows?

—Ellen Wright

From In Transit (Main Street Rag)

POEMS

Books

I AM AN EMERGING POET

​LEAVING JAMAICA STATION

LEAVING JAMAICA STATION