[New-Poetry] RMN

[Anny Ballardini]

Thank you Rachel.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Rachel Loden 
  To: 'NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views' 
  Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 7:56 PM
  Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] RMN


  David Graham wrote: 

  <<It's the birthday of Richard Nixon. Everyone please go read Rachel Loden.>>

  Thanks, David! Why don't I make that easier? Here's a poem for the birthday, from the birthplace:


  A Quaker Meeting in Yorba Linda
   

            The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace, Yorba Linda, California

   

   

  The little flower of Yorba Linda told the gravestone: "Get thee behind me"

   

  The gravestone told the grass: "I am coming out of you like a shiny tooth"

   

  The grass asked Mrs. Nixon: "Are you dressed for Easter morning?"

   

  Mrs. Nixon told Tricia and Julie: "Girls, your father is sprouting from the grave"

   

  Tricia and Julie told Checkers: "You must rise too, and come away"

   

  Checkers told us: "Why would I rise? You promised to rebury me at the Library and Birthplace. I am still here at the Bide-a-Wee Pet Cemetery in Wantagh, New York, and not one of you has ever been to visit me."

   

  Tricia and Julie told us: "When we were little girls, we spake as little girls, we understood as little girls, we thought as little girls: but when we became Mrs. Edward Cox and Mrs. David Eisenhower, we put away childish things"

   

  Mrs. Nixon told us: "I am Thelma Catherine Ryan, a miner's daughter and a beauty"

   

  The grass told us: "I feel so light without that shiny stone, so green and airy"

   

  The gravestone told us: "The little flower's death is written on my body"

   

  The little flower of Yorba Linda told us: "I am rising even if Pat and Checkers will not rise with me. How many did we kill in Laos? Think big, for Chrissakes, Henry"

   

  I said: "Dear Friends, will you sit and quake awhile with me? I invite the gravestone, the grass, the beautiful Thelma Catherine Ryan, Mrs. Cox and Mrs. Eisenhower, Checkers sick-at-heart in Wantagh, even Henry, if he wishes, even the shy flower of Whittier, the angry flower of San Clemente, the thwarted flower of Yorba Linda."







  --from THE RICHARD NIXON SNOW GLOBE, Wild Honey Press



  http://www.wildhoneypress.com/




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