The Shah of Iran and other poems

poetry by Peter Mladinic

Poet’s corner is back! Spring is here and Easter is right around the corner. Perfect for putting me in a poetry kind of mood.

Oh, and it’s also NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month)! If you’re participating, drop us a line and save your rhythms and rhymes for me later.

So pull up a seat and listen to these poetic iterations, and ponder what they mean or, more importantly, how they make you feel. Then tell us about it in the comments!

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Photo by John Robert Marasigan on Unsplash

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The Shah of Iran
 
Elvis Presley and Robert Lowell, a poet,
died less than a month apart,
(Lowell in a taxi),
though he was still alive
the last afternoon we saw each other,
face to face, your Schwinn on a kickstand,
my house on an embankment above I-35,
the Shah in America, at the Mayo Clinic,
trying to stay alive. All his wealth
couldn’t keep off lung cancer.
He was handsome, debonair, the world
at his fingertips, then Iran’s upheaval
and the crab attacking.
Earlier that day I saw you and your father  
at Lake Harriet. Then, there you were
the last time our hands touched.
You were moving to San Diego.
I moved into an apartment with Patrick
and Kate, brother and sister,
and found a dead mouse in the fridge.
Years later, New York’s Port Authority,
a man in a blue topcoat,
his suave looks resembled the Shah’s,
helped as I struggled with heavy bags.
The bus we boarded went through a tunnel
into Weehawken.
He reminded me not only of the Shah,
but also of Kamel, from Saudi Arabia,
in the Wilson Library’s smoking room
a doctoral student in economics,
quiet, friendly, unobtrusive,
like his American girlfriend,
in that bright below-ground-level room
where my friends and I studied.
One Sunday morning I left the library
and, walking a footbridge
from the West Bank to the East, met you.
It was January, very cold.
In a blue Parka with a fur-lined hood,
you told me your name.

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Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash

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The Taste of Ashes
 
I’d like to believe. Of course, many do.
Eternity’s synonymous with forever.
Some say, I’ll love you forever, or my love
for you will never die. They believe love
will live on after they die. We see love,
hear it, mostly feel it. I was about to walk
a path around a golf course perimeter
with my small poodle-spaniel.  I set him
down from my Jeep, looked in his eyes
and felt the joy he felt, a surge of love,
as tangible as holding a pool cue in a parlor,
except we were outdoors in a parking lot.
My point: love is tangible, forever isn’t.
A patient waits to go in to the dentist, looks
at a wristwatch: this is taking forever,
a long time. Just an expression, that wait
ending eventually.  Perhaps forever’s
only reality is its three syllables. Touch
a spaniel, a pool cue, but no one I know
touches or looks into the eyes of forever.
Maybe eternity’s meaning is we get up
from our deathbeds and start the journey
all over. A circular walk on a path around
a golf course that goes on day and night,
spring into winter and back into spring.
Maybe after the last breath on the deathbed
nothing. I knew a woman who died of
a cerebral hemorrhage in a dentist’s chair.
A nurse stepped from his front door out to
his mailbox by the curb and dropped dead.
Nothing’s two syllables rings true till it
doesn’t. How old were you the first time you
saw and felt dust?  Had you matched
the thing with the word?  When I was a child,
sportswriter Bill Stern published a book,
The Taste of Ashes. Who has not,
in their lives, in one form or another, tasted
ashes? Who has not felt love?  Breathe,
smell the ocean, smell the fresh cut grass.
The song goes love is all around us. Clutch
an infant’s fingers, touch the chin of some
person whose presence fills you with joy.

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Photo by Reza Hasannia on Unsplash

An Answer for Everything
 
Randy had answer for everything
and Sheila, his beautiful girlfriend,
but not for why Art raised a knife to Sue
in our kitchen one spring night, with light
though windows, Art poised with the blade
over Sue, near the sink and cupboards.
Sheila wasn’t beautiful then, in 1973,
but she is now, in my mind. Luckily,
Art dropped the knife and went into his room.
Once, passing Sheila’s door, I heard Randy
reciting a long poem he made her listen to.
He was bombastic, ever present
even when Sheila wasn’t there. It got so
we told him to leave.  
He wore a long beard (longer than Art’s).
With a sweep of his long arm he said,
“A curse on the lot of you!” We felt guilty
but relieved. Though still Sheila’s sweetheart,
he never came back.
By the time I moved out, the winter of ‘74,
Art was still there, Sheila had moved,
and Sue had gotten a place with Gary,
who had once said to Art, “You’re boring,”
in front of the TV no one watched
(except for Watergate), and the plastic palm
in the corner. Art didn’t know what to say.
“Why are you being so defensive?”
he asked me several times;
that was the new thing his frame—
wire rim glasses, beard, hair in a ponytail—
had taken in: Why are you being so
defensive? His room was off the kitchen.
His dog, Lori, part lab, never on a leash,
the sweetest dog I ever met,
was the foil to Art’s temper.
I don’t know why he raised that knife to Sue.
They knew each other before I knew either
of them. Randy, a TA at the university,
reminded me of Rasputin. He was hard
to talk to. Art was easy to talk to.
Once we took a road trip,
and I met his mother in the Bronx.

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Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

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Meet the author:

Peter Mladinic's most recent book of poems, Maiden Rock, is available from UnCollected Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.

“An advocate for animal welfare I am well aware of the underside. Part of the dark side of human experience for me is the indifference too many people have as to the value and well being of animals. The dark side often gets into my poems, but so does the light side, I hope.”

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