THE BLIND MAN’S MEAL

My new chapbook of ekphrastic verse is now available for pre-order.

The Blind Man’s Meal by Peter Grieco – Finishing Line Press

“The Blind Man’s Meal” is a selection of ekphrastic verse—poems written in response to particular works of visual. The original impetus for the project came from reading Carol T. Christ’s writings on the relationships between verbal and visual imagination. I envy the hard materiality of painting and other visual art. My intention is to capture some of that brute reality, in works that inspire me, by lending it a voice. The aim is not centrally descriptive but a tracing of blunt impact. The collection is arranged chronologically in the order in which the inspiring works were created, and includes meditations on a museum visit, Impressionist and Expressionist paintings, documentary photography, and a jewelry shop window.

Thanks for your support!

Peter

from A WEEK ON THE CONCORD & MERRIMACK RIVERS

A WEEK ON THE CONCORD & MERRIMACK RIVERS
H. D. Thoreau, 1849

I.
Agitated by the raw March wind
river spray blows in your face.
The slack current bobs with ducks
in the hundreds, uneasy on the surf
ready to rise, & now going off
in a clatter of wings & whistles
like riggers with sails straight
for Labrador. All around stand alders
& birches & oak, maple full of glee & sap
holding in their buds.

Here there are men fuller of talk
& rare adventure than chestnuts are of meat
men greater than Hesiod
or Chaucer, only they never had time
to say so. What they have not
written is etched in the land
by clearings & burnings & scratchings
by harrowing & plowing, in & out
& in, erasing anew & again each season
all for want of parchment.

Frist published: New Note Poetry. Autumn, 2022. p 22. https://www.newnotepoetry.com/autumn-2022

MORE from AT THE MUSARIUM

[28401 – 28500]

“What sclerotic bibliomaniac,
coincidental with his psychologist,
bussed in these upflung glossaries & down-
loaded them to the icebox?” abridges
a crapulous Nigerian who yaws
again to sidestep a hyperbolic
Swazi cannonball. (That was touch-&-go.)
What a worrier! What a temerarious
ranter! (Here he yorks in order to toughen
his sphincter.) What a miniscule klepto-
maniac! “Must they all, on a bender
of mayhem & abomination, gimp
at the bloodroot of organizational
racism, interacting only to
revitalize their blurry egos?”

 
[28601 – 28700]

Now, at mid-May in Trapani, plangent
stickleback, with scalene asymmetry,
sheave the seaway in free-for-all bonding
& fusiform interrelation. Was it
Polyhymnia that gelt Castrato?
Does dialog desktop shareware outrank
the monochromatic brume of all this
iconography? Was it wrongheaded
accountancy or simply numismatics
that overlie the Oslo Olympics?
Would’ve anything kept the pterodactyl
from the piglets? Would’ve it been so
allegedly ultra-exceptional
for the oligarch to misplace his Jeep?

 
[23601 – 23700]

One AM in the insectivorous
Maldives where busybodies dismantle
their esculent lingerie glumly
& etymologically, yet uncontested.
Ah, cohabitation. . . . Crap! A matchlock!
Pappy, oh Pappy! A motorcycle
advertises such vulgarism &
wastage while hare-brained tom-tom outbid them,
nog upon nog, & coagulation
of the Eucharist actuates
zodiacal, agnostic sciatica.
For colophon, the bravura, baroque
nocturne of a fledgling saleswoman:
Best to lacerate then sprint away.

 
[23901 – 24000]

Relight the astrolabe fey Netherlander,
for I’m conflicted. Though I peddle my
unheroic tricycle, all godspeed
& weirdness, at evensong a bullfinch
deadens the seamless margrave with saltpeter.
Relight the handspike, for this nerve-racking
snapshot is mushy & insubstantial
as a puree of bumptious Newtonian
transcendentalism. Mime on moony
stammerer. Relight the ovule, gullible
ventriloquist, & outflank the buttock of
coronary morbidity: for screed
is pottle to the teetotaler, as
instrumentation is prophylactic
to the wolverine.

 
[33001 – 33100]

Pocked with paintwork, Lulu mighta been
moonlighting. No tomboyish shogun, but
no sadist, either, she was as left-wing
& luminescent as the Erinyes
on the freeway. She could scam a Rodin
out of a hexahedron. She mighta
been a godforsaken luddite, but her
mega-wonky weathervane, as much as
her hedonic headwind, was undepraved.
We getup to publicize the “gotcha”
lovage of salami knackers &
overplay the Maharashtra back in
Muskogee. What mighta been! Instead we’re
goners for gimlet-eyed ophthalmology.

Frist published: Burningword Literary Journal: Issue 103, July 2022. Print.

https://www.burningword.com/tag/103/page/3/