<div class="line">Morning in East Wallingford,</div>
<div class="line">not to be confused with</div>
<div class="line">Wallingford proper,</div>
<div class="line">down the road</div>
<div class="line">a few miles</div>
<div class="line">here in Vermont:</div>
<div class="line">a bifurcated village.</div>
<div class="line">Nothing much is</div>
<div class="line">happening.</div>
<div class="line">We had a thunderstorm</div>
<div class="line">last night and now</div>
<div class="line">bullfrogs are squawking</div>
<div class="line">from the pond as if</div>
<div class="line">the storm had lodged</div>
<div class="line">fragments of thunder</div>
<div class="line">in their throats,</div>
<div class="line">a wet and rubbery sound,</div>
<div class="line">mildly insistent,</div>
<div class="line">counterpointed by</div>
<div class="line">faint birdsong</div>
<div class="line">against a backdrop</div>
<div class="line">of highway traffic,</div>
<div class="line">cars and trucks,</div>
<div class="line">the human contribution</div>
<div class="line">to the soundscape.</div>
<div class="line">The Luna moth</div>
<div class="line">we found last night</div>
<div class="line">affixed to the porch railing</div>
<div class="line">is gone, swept away by</div>
<div class="line">the wind probably.</div>
<div class="line">A fabulous creature,</div>
<div class="line">green and leaflike,</div>
<div class="line">with delicate orange ferns</div>
<div class="line">for antenna and a curlicue</div>
<div class="line">on each wing, added</div>
<div class="line">for what purpose?</div>
<div class="line">A mystery.</div>
<div class="line">My wife is asleep upstairs,</div>
<div class="line">her mother and father</div>
<div class="line">a little further down the road.</div>
<div class="line">I sit here feeling content,</div>
<div class="line">even as I know the world</div>
<div class="line">as we know it is ending,</div>
<div class="line">happiness resting</div>
<div class="line">in the pit of my stomach,</div>
<div class="line">a calm excitement,</div>
<div class="line">my mind free of anger,</div>
<div class="line">resentment, ambition, regret.</div>
<div class="line">Twelve raindrops hang</div>
<div class="line">from the window sash,</div>
<div class="line">gathering weight.</div>
<div class="line">One or two look ready</div>
<div class="line">to fall, but who</div>
<div class="line">knows when</div>
<div class="line">that will happen.</div>
<div class="line">Pearled, light-filled,</div>
<div class="line">each one a condensation</div>
<div class="line">of cloud called downward</div>
<div class="line">by invisible forces,</div>
<div class="line">just as we are,</div>
<div class="line">falling but not yet fallen,</div>
<div class="line">held between earth</div>
<div class="line">and sky, then and now,</div>
<div class="line">and now the rain begins again.</div>


Umbrella

If the Point Were to Tell it Straight, Not Slant

Morning in East Wallingford

<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">     coming unstitched—</div>
<div class="line">even the fake flowers</div>
<div class="line">     grow old</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">      the pain is still there</div>
<div class="line">weeping willow</div>
<div class="line">      my father cut down</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">      regretting something I said</div>
<div class="line">I turn the lampshade</div>
<div class="line">      to hide the seam</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">     scattered crocuses</div>
<div class="line">as if someone had planted</div>
<div class="line">     birdsong</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">      cold spring morning—</div>
<div class="line">close the window</div>
<div class="line">      or listen to the warbler?</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">      not so different</div>
<div class="line">veined spring leaf</div>
<div class="line">      and my ancient hand</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">      fifty years ago: seeds</div>
<div class="line">before that, nothing—</div>
<div class="line">      oak trees outside my window</div>


