August 25, 2023

David Romtvedt

WATERING THE TREES

Seeing the neighbor watering his pear tree,
I see my father watering the mulberry trees
in our yard. Bitter after his day of labor,
he turns away and I wait, imagining he will
speak across the years and space and what
passed between us will pass away. This
is how I live—pleased to hope in vain,
happy I’ll never see my father again.
 
The neighbor starts yelling, face purple, 
the veins in his neck ropes pulled tight.
Same veins in my father’s neck. For him,
it was the bosses. For the neighbor, it’s
the idiot liberals, every one of us. Funny
that he likes me. I like him. Maybe 
we’re changing the shape of the universe, 
irony the literary equivalent of the worm
hole that lets our rocket go faster than 
the speed of light. Drop in and come out
a door that isn’t there until you open it.
 

from Rattle #80, Summer 2023

__________

David Romtvedt: “I’m a musician and poet. Language, meaning, and rhythm drive me in both forms—I write poems that don’t have regular meter but I’m always thinking about how the poems move when spoken. I write party dance music that is metrically very regular but I’m always thinking about using language in ways that will break free of the meter a little.”

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January 13, 2021

David Romtvedt

REMEMBERING THE WEDDING

When a couple separates, it’s hard not to stick 
with one and let the other go. Sitting on the fence, 
you risk being reviled by people on both sides.

A friend says, “My wife came home and found me
with another woman. I tried to make a joke, said,
‘I got the laundry done.’ Really, what could I say?”

“Nothing,” I want to tell him, but keep still,
seeing the lover in bed, the washing machine,
the wife, the joke. Is that a joke?

His ex, also a friend, says, “I opened the door
and there he was with a woman I’d never seen,
each of them a bellow pumping oxygen on a fire.”

I admire this metaphor made when she was angry
and hurt. And I’ve always thought her attractive 
though it’s not something I could tell her, even now.

I look out the window to the water, a tug 
hauling a load of logs to the mill. The slices
of wedding cake laid out on their plates.

from Rattle #69, Fall 2020

__________

David Romtvedt: “Today is September 1st, and it was the hottest day of the year—96 degrees. I mowed the lawn, dug up carrots and potatoes from the garden, took a mountain bike ride, read an analysis of fairy tales by Bruno Bettelheim, which annoyed me for his refusal to consider culture as one of the shaping influences in the individual’s psyche, and listened to the neighbor shooting baskets in his backyard. Whatever its pain, the world is also awash in beauty.” (web)

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July 21, 2020

David Romtvedt

ON BROADWAY

My Uncle Will wanted to be on Broadway.
After family dinners, when everyone sat around
drinking coffee, he’d do a little tap dance or shuffle.
Of course it was embarrassing to have a grown man
who worked at the lumberyard dancing after dinner.

On my ninth birthday, I became his reluctant partner.
We wore white shirts, red jackets, and black patent
leather shoes he’d bought at the Salvation Army Thrift Shop
along with paper top hats from the party supply store
and canes made from PVC tubing he’d painted gold.
Our big number was “Putting on the Ritz.”

The other day I looked up in the sky and saw Uncle Will
floating in an aluminum lawn chair. He leaned forward
and grabbed a bit of cloud that was shaped like a woman.
I don’t remember him as a lady’s man so maybe
I invented the woman. She was wearing a tutu
but moved more like a stripper than a ballerina.
Uncle Will was whistling Broadway tunes and talking
to himself about the right expression and inflection
to impress a casting director at an audition.

Then my aunt, his wife Jane, came into the sky.
She was carrying drinks and a plate of strawberries
and whipped cream, the same as in real life.
Sometimes when we finished, Aunt Jane would look
at Uncle Will, a dark sympathetic look, and she’d say,
“Will, if you worked hard you could still audition.”
The way he looked back at her—even now floating
in the sky—it’s a good thing angel uncles don’t carry guns.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he’d say, too casually.
“I can’t give up the lumberyard.”

