P O E M Gallery
On this page I'll post poems I have published or links to the online publication.
"California Road Trip, 1969," Boomer Lit Magazine, Summer 2018
This poem was published in Farming Words: The Harvest of Literature at a Prairie College, 2007, edited by Bill Holm and David Pichaske.
The News in Southwest Minnesota
A Buddhist monk, exiled from Thailand, broadsided the car
of a local woman, age 20. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
He survives with serious injuries. - Marshall Independent, Summer 2000
Days after I’ve read the front page, my mind returns to the scene
of the accident. A familiar crossroads framed by early summer cornfields.
Late afternoon, the sun hovering high, so close to summer solstice.
Didn’t the monk see the oversize red stop sign, hear and feel
the vibration of tires passing over rumble strips etched into the road?
But no trace of skid marks. No time for either driver to brake before impact.
Some accidents are like that. Blind siding us no matter how familiar the route,
how aware, awake we are, or how faithfully we’ve sat in daily meditation.
And haven’t I have been all of these?
The victim, following the rules of the road, still unsafe, vulnerable.
The intersection, unconsciously aiding and abetting fatal collisions.
And the monk, missing signs, warnings, speeding on to that place
where I do harm accidentally.
* * * * *
I wrote this next poem while working on my MFA in Creative Writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato. I commuted two hours from my home in Marshall, Minnesota, and during the week I rented a room from the School Sisters of Notre Dame. Sister Dolores Hodapp, SSND, a retired principal and teacher, served as the hospitality nun at that time. She loves poetry and literature, and she was always incredibly supportive and interested in reading my latest poems. In grad school, everyone needs a guardian angel or two; Sister Dolores was mine.
Conversions at the Motherhouse of the School Sisters of Notre Dame
For Sister Dolores Hodapp
The same nuns who donate their brains to science after they leave this world
move into a new century wrapped in the dust and dread of renovation,
all those brides of Christ now co-existing with a construction crew.
With the din of jackhammers rising above the dining room,
Sister Marie, still in full black habit, finishes her soup, lifts her eyes
to the ceiling, and says, “Two years down, just one to go.”
After Ash Wednesday Mass, Sister Rose skirts the construction zone,
black ashes smudged in a cross on her forehead, tells another sister,
“We hardly need a reminder—we return to dust every day.”
Men with myriad job titles stride in and out—contractor, carpenter, electrician--
some with a paunch, some a hidden six-pack, all handy in hard hats,
loins girded with tools, bent to their task of transformation, reverent.
Halls that once flowed only with the pulse of yin, the feminine, bulge now
with yang, the testosterone energy of father, son, husband, boyfriend.
A new sense of balance rings out within old walls, down broad corridors.
Limited now by the etiquette of this job--watch yer mouth, none of them jokes,
no swearing—perhaps Joe, the guy in the welder’s mask making sparks
spit across the lobby, feels oddly at home, at ease, on the job for the first time.
And maybe Bill, rolling his wheelbarrow piled with rubble, feels engulfed
by some strange calm like that time at the ocean carried off
beyond his body by the rhythm of surf, that sweep of endless blue.
-Marianne Murphy Zarzana
(Dust & Fire, 2004)
* * * * *
The following two poems were published in Perceptions, the annual literary and arts journal produced by creative writing students at Southwest Minnesota State University.
Hawks on Guard
Football stadium speakers let loose hawk screeches
to frighten birds with a penchant for flying straight
into disaster--the beckoning glass of sky boxes
known to shatter avian bones.
Predator turned savior,
the mechanical hawk's hard at work,
its shrill cry electric, yet real enough
to startle cruise control set on a doomed
flight path, to send a crucial message:
alter course, peel off--
what you cannot see will kill you.
-Marianne Murphy Zarzana
(Perceptions, 2011)
Bill Holm Joins Us at the Nail Salon
"You are safe now from noises made / by other people,
other machines, by chance, / noises you have not chosen
as your own." from "Earbud" by Bill Holm
Seated high in my black leather massage throne,
I glance over, recognize Marilyn, a friend of a friend,
two thrones down with her teenaged daughter, find out
they live in Minneota. A coincidence. Just yesterday
I bought Bill Holm's new book of poems, The Chain Letter
of the Soul, published posthumously. I'm reading it now
as Tina paints my toenails the color of passion.
I have to ask, did you know him? Yeah, says Emily,
the teen. We read his poetry and essays in Language Arts.
Again, I have to ask, could I read you one? "Earbud"?
Marilyn, Emily and Tina are game. So we click off
Fox Noise, silence "Keeping Up with the Kardashians."
And for one fleeting moment, Bill's words triumph
over reality TV, a victory he'd savor, bellowing, By gawd!
For Sister Dolores Hodapp
The same nuns who donate their brains to science after they leave this world
move into a new century wrapped in the dust and dread of renovation,
all those brides of Christ now co-existing with a construction crew.
With the din of jackhammers rising above the dining room,
Sister Marie, still in full black habit, finishes her soup, lifts her eyes
to the ceiling, and says, “Two years down, just one to go.”
After Ash Wednesday Mass, Sister Rose skirts the construction zone,
black ashes smudged in a cross on her forehead, tells another sister,
“We hardly need a reminder—we return to dust every day.”
Men with myriad job titles stride in and out—contractor, carpenter, electrician--
some with a paunch, some a hidden six-pack, all handy in hard hats,
loins girded with tools, bent to their task of transformation, reverent.
Halls that once flowed only with the pulse of yin, the feminine, bulge now
with yang, the testosterone energy of father, son, husband, boyfriend.
A new sense of balance rings out within old walls, down broad corridors.
Limited now by the etiquette of this job--watch yer mouth, none of them jokes,
no swearing—perhaps Joe, the guy in the welder’s mask making sparks
spit across the lobby, feels oddly at home, at ease, on the job for the first time.
And maybe Bill, rolling his wheelbarrow piled with rubble, feels engulfed
by some strange calm like that time at the ocean carried off
beyond his body by the rhythm of surf, that sweep of endless blue.
-Marianne Murphy Zarzana
(Dust & Fire, 2004)
* * * * *
The following two poems were published in Perceptions, the annual literary and arts journal produced by creative writing students at Southwest Minnesota State University.
Hawks on Guard
Football stadium speakers let loose hawk screeches
to frighten birds with a penchant for flying straight
into disaster--the beckoning glass of sky boxes
known to shatter avian bones.
Predator turned savior,
the mechanical hawk's hard at work,
its shrill cry electric, yet real enough
to startle cruise control set on a doomed
flight path, to send a crucial message:
alter course, peel off--
what you cannot see will kill you.
-Marianne Murphy Zarzana
(Perceptions, 2011)
Bill Holm Joins Us at the Nail Salon
"You are safe now from noises made / by other people,
other machines, by chance, / noises you have not chosen
as your own." from "Earbud" by Bill Holm
Seated high in my black leather massage throne,
I glance over, recognize Marilyn, a friend of a friend,
two thrones down with her teenaged daughter, find out
they live in Minneota. A coincidence. Just yesterday
I bought Bill Holm's new book of poems, The Chain Letter
of the Soul, published posthumously. I'm reading it now
as Tina paints my toenails the color of passion.
I have to ask, did you know him? Yeah, says Emily,
the teen. We read his poetry and essays in Language Arts.
Again, I have to ask, could I read you one? "Earbud"?
Marilyn, Emily and Tina are game. So we click off
Fox Noise, silence "Keeping Up with the Kardashians."
And for one fleeting moment, Bill's words triumph
over reality TV, a victory he'd savor, bellowing, By gawd!
