Prartho Sereno

December 11, 2023

“Charlie Chaplin & Me” by Prartho SerenoPosted by

Prartho Sereno

CHARLIE CHAPLIN & ME

Legend has it that Charlie Chaplin placed third
in a Charlie Chaplin Look-Alike Contest. Now
that I’ve been threatened suit for stealing a stranger’s 
image for my author photo, I know how he feels.
 
When we met with an arbiter (it got that far),
she pointed to the leg in the photo and said, Look 
at the bulge of that calf—that’s not your calf.
 
Look at the flounce of those side-curls, she said. 
That’s not the way your hair goes—it’s mine. 
 
I’m embarrassed to admit how unsettling
it was. I found myself defensive, coming up 
with details about the day my daughter snapped it:
On a walk by the lake, under an old madrone. 
 
No, she said with a certainty I couldn’t match. 
This was taken at the bus stop on College Ave—
See the dappled shadow of oak leaves on my face? 
 
I took a good look at my challenger and had to admit
she was better at being me than me—floppier hat, rimmed
with profusions of bright blooms; periwinkle blue
of her blouse rhymed perfectly to her eyes. 
 
And those widening pupils that tunneled down 
like the black holes I’ve seen at the centers 
of galaxies. I had to hold fast to my chair 
to keep from sliding in. 
 

—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023

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Prartho Sereno: “I’ve been writing poems since I discovered they existed in fifth grade, but the nudge that sent me deeper was reading a few of my own at a memorial in India. The silence that followed drank me in, as if I’d been swallowed by a whale. I decided to take my place around the fires with Jonah and Geppetto, my now closest kin.” (web)

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November 14, 2023

“Love of Distance” by Prartho SerenoPosted by

Prartho Sereno

LOVE OF DISTANCE

He’s enchanted with the idea
of reaching through space,
wants me to wait by the window
while he climbs the far-off mountain,
sets up the light, flashes something back
in Morse code. He says we should begin
studying our dots and dashes, along with
smoke signals, the extravagantly long rolled r’s
of Spanish. Hand gestures of the deaf.
 

Or we could take the rim trail,
one of us staying on the southern lip
while the other heads north till our bodies
shrink to the size of tree-frogs. Then we can converse
across the canyon without effort, no need
to raise our voices. He is certain this will work,
that the atmosphere at these heights
will bear our words with a clarity
as yet unknown to us.
 
My faith in these things is weaker.
I dare not tell him the Far Eastern stories—
the one where the poet builds two houses
on opposite shores of the lake. Gives one
to his sweetheart, who he tells to go in,
take up dulcimer or needlework, learn to love
the lonely ways. Think of the surprise,
he says. One of our faces suddenly shining
between the black birds and reeds.
 

—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007

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Prartho Sereno: “When I first read that so much depended on a red wheelbarrow beside the white chickens, I breathed a sigh of relief. My inner whisperer seemed to know this kind of thing, but I had always felt her murmurings to be of no use. Now I could scramble through an odd labyrinth of life-hoops—psychologist, cab driver, head cook, single parent, housecleaner, palmist, phys. ed teacher, Poet in the Schools—with someone I could trust inside. She’s the one who writes my poems.” (web)

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January 16, 2019

“A Few Questions Before We Go On” by Prartho SerenoPosted by

Prartho Sereno

A FEW QUESTIONS BEFORE WE GO ON

Who gathered the straw and the twigs?
Who wove the nest and laid the egg
of this world? What patient one sat
and warmed it till it broke out in octopus
and chickadee, walrus and snake?

Who came up with all the comings and goings?
The breathing and eating. Sleeping
and waking. Who conjured the laugh?

Who thought up sex and where
we drop when we fall in?
Who dreamed the river of tears?

Who charmed the embryo’s polliwog body
to flower into elbows and ears?
Who jolted the heart to throb?
Who thought up growing old?

What melancholic dramatist chose loss
for every scene—tragic, comic, slice-of-life?
And who is it that can’t stop humming
as she sweeps up the stardust backstage?