When the Monsters Come Out

To the Child Watching His Grandmother Sew

Seven Haiku

<div class="line">I cannot save her, she will be broken, is broken,</div>
<div class="line">will be broken again and again, this little girl,</div>
<div class="line">five or six, in a grubby pink dress,</div>
<div class="line">black hair, fat cheeks, hard black eyes</div>
<div class="line">on her father—a giant version of herself</div>
<div class="line">inflated by time and half-controlled</div>
<div class="line">rage—who grabs her shoulders</div>
<div class="line">and shoves her down on the sidewalk,</div>
<div class="line">against the brick wall of the bookstore</div>
<div class="line">I&#8217;m about to enter, and stands back</div>
<div class="line">waiting as she gets up, tries to run</div>
<div class="line">past him, unstoppable force,</div>
<div class="line">immovable object, and grabs her again,</div>
<div class="line">slams her down, the exact same motions</div>
<div class="line">but harder this time, both of them</div>
<div class="line">like marionettes the god who rules over</div>
<div class="line">ruined childhoods guides with gnarled fingers,</div>
<div class="line">and my hard-wired, Paleolithic radar</div>
<div class="line">for violence flares inside me, turns me</div>
<div class="line">towards them, makes me want to slam <em>him</em></div>
<div class="line">into the next universe, and horrible things</div>
<div class="line">will happen today that none of us can stop,</div>
<div class="line">savage human fear everywhere in full swing,</div>
<div class="line">the need for comfort never-ending,</div>
<div class="line">need beyond all depth and measure—</div>
<div class="line">everything will happen and none can stop it</div>
<div class="line">but <em>this </em>will not happen, not here, not now,</div>
<div class="line">though she will be broken, and I say,</div>
<div class="line">“Hey, man, you do that again, I&#8217;m calling</div>
<div class="line">the cops—<em>what </em>is going on here?”</div>
<div class="line">and he says, “She&#8217;s having a time-out,</div>
<div class="line">call the cops if you want to,” and the raspy</div>
<div class="line">mother smoking on the street corner says,</div>
<div class="line">“She&#8217;s having a time-out, that&#8217;s good discipline,</div>
<div class="line">daddy,” and I stand there, held in this moment,</div>
<div class="line">and then he starts to gentle her, sets her</div>
<div class="line">softly down, and she snarls her lip, sputters</div>
<div class="line">up at him, five-year-old for<em> go fuck yourself</em>,</div>
<div class="line">and I think good for you and he calls her</div>
<div class="line"><em>honey</em>, kneels down close to talk to her,</div>
<div class="line">and I can&#8217;t tell if it&#8217;s a show for me or if it&#8217;s real,</div>
<div class="line">though I can feel he feels my eyes on him,</div>
<div class="line">and I&#8217;m not going anywhere, until he takes</div>
<div class="line">her hand and walks her inside the bookstore,</div>
<div class="line">a shimmering mirage of loving father</div>
<div class="line">and trusting child, and I follow them</div>
<div class="line">to where all the helpless words are kept</div>
<div class="line">and time itself rests inside the covers</div>
<div class="line">waiting to be set free now</div>
<div class="line">and forever and he lets</div>
<div class="line">me walk away.</div>