I look again and realize my Uncle Will was afraid.
I never knew. When the song ends, we tap the edges
of our paper top hats with our PVC canes and bow
and everyone claps like mad, Jane most of all.

from Rattle #32, Winter 2009

__________

David Romtvedt: “I’m a musician and poet. Language, meaning, and rhythm drive me in both forms—I write poems that don’t have regular meter but I’m always thinking about how the poems move when spoken. I write party dance music that is metrically very regular but I’m always thinking about using language in ways that will break free of the meter a little. My big quest now is to learn Basque, a language of great beauty that is very unlike other European languages.” (web)

 

David Romtvedt is the guest on tonight’s episode of the Rattlecast! Click here to watch …

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July 23, 2014

David Romtvedt

DILEMMAS OF THE ANGELS: INTENTION

The angel loves Sundays—coffee and the paper—
but it’s hard today. A man says he cannot 
support a woman’s right to abortion 
even if she becomes pregnant after being raped.
Such pregnancies, he explains, are
intended by God.
 
She puts down her coffee, turns away, 
and looks out the window into the silence 
of the winter morning—the yard filled with leaves 
fallen from the hundred-year-old cottonwood tree, 
and the two squirrels darting around the trunk as if life
required no thinking.
 
Maybe the man’s right—all killing is murder 
no matter the horror of life’s creation. Still, it eats 
at her—if the Lord intended the pregnancy, He 
intended the rape.
 
She feels his invisible caress and distant gaze, 
hands pulling her gown aside, sometimes roughly.
He must know there can be no product 
from their union.
 
That same Sunday morning, a woman gets up
before her husband and teenaged daughters.
She’s waited all week for this pleasure—
coffee and the paper. But she’s out of milk 
so quick goes to the store, a corner grocery 
like in a movie, run by an old couple 
who know her name and the girls’ names, 
even her husband’s. When she forgets 
the money, they say, “Don’t worry, you can 
pay next time.”
 
That’s when it happens—the rape. The angel
would intervene, wrestle the rapist away,
but she knows it would
do no good.
 
Once she tried playing with an Irish Setter, 
the happiest being she’d ever met. He leapt up 
smiling and his soft paws passed through her 
as through the silk screen in her bedroom, 
touching only her wings,
leaving them bruised.
 
When the Lord got Mary pregnant 
he never knew her. He wanted 
a miracle and made the only 
kind he could.
 
The squirrels are still running around the tree, 
brains swirling in the emptiness of their heads.
The coffee’s as cold as the winter wind 
blowing the leaves against the window.
The angel would claw the skin off her bones 
but she has no bones, no parts
anyone can touch.
 
She shivers then unbuttons her robe. 
Let the Lord watch and imagine
what he intends.
 

from Rattle #42, Winter 2013

[download audio]

__________

David Romtvedt: “I’m a musician and poet. Language, meaning, and rhythm drive me in both forms—I write poems that don’t have regular meter but I’m always thinking about how the poems move when spoken. I write party dance music that is metrically very regular but I’m always thinking about using language in ways that will break free of the meter a little. My big quest now is to learn Basque, a language of great beauty that is very unlike other European languages.”

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July 22, 2014

David Romtvedt

DILEMMAS OF THE ANGELS: EXTRATERRESTRIAL

The aliens land and at first she’s scared.
Has her Lord been keeping secrets?
Another wife and kids in a faraway galaxy?
 
It would be tempting. Imagine saying,
“Let there be light.” And, poof, there’s light.
The magic word is any word you want it to be—
bucket, for example, or asphalt, and into the world
tumble jet planes, hair dryers, and vegetarian restaurants.
 
The Mayans say God made human beings from mud 
but when it rained they washed away and he had 
to start over. So maybe we’re the other family.
 
Now the aliens are stepping out of their ship
which looks like a giant corncob painted blue.
That’s a nice detail, she thinks—that blue.
 
Could be these people created themselves. 
Certainly our Lord didn’t attend so to detail.
Here it was light, dark, firmament, seas, 
vault of heaven—all pretty vague. It wasn’t 
even clear whether angels have sexual organs. 
Take that Cole Porter song—“Birds do it, bees 
do it, even educated fleas do it.” What about angels?
 
The problem is 
there is no one
before whom the Lord 
can bow his head
and be born again.
 
