16-49

Lament of the Cactus

"Give up thy thorns,"
the great genius Burbank said.
"In the potted world
we've made for you,
you won't need them."

And the cactus surely knew
that what the seed-man said
was true, eschewed
its genetic predisposition
to be prickly.

A triumph for botanical science,
all agreed,
when they spied the spineless breed,
a cactus no more barbed
than a banana.

Yet this mellow prodigy
was a hollow victory, for without its spikes
the vegetable turned sickly,
a flaccid stump where angels
once feared to tread.

The swordsman of the desert was half dead.
The other half was weak about the head.
Which only goes to show what every cactus knows—
that the spice of life is all
that makes life prickly.

by Richard Schiffman

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Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist, poet, and author of two biographies. His poems have been published in Southern Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, and many other publications. His poetry book, What the Dust Doesn't Know, is forthcoming from Salmon Press.

16-48

Karmic Laundromat

Though less than a dustball
in the lint filter of history,
he tumbled headlong
through the cycles of life's mystery
with a half-scoop of alacrity,
a tad lemony and olfactory,
but not a pinch of bleach
to leach the mortal stain,
which all must wear—alack—
upon a shirtsleeve or a brain.
Yet all was not lost;
his grimy mind he tossed
in the shuddering machine
of life's mingled joys and pain,
and he watched love's basket whirl,
the soiled thoughts slowly whitened.
The sudsy swill then drained,
the load spun out and lightened.
And when the time arrived
to dry his damp desires
in Spirit's greater fires,
he lugged the pile
across the aisle
and turned the dial to high.

by Richard Schiffman

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Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist, poet, and author of two biographies. His poems have been published in Southern Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, and many other publications. His poetry book, What the Dust Doesn't Know, is forthcoming from Salmon Press.

16-47

Apocryphal Bard

To be or not to be? Whose question is that?
Not mine said the sweet pea tucked snug in its pod.
Not mine said the queen bee sipping honey through a straw.
Not mine said the oak tree, I am what I am.
Not mine said the pearl, the world is my oyster.
Not mine said the turtledove to its fetching mate.
Not mine said the mountain peak sitting pretty.
Not mine said the black hole, I'm a sucker for nothing.
Not mine said the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.
Not mine said Hamlet, my creator was mistaken.
To be or not to be? Whose question is that?
Shakespeare's, I think, who was really Francis Bacon.

by Richard Schiffman

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Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist, poet, and author of two biographies. His poems have been published in Southern Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, and many other publications. His poetry book, What the Dust Doesn't Know, is forthcoming from Salmon Press.

16-20

Doctor's Orders

Dr. Williams made poems, and he delivered babies.
The poems are short because he wrote them
in the breaks between the babies. The babies
by now have had their own babies,
who have had their own babies.
They all go around eating plums and talking American.
American is a very poetic language.
Dr. Williams wrote it as he heard it
on his prescription pads, where there was no room
for adjectives or fancy Latinate words.
He said that men die every day from the lack
of what is found in poetry. Which is why he made so many
house calls. Dr. Williams checked all his babies
with a metrical stethoscope. Their heartbeats were syncopated
like jazz, they never beat in iambic pentameter.
When the babies grew up, all day long they riffed in free verse.
When Dr. Williams grew old,
he stopped writing on prescription pads,
used yellow legal pads instead. His lines grew longer,
more rambling. He started sounding like Allen Ginsberg.
Allen Ginsberg was Dr. William's hipster baby.
He howled when Dr. Williams smacked him on the fanny.
Allen Ginsberg was gay, but he had a straight baby.
His baby was called Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan's real name was Zimmerman.
He called himself Dylan after Dylan Thomas.
Dylan Thomas wrote in Irish, not American.
His lines were flowery, and frequently difficult to understand.
Nobody could figure out Bob Dylan either.
That is what made him so soulful and poetic.
Everyone can understand Dr. Williams. His plums are sweet,
his wheelbarrows are red and glazed with rain.
His babies fill every nook and cranny of America.

by Richard Schiffman

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Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist, poet, and author of two biographies. His poems have been published in Southern Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, and many other publications. His poetry book, What the Dust Doesn't Know, is forthcoming from Salmon Press.