Four Poems by Tom Chandler


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Wingbones
by
Tom Chandler

 
Ten Degrees
 
 
How beautiful the sun as it skims
across the air in the hush of ten degrees,
disc of palest yellow hope along a sky
 
of circumstance; how beautifully we watch it fall,
the random tern, forgotten mole,
the infant tree inside rough winter bark.
 
How beautiful this frost, female fingers
tracing down the glass, how beautiful
this world too cold to criticize itself;
 
how beautiful Earth's creatures are, happy
and forever safe from the only perfect tragedy,
which is of course to never have been born.
 
                                   
 
Wife Poem
 
 
The line of her shoulder
under the blanket
is silhouetted by the
streetlight which is
framed
by the window.
It is 3am.
Her pillow cups her
in its whisper.
Her breath shines
invisibly, inside
the perfect pearl
of her sleep.
Her husband
lies along her shape,
watching her
with eyes closed,
watching the darkness
curve around her,
nestle
in the hollow of her
neck, inhale the sweet
shadow of her hair.
He cannot see her face
but knows with sudden
shock of clarity
that she is beautiful,
and that they are
both exactly
where they are.

 

Work Ethic
 
 
After carving a quartet of clean perfect sentences
Hem would call it a well-lit morning, clap shut
the now-famous later-lost notebook, snap the tip
of the #2 pencil on a thumbnail brown
with pipe nicotine, jam it down deep in his
tired tweed pocket
 
then head for restorative afternoon dying,
good beer, cafe saucers over-anxious with anis,
a small stylish war, the obscurity of fame, then
piss away twilight in love with some woman
as if she'd been written by Pound or Fitzgerald,
spare paragraphs he distilled to their consonant bones.
 
                                                      
 
High School
 
 
I would float down the halls
like a clutch of balloons,
alternately booming
and squeaking my voice,
head filled with clear gas,
barely tethered to the world
by the dangling string of my body
when suddenly, by instinct
I'd raise my eyes
like the wagon train scout on tv
would gaze up at war bonnets riffling
the ridgetop breeze which seconds before
had been empty sky,
and she would glide by, big needle
glinting her fingers, giggling too high
from the helium left on her breath.
 
                                             

_________________________________________________________________________

TOM CHANDLER was named the Brown University Phi Beta Kappa Poet.  His work has appeared in Poetry, Boulevard, Ontario Review, and many other journals. He won the Galway Kinnell Poetry Prize.  Tom Chandler teaches creative writing at Bryant College, Rhode Island, New England.   He is also a writing fellow at Yaddo. His third collection, WINGBONES, was published in hardcover by Signal Books.

You can email Tom Chandler at tchandle@bryant.edu

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