The aliens take off their shoes and socks 
before walking barefoot across the lawn.
There’s something appealing about them—
those smiles. They’re taking off their clothes, 
space suits really, and lying down on the grass. 
They’re wrapping their arms and legs around each other.
They’re doing what is done to create a new being.
 
“Hey,” she shouts, not that she’s a prude 
but she’s been in the garden before 
and knows that the sprinklers come on
at dusk, which it almost is. And what if, under 
the screen of water, they are washed away?
 

from Rattle #42, Winter 2013

[download audio]

__________

David Romtvedt: “I’m a musician and poet. Language, meaning, and rhythm drive me in both forms—I write poems that don’t have regular meter but I’m always thinking about how the poems move when spoken. I write party dance music that is metrically very regular but I’m always thinking about using language in ways that will break free of the meter a little. My big quest now is to learn Basque, a language of great beauty that is very unlike other European languages.”

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February 7, 2011

David Romtvedt

AMERICAN ELECTION: 2004

What would be best then, to go or stay,
to cross the border or once again to dawdle and delay?
It’s true there’s a fence, and men with helmets
and guns have little patience with an uncertain stance
or scornful glance. Ah, and yet, and yet,
every four years at this time I wonder and shake my head
and ask how can it be? How can it be?

On the street the taxis idle, waiting for a fare.
It could be me, running my fingers through my hair.

It would be better perhaps
to buy maps of the world, all those pretty countries—
rosy pink and forest green and pale blue—
and lay them out on the floor or tack them to the walls,
a montage of roads that are not mined and skies
out of which no bombs fall, no one sitting sweating
in the waiting room of a clinic, no one uncertain how
to pay the bill. But where would I go? Surely
Bolivia is no better than Buffalo, Wyoming,
nor Ecuador or the Dominican Republic.

Maybe Norway, those healthy and reasonable Norwegians
in hand knit sweaters with a government that guarantees
health insurance and a people that pays taxes for the common good,
and are all Lutheran but don’t much go to church.
I could run up to them on the street and shout,
“Just look at those fjords!” In winter
the smoke curls cheerfully up the chimneys
and in the not quite warm bedrooms beautiful
Norwegian women remove their sweaters
to reveal icy Scandinavian perfection.
Yes, I could live in Norway in the cool bedrooms
burrowing under the covers, my face buried
between Nordic breasts, my body warm.
On the other hand, what if I find no Norwegian woman
who wants me to bury my face between her breasts?
What if my life in Norway is like my life here. Like
in high school when my girlfriend called and said,
“Want to come to my house? There’s no one home.”
And I, salivating, thinking, boy oh boy, do I ever,
hopped in the car and drove to her house, ran up
the steps to the front door, threw it open, and shouted,
“I’m here” while imagining the buttons and zippers
to be undone. “I’m here.” I shouted again, “I’m here.”
But there was no answer, there was, as she’d promised,
no one home. How sad it can be in the far north
as the nights grow long and one is alone. My car
is buried in a snow bank and even if I dig it out
I have no license—it was revoked for drunk driving
and I can’t even walk to the post office and buy a stamp
to write a letter home to my ex-girlfriend and tell her
I don’t mind the joke she pulled on me. I don’t know
the word in Norwegian for stamp. And I don’t know
how to say, “How much?” Or “Do you sell envelopes?”
And where would I buy stationery? And it’s impossible
to use the phone because I can’t speak to the operator
to make the long distance connection. And what if
I’m trapped here forever unable to speak Norwegian?
All I can do is shrug and wag my head back and forth
as if telling a waiter to keep the change. Keep the change.
It’s a beautiful country but one day I’ll run out of money
and then what? Homeless on the streets in a greasy coat,
my hair matted, sleeping over a vent where steam rises
and the Norwegian social service worker will come for me
and put me in a group home where I’ll make ashtrays
from ceramic molds and have to attend group therapy
in a language I can’t understand. Maybe it won’t be
so bad. I’m told most Norwegians speak English
better than I do. Either way, it might have been
better to have never gone to Norway at all.

On the street the taxis idle, waiting for a fare.
It could be me, running my fingers through my hair.

