Patricia Seyburn
Acusmata (i)
Pour libations to gods
from the ear of the cup;
don’t craft their images
to wear on your fingers.
Make any sacrifice
barefoot. Put your right shoe
on first, eschew public
roads. Remember, planets
do not love you – they are
vehicles of divine
vengeance: only the moon
and sun can be trusted.
Marvel at silence, try
to be silent for five
years and if all else fails,
recall the tetraktys –
the first four numbers, which
when added together,
equal ten, the perfect
digits – the harmony,
believed Pythagoras
(“chief of the charlatans,”
eye-rolled Heraclitus)
in which the Sirens sing.
Acusmata (ii)
Whatever you do, don’t eat
vicia fava – the pale broad bean
may act as receptacle for the soul.
You’d be a consumer of souls
and that’s no way to live.
Some claim the mild legume
an aphrodisiac and you know how
the boss frowns on all things carnal.
You need no degree in philosophy
to see how it resembles the testicles.
As for that rude black freckle
it bears – you can’t tell me that’s not
the prefect of omens. Who needs democracy?
One man, one bean – light or dark –
one vote: that’s no way to run
a nation-state. They are hard to digest,
hinder concentration – please, it’s tough
enough to wade through the oracle’s
elliptical comments. Poor bean, conscripted
as container of sex, spirit and luck,
minding its business, predestined to mean.
House Brand
Yesterday, a man named Stephen Alternative
wed a nice girl with the last name, Smith.
She became Barbara Alternative.
What would it be like to be forever the other?
My name remained my own.
I know – don’t tell me – it’s my father’s name. I am still steeped in the patriarchy yeah yeah yeah
and worse,
a named shortened from endless Eastern European glottal syllabics for what shtetl from which we
hailed or what blue-collar profession my ancestors
performed with such integrity
to satisfy the homogeny police.
Tell me again, with a sharp stick: I should have chosen a new name
in some uncorrupted language
but I stuck with the status quo
because Latin holds up well, over time.
I thought everyone would do this.
I meant to fit in.
It backfired.
I have a lot of dinner parties and try to invite people
not like me, not like each other.
No one has a very good time, but no one leaves early,
out of fear they will be the subject of chortling.
At home in bed, they think glad thoughts
about the course of their lives and when they turn off
the lights and the moon turns on, they say aloud,
Hello, Nothingness, Where Have You Been Hiding?
Solanum Tuberosum
Unsightly root crop, durable tuber
unburdened by beauty’s chores I like mine
baked with crisp skin washed up on Irish shores
from the Spanish Armada’s wrecked galleons –
“the devil’s plant” in France – to eat one,
a sin – member of the deadly nightshade
family – remember them? that bella-
donna felled Marcus Antonius’ troops.
I prefer mine mashed You, pocked, amorphous
shaped, are the most pedestrian, plainest
Jane of staples, ardently endorsed
by Antoine Augustine Parmentier
(humble servant of the 16th Louis)
who believed the mass of French peasants
I like mine small and roasted should love it as
he did, long-imprisoned by ill-tempered
Prussians during Wars enduring Seven
Years: ah, the stamina of pain. But what
are looks and dates, 7,000-year-old
spud, patata, pomme de terre –
translatable and edible until you’re
green and poisonous – most of us embitter
after salad days. Desiree, Amandine
fried I think the world of you
Maris Piper, Kerr’s Pink pancake, gnocchi,
au gratin Mona Lisa, Yellow Finn, Fingerling
Sussbury Gambit, who’d not take a chance
on your survival, you have made your way
into the new world, upended
the supremacy of rice and grain –
what would the Peruvian gang say now?
I like mine shredded, browned and
served between a poached egg and buttered toast
on the democracy of a clean plate.
May we all maintain such dignity
in the face of slander, myriad eyes
on and upon us, bathed in dirt from birth –
no easy berth, yours – sideman, second fiddle –
how few of us valued at what we’re worth –
what exactly are we worth? Pureed with leeks
and butter into a soup Oh Russett
Burbank – the greatest of your bountiful
gifts, itself, is bounty – fill, sate, satisfy,
I fear it’s more than I will be or do.
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Patty Seyburn has published three books of poems: Hilarity (New Issues Press, 2009), Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002) and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998). Her poems are currently in Boston Review, DIAGRAM and Hotel Amerika. She is an Associate Professor at California State University, Long Beach and co-editor of POOL: A Journal of Poetry (www.poolpoetry.com). She recently won a 2011 Pushcart Prize for her poem, “The Case for Free Will,” published in Arroyo Literary Review.