Ron Silliman
Ron Silliman has written and edited 24 books to date, including the anthology In the American Tree, which the National Poetry Foundation has republished with a new afterword. Since 1979, Silliman has been writing a poem entitled The Alphabet. Volumes published thus far from that project have included ABC, Demo to Ink, Jones, Lit, Manifest, N/O, Paradise, (R), Toner, What and Xing. Silliman is a 2003 Literary fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and was a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council as well as a Pew Fellow in the Arts in 1998. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two sons, and works as a market analyst in the computer industry.
from Parrot Eyes Lust
For Elliot Helfer
Hand-carved text
The cross-bar of an H
or of a T
can vary day to day
hand-carved hex
Open the pen
replace the cartridge
the new ink
Pita or naan
which side are you on?
Already
by the time of Brahms
Stein & Pound
& even Williams are alive
sound
is being recorded
Nothing will ever be the same
but it never is
Great satisfaction
with which
my grandfather
would park on the back
side of Albany Hill
to watch the trains
on the Santa Fe tracks
That he even knew their schedules
That one wld
or cld
or had any such desire
Who had himself
before the Great War
which he spent
loading ammo into taxis
in Paris
that then drove out to
“the front”
worked for Santa Fe
& could have again
but for the young man
with a brand new family
who was holding his job
so signed on instead
at the mill in Emeryville
for the next 42 years
My grandfather in Paris!
& as a young man
What leaps of the imagination
it takes me to get there
Moment of Panic!
How could I
misplace
a notebook this large?
My study
aka The Basement
approaches the “natural” world
mountains of books
stacked on every surface
I found your
set carefully
atop one of the few
empty chairs
This pen by your side
a steady companion
Songs in my head
better left for dead
Cranberries in heaven
are redundant
something
that when I was a kid
came strictly in cans
as for example did peaches
with a few exceptions
my favorite part of the peach
was the syrup
thick & sweet
Robin atop
the little
concrete abstraction
in the middle of
the garden
surveys the lawn
as tho it were a hawk
Five Poems I Did Not Write
20th Century
Petals on a wet, black bough
beside the white
chickens.
20th Century
Petals on a wet, black bough,
so sweet,
and so cold
20th Century
Petals on a wet, black bough,
Starving, hysterical, naked
20th Century
Petals on a wet, black bough,
They were a kind of solution.
20th Century
Petals on a wet, black bough.
They never knew what hit them.
From American Songbook