Singularity

The Astronaut Explains Divorce to Me

Time Out

<p><em>Review by Alejandro Escudé<img decoding="async" src="https://admin.rattle.com/ereviews/images/brehmway.jpg" alt="Help Is on the Way by John Brehm" align="right" /></em></p>
<p><small>University of Wisconsin Press<br />
1930 Monroe Street<br />
Madison, WI 53711-2059<br />
ISBN: 978-0-299-28624-8<br />
2012, 68 pp., $16.95<br />
<a href="http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5035.htm">uwpress.wisc.edu/</a></small></p>
<p>John Brehm won me over while I listened to him read and speak about his book of poems <em>Help Is On the Way </em>on the KUSP 88.9 poetry podcast. Something about his voice (perhaps it’s always in the voice) told me this was a poet who knows poetry. I want to be very clear that I think this is extremely rare today. Often in the circles of poetry one runs into fans who don’t know a good poem from a passionately read bad one, editors won over by the ornate frame around the poem rather than the poem itself, and widely recognized poets enamored more with the verbal acrobatics in a given piece than the emotional core of the piece. But John Brehm is a true poet. And any astute reader of poetry will readily confirm this by opening <em>Help Is On the Way </em>and coming across the first poem, “Pompeii.”</p>
<p>Brehm describes the experience of noticing a poster for a movie called “Pompeii” on a train in New York City. He’s disturbed about the timing of the poster, not long after 9/11. “And now we rise creaking,” Brehm writes, “over the Manhattan Bridge, where/ one can see through the scratchy windows/the city skyline and the buildings that are/not there, where thousands tried/to breathe air on fire and failed.” This is an interesting piece because even though it is informed by the events of 9/11 it isn’t about 9/11. This is more of a poem about a grievance which clearly reveals the cruelty and insensitivity present in our society. To a poet as sensitive as Brehm, to any sensitive person for that matter, America doesn’t really feel like America anymore. Some ad exec, for the sake of making a buck, allowed that heinous poster of people outrunning a wall of flame to be posted on a New York train during an emotionally charged time for that city and for the country as a whole. But that’s the America we live in today: anything goes as long as you’re making money. The Great Recession teaches me that on a daily basis. This poem also succeeds because it avoids descending into a political rant. The poet politely makes a point of correcting the poster printer who brazenly asks of the commuters: “How can you outrun an eruption/faster than this train?” Brehm points out that the train he’s on is incredibly slow and that anyone would be able to outrun it. He sadly muses, of the victims of the World Trade Center attacks, “how easily they might have done it./But that is not what they were asked to do.”</p>
<p>The second part of the collection called “Still Falling” consists of one long sequence entitled “Lineage,” in which Brehm playfully retraces the ancient roots of the human race. Similar in scope to Heaney’s bog poems, Brehm meditates on the place of the first artists and poets in this mythic early time. He imagines “the very first artists who painted on cave walls,” and wonders “why would you descend to darkness to make/your art?” A bit later in the sequence, Brehm wonders how many “proto-poets” were killed by predators in the dawn of civilization because they were prone to wandering alone. This is just a lot of fun to read. And in my opinion, it’s a sequence that works as an extended metaphor for the human condition in today’s difficult times. At the end of the sequence, Brehm seems to come to terms with the abrasive reality of his own contemporary society by deciding one must “start grasping things and reshaping them,/turning the world into your/idea of the world.”</p>
<p>There are some misses in the collection. I didn’t enjoy a few short lyrics, such as the poem “On the Subway Platform.” This piece is pure filler in my opinion and doesn’t stand with the rest of the work in this collection, which is powerful and holds a reader’s attention through Brehm’s lyrical control and hard-earned gravitas. Despite Brehm’s strong reading of “Newborn, Brovetto Farm” in the aforementioned radio program, it’s also not a particularly standout piece. There is a overly emphasized antipathy towards meat consumption orbiting the description of the newborn calf which comes off as preachy and melodramatic. But these, of course, are the exceptions.</p>
<p>And how does one criticize a collection of poems that needed to be written? In the third part of the book, “Side by Side,” Brehm chronicles the experience of traveling to Japan in order to donate a part of his liver to save his dying nephew, George Masahiro Brehm, to whom the collection is also dedicated. It is striking. There’s not one false note in the entire narrative sequence and it hits you right in the gut. It’s a sacred piece both for the poet and inevitably for the reader who is fortunate enough to come across it. This section of <em>Help Is On the Way</em> is reason enough to purchase the book.</p>
<blockquote><p>&nbsp;</p></blockquote>


The Escape Artists

Dillinger is Dead

HELP IS ON THE WAY

<p class="author"><em>John Brehm</em></p>
<p class="title"><strong>DECOMPOSITION</strong></p>
<div class="line">Framed in the upended triangle</div>
<div class="line">of the dead pine’s</div>
<div class="line">now un-</div>
<div class="line">grasping</div>
<div class="line">roots a cluster of</div>
<div class="line">larkspur perfectly composed.</div>
<p style="text-align: center;">__________</p>
<p class="title"><strong>SMALL TALK</strong></p>
<div class="line">Death and beauty and</div>
<div class="line">the of of each</div>
<div class="line">gives us</div>
<div class="line">all we</div>
<div class="line">need to say</div>
<div class="line">then takes it all away.</div>


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September 29, 2023Seven HaikuJohn Brehm

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September 29, 2023Seven HaikuJohn Brehm

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Morning in East Wallingford by John Brehm

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