Kingdom Come

“Pain carves this
white chrysanthemum
inside my brain,

the bloom his royal emblem.
Pain is my Emperor.
I am but the delicate throne

he deigns to rest upon.
Once, they were rare,
these royal audiences.

Now they never end.
Morphine, Dilaudid
do not preclude

his fearsome presence.
I bow, forehead touching
the cold tiled floor.

It is not permitted to gaze
upon the Emperor’s countenance.
His face is divine.

A glimpse, and toxins
spill from my bowels,
my eyes weep red.

My thick arms, my sturdy spine
are warped now, splintering—
so be it.

When, at last, my Emperor
rises, gathers his robes,
moves on, I will be

no one’s subject, bearing
nothing’s emblem. All
the world, mum.”

Distances 

“Between this anchored pain
and the white-capped vial,
standing like a lighthouse on
the bedside table: an arm’s length,
a thousand nautical miles.
Water, water, everywhere and not
a drop to drink. I call out
and my daughter strides across
the waves, a brimming glass and
two chalky tablets, her cupped palm
bobbing like a toy boat.
Down I go, fathom after fathom,
shafts of weak sun my Mercator.
But I am not alone. Wrecked hulls
and split masts litter the bottom.
All these broken hearts choked by silt.
And now you are calling me again, my sea-girl,
wreathed in seaweed red and brown.
What lovely syllables. My name
is a white sail somewhere, luffing in the wind.
But the distance, love, between your pale lips
and my wet pillow: unfathomable.”

Steven Ratiner—author of three poetry chapbooks and the current Poet Laureate of Arlington, Massachusetts—has published work in numerous journals in America and abroad, including Parnassus, Agni, Blackbird, Hanging Loose, Poet Lore, Salamander, QRLS (Singapore) and Poetry Australia. He’s written about poetry for The Christian Science Monitor and their media stations, The San Francisco Chronicle, Horizon, Yankee Magazine, and The Washington Post.  Giving Their Word, a collection of poetry interviews, was re-issued in a paperback edition from University of Massachusetts Press and includes conversations with some of poetry’s most vital contemporary voices, such as Seamus Heaney, Charles Simic, Rita Dove, Bei Dao, and the last full-length interview with Bill Stafford before he died.  The two poems appearing here are from Black Quilt, a full-length sequence triggered by his sister’s long battle with cancer of the brain and spine. Both are persona poems written in his sister’s voice (indicated here by the quotation marks).