Collaboration #23, Guillermo Delgado’s image, Anita Skeen responded

Guillermo Delgado's "Untitled #23", 2011, acrylic on wood, 8'' x 10"




The Gavel Maker
 
 
 
 
 
It started with trees when I was twelve.
 
And Perry Mason.  When Your Honor smacked
 
the world into order with one whack
 
of his mallet, maple on cherry, a final
 
definitive, That’s that, justice prevailed
 
and the clever, but not-so-clever-as-he-thought
 
killer got his comeuppance.  I wanted a part
 
of that, the last word in the courtroom,
 
the period at the end of the sentence.
 
 
 
I knew how to translate the trees.
 
I could hear the dark secrets in the heart
 
of walnut, the contagious laughter
 
in a pack of Aspen, the sighs
 
of the white pine.  The buckeye
 
winked my way when no one
 
was looking.  Persimmon
 
puckered up for a kiss.
 
Time to open conversation.
 
 
 
The work takes time, takes patience.
 
I do it all by hand, no lathe.
 
I craft three pieces: a head,
 
a handle, a sound block.
 
They’re not the same, the gavel
 
banged by the student council president,
 
the one opening the New York Stock Exchange.
 
What gets handed to the Speaker of the House,
 
hammered when the house is sold at auction.
 
 
 
Each gavel speaks from the life
 
of its tree.  I do not silence it, lock it tight
 
in a foreign shape.  I release it:
 
say what you will. I give it a tongue.
 
Wood always speaks to wood:  guitar
 
to mandolin, chair leg to roof beam.
 
Library table to card catalog.
 
Hear the hum in the courtroom:
 
prisoner’s dock, jury box, gavel’s knock.
 
 
 
1/16/11

Collaboration #22 Anita Skeen wrote, Guillermo Delgado responded. Dedicated to our dear friend, the artist Thomas R. Aprile (1953 – 2010).

Mourning Tom

We end in joy.
–Theodore Roethke

I will do it with splashes
of ochre and orange, alizarin, cerulean
on a canvas as wide as his Huck Finn grin,
a riot of kiwi and turquoise storming
the cliché: desert hues at sunset,
Cape Cod wind and water, wood grain
and tree limb bending to
the sculptor’s hand.

I will do it by fusing matchsticks
with glue sticks to sharp sticks, to broken
sticks, to stockade sticks, by building
boxes, by boxing in the light
in bricks of glass that catch
the morning swimming by
like tropical fish in a tank.

I will not tear the world apart.

I will do it by taking the stage
where I can be absurd,
abstract, abnormal,
where I can be an abdomen,
an Abominable Snowman,
a man lost in snow,
a white sock.

I will do it by telling tales
of my Italian relatives,
Uncle Giovanni and Cousin Dominic,
though I have no Italian relatives,
have never been to Italy,
and do not drink wine.

I will come to love hummingbirds.

I will do it by cooking
with every spice on my shelf:
oregano, basil, cardamom and dill.
Cinnamon, mustard, chili pepper, sage.
I will make a poem for the palate,
a prayer for delight. I will mix
and mash and make more than enough.
I will feed everyone.

10/2/10

Guillermo Delgado's "For Tom", 2010, acrylic on wood, 8'' x 10"

Collaboration #21, Guillermo Delgado’s image, Anita Skeen responded

Guillermo Delgado's Untitled #21, 2010, mixed media on paper, 22'' x 30"



 

At the Place Where
 
 
 
 
 
In the farmhouse, in the meadow, in the field
 
of stones,
 
 
 
the voices remain, regardless.
 
 
 
Did he hold his hands just so
 
when he spoke of how far he had come?
 
 
 
Did she lean into the conversation,
 
bent by sorrow?
 
 
 
And the boy, was he always watching
 
as the girls turned their heads?
 
 
 
Who heard the wisp of his voice
 
as he lowered his eyes?
 
 
 
When it happens with gunfire
 
or the steel shiver of the blade,
 
 
 
with sticks, with rocks, with kicks,
 
syllables shatter,
 
 
 
unanchor from language.
 
 
 
Listen:
 
 
 
there is chatter in the trees.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 9/9/10

Collaboration #20 Anita Skeen wrote, Guillermo Delgado responded

Birthday Poem for my Mother, Gone Two Years

 

They perish. They cannot be brought back.
 The secret worlds are not regenerated

 --Yevgeny Yevtushenko

 

 

You would have said

you had no secret

worlds, that secrets

 

made for trouble,

something you

could do without.