—from Rattle #61, Fall 2018

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Prartho Sereno: “Thankfully my muse is a nag. I can’t go long in the numbing marketplace before she begins grouching, and if push comes to shove (i.e., I resist), she always wins, and off we go to the Redwood Forest or the Mendocino Cliffs or the Cabin by the Lake in Upstate New York. You could say I’m naggingly blessed.” (web)

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September 1, 2011

“Mr. James’s Marvelous Thing” by Prartho SerenoPosted by

Prartho Sereno

MR. JAMES’S MARVELOUS THING

In this week’s obituaries—Betty James,
whose 90 years are boiled down
to three paragraphs, one and a half given
to her husband Richard, the marine engineer
who fell in love with a torsion spring
when it toppled from his desk and
cartwheeled out the door.

In the picture, Betty’s holding the beloved
Slinky in her stair-step hands. Most likely
she’s been shuffling the toy—one of its many
irresistible charms. But for the picture’s sake
she’s struck a pose and it has slunk
the way of all things (we were later
to discover)—building up on one hand
before helplessly spilling over to the other.

Her part in the tale was holding it
together—the six offspring and the shiny
empire built around a creature that couldn’t rise
to a single occasion but was splendid at descent,
which was what they said about Mr. James,
or at least that’s the story Betty stuck to
till the end—that he slunk away,
down to Bolivia to join a cult.

In any case, it was only fair that Betty
share her obituary with Richard, since
it was Mr. James, after all, who gave us
the marvelous thing, and there was little
note taken of his passing (somewhere
in the Bolivian mountains, 1974).
And, truth be told, there is never a record
of what the voice says when it calls us
away from the tinseled world, which
leaves us to consider that maybe Mr. James’s
tumble south was not so much a fall as a
surrender, a call and response: to rise.

—from Rattle #34, Winter 2010

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August 27, 2010

“Electrodomestico” by Prartho SerenoPosted by

Prartho Sereno

ELECTRODOMESTICO

One day the iceman came no more.
Neither did the coalman with his telescopic chute.
Nor the junkman with his horse and cart,
his dust and sweat-streaked face.
Not even the milkman’s xylophone
of bottles could be heard jangling
through the magenta streets of dawn.

That day the wide-eyed band of women
in calico aprons, pockets bulging with
clothespins, were swept away to a buzzing
world where everything came with its own
complication of cord. But these women of faith
knew what to do. They dove in and took refuge
in Houdini’s secret, hiding a small brass key
in their mouths.

And they did what they’d always done,
took everyone in—the plug-in refrigerator
and washing machine, a menagerie of electric
can openers, ice-crushers, and coffee mills.
And the Edsel of home appliances:
the sit-down steam press that could snatch
a shirt from your hands, send it back
an origami waffle with melted buttons.

It was Fat Tuesday in the history of man’s
imagination, a festival of dazzling inventions,
each one out-doing the next. The bobby pin
bowed to the Spoolie, the Spoolie
to the electric roller. The wood-sided
station wagon sidled up, wired
with a radio and its very own garage.

And the suburbs—that great yawn of grass
with its pastel stutter of houses, all
stocked with friendly products: Hamburger
Helper, Aunt Jemima, a detergent
called Cheer, a dish soap named Joy.
Turquoise linoleum nests, feathered
with vim and verve where they delivered
us, girls who grew into flowers, ceding

ourselves to the wind. They watched
in dismay as we pulled up those tender
roots and headed out for the likes of India
or Back to the Land. They couldn’t understand
why we left our humming dowries behind—
plug-in frying pans, carving knives, and brooms.

But on our way out they drew near,
as mothers do, and slipped us the keys—
the small brass keys they’d kept all the while
in their mouths, but never used.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009

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Prartho Sereno: “A California Poet in the Schools, I’ve spent the past ten years hanging out with mystic poets, i.e., my students in fifteen schools in Marin County. Anything I get right in my poems I owe to them, especially the second graders.” (web)

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