And god forbid I’d end my days in some gigantic
city—Hong Kong, Tokyo, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur—
though I knew a Malaysian poet who loved the American
Beat Generation poets—Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti
and even Jack Kerouac though he was more of a novelist than
a poet and some people didn’t even like his prose. Truman Capote,
for example, when asked what he thought of Kerouac’s writing, said,
“That’s not writing; it’s typing.” The Malaysian, while visiting
the United States, found that he missed his wife. He wrote
a poem about having a six thousand mile long penis
that he would send home to her. But those are Asian cities
I’ve never visited. I loved walking the streets of Kinshasa,
the fires burning in the gutters, the music playing from the bars,
and the venders in the market screaming and smiling and spitting
and waving their arms and when I make my offer twisting
their faces into such contorted masks of pain that I am ashamed.
“Oh, please,” I want to cry, “Please take twice what I offered,
three times what I offered. Take all the money I have and give it
to your children, buy them a chicken or at least a dozen eggs
and not another five kilos of manioc out of which you make
gluey fou-fou that wears out your mouth and fills your belly
while leaving you hungry. Imagine fou-fou for Christmas.
The fires smell of eucalyptus leaves, and plastic bags, and tires.
No, not even Kinshasa, a big city I love, is where I want to go.

On the street the taxis idle, waiting for a fare.
It could be me, running my fingers through my hair.

But I have been happy in cities—in Mexico along the Reforma
where an angel looks down on us all and the US embassy
is gray concrete with a guard booth that has real glass
behind a steel screen. And Paris, who could say no to Paris
where on Independence Day night the sky lights up
with the history of the Republic told in music and fireworks,
explosions that hurt no one, guillotines that melt into dainty clouds.
Yes, Paris, that’s worth the price of the maps.

But the border here is with Canada not France and though
they speak French in Quebec, Vancouver is rainy and cold
and English though I should mention Stanley Park,
the sea wall and, when the sun shines, the people walking
and rollerblading and playing soccer and swimming and eating,
and there are so many of them, thousands, millions, it seems,
so there’s no room to roam. But there is beauty everywhere,
even in those nations we all know must be gotten rid of—
Iran and Iraq and Korea, no wait, only North Korea.
South Korea is good and Godly and I could go there but
those bad nations, those Axes of Evil, those cruel and bloodthirsty
monsters who want to take our Walmarts away and blow up
our fast food restaurants and who hate us because we are free
and hate freedom and want everyone to be in chains
dragging heavy iron balls like prisoners in hell and all
want to strap bombs to their bodies and blow themselves up
right along with us, those Axes of Evil, of course I can’t live there.

On the street the taxis idle, waiting for a fare.
It could be me, running my fingers through my hair.

It’s worth repeating that it rains on the British Columbia coast.
It rains a lot, starts early and ends late and what if I were there
and found myself depressed and far from home and I lost
my job as a teacher of English to Chinese and Thai immigrants,
how would I feel knowing I wasn’t a real Canadian even if
I looked like I could be. Anybody can tell the difference
between an American and a Canadian saying “about.”
In such circumstances, unable to accurately pronounce
the most ordinary of words, would I care who was winning elections
back home? Home, that’s the place. But I romanticize.
And so here I am in a long line at the Peace Arch border crossing
where the flower beds are so carefully laid—the brilliant red, white,
yellow, orange, violet, and blue. I’m surrounded by idling cars.
The drivers have rolled down their windows and the exhaust fumes
pour into the cars as music from a thousand CD players and radios pours out.
Off to my left is the Pacific Ocean. It’s low tide so I can’t see the water,
and under an unseasonably hot sun, the mud begins to stink.

from Rattle #33, Summer 2010
Tribute to Humor

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August 6, 2009

David Romtvedt

SPRING IN THE COUNTRY

And sheep are led to the shearing shed.
They tumble out, shivering, bleeding. What good to tell them,
“look toward the blades, not away.”

from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
Tribute to Cowboy & Western Poetry

__________

David Romtvedt: “I’ve always wondered what some of the high modernist poets would make of life in rural Wyoming and so I began to write poems that were take-offs of some of those famous fellows. ‘Spring in the Country’ is from ‘In a Station of the Metro’ by Ezra Pound. But the poet who interested me most was Allen Ginsberg. I think he would have liked it here and we need a Jewish communist gay cowboy in the neighborhood.”

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