 

What about those nights

you sat so late at the old Singer?

Where did the treadle

 

take you? To what world

did you travel when the tumor

snatched your mother?

 

What walks

did you recall

to hold her hand?

 

Those hopes you never

spoke, those regrets

catching you off guard,

 

again and again,

the doors you opened,

then closed, when

 

you were alone.

Now, trouble is

there’s no transport

 

to those sites,

the last ship

sailed from port

 

on your final breath.

Towns erased their coordinates.

Eighty-five years

 

flattened like a city

in a pop-up book,

lost like Atlantis.

3/27/10



Guillermo Delgado's Untitled #20, 2010, mixed media on wood, 8'' x 10"

Collaboration #19 Guillermo Delgado’s image, Anita Skeen responded

	 	 	 	 

What Lingers 

 

Sometimes a splash of brown

just to the side of my vision.

 

In the woods, near the compost,

grass matted flat.

 

At night, the click of claws

on the deck, a bark at the neighbor’s

where now there are only cats.

 

Something slides beneath my eyelids,

goes neon when I squeeze

tight for a better glimpse.

 

I might catch the odd floater

on the horizon.  I might think

I’ve just seen a snake.

 

There is an apple

on my kitchen counter

and somewhere my mother,

 

pairing knife in hand,

ready to slice it for a snack.

 

 

                       2/22/10

Collaboration #18 Anita Skeen wrote, Guillermo Delgado responded

Type
 
 
 
                 Poetry is news that stays news.  --  Ezra Pound
 
 
 
 
 
On the phone, my father recalls
 
his time in the Charleston High School
 
print shop, the hours he spent
 
standing in a shaft of moted sunlight
 
plucking the s, the e, the t from the California Job Case,
 
sliding them into the composing stick.
 
 
 
I printed The Book Strap, he says, the school
 
newspaper.  You remember. I do remember,
 
twenty five years behind him, how each Friday
 
I was eager to see who’d been chosen
 
Student of the Week, what would be said
 
about the weekend game, which teacher
 
 
 
might reveal some amazing fact (she
 
drives a Mustang?).  I never thought about
 
who set the type, which boys in their rolled-up
 
sleeves and aprons, Industrial Arts boys,
 
brought words to the page, made sure
 
their was not there, united not untied.
 
 
 
I tell my father I’m calling late
 
because on Monday night I teach
 
the Book Arts class.  I’ve spent four
 
hours pointing out the gears
 
and shafts on the Chandler & Price,
 
how to treadle the press, how to choose
 
 
 
and distribute type:  Bembo, Baskerville,
 
Garamond, Helvetica, Goudy Old Style,
 
Spartan Bold, a poem on my tongue.
 
I was College Prep, in 4th year
 
Latin, not woodworking,
 
physics, not shop.
 
 
 
Even then I loved the printed page,
 
texture of rag and linen
 
more than Laws of Motion,
 
letters aligning toward the mystery
 
called word, words busy to tell it all.
 
My father says he liked the work,
 
 
 
the steady rhythm of a story coming up.
 
Three quarters of a century later, he’s proud
 
he always got out the news on time.
 
We say goodnight.  Before I go
 
to bed, I work to set the last
 
line of this poem.



Guillermo Delgado's Untitled #18, 2010, mixed media on wc paper, 6'' x 12"

Collaboration #16 Anita Skeen wrote, Guillermo Delgado responded

31st

 

The trees stand absolutely still,

leaves too lethargic to wave to anyone,

sunlight draped across the deck

 

as if it fainted there and can’t get up.

Feeders hang devoid of wing

and chirp; the wind

 

has sped ahead to more ferocious

months.  Poor August, caught between

the splash and squeal of summer,

 

the pregnant backpacks and obese gourds

of fall.  The month we plod through

on our way to virgin crayons

 

and intimate evening walks,

the subtle touch of someone’s hand.

It’s even burdened with this extra day.

 

No cars scuffing the blacktop.

No dogs protesting letters floated

through the slot.  Even the ginger cat

 

lies belly up in the uncut grass,

not an eyelid lifted as the vole

in his wooly coat chugs by.

 

                             9/1/09



Guillermo Delgado's Untitled #16, 2010, mixed media on wc paper, 6'' x 12"