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GLORIOUS LIAR: A RENGA OF TANKA
(An e-mail exchange between Cissy Ross & Barry Spacks)

Charles Wright

Brenda Hillman

Mark Jarmon

Jane Hirshfield

W.S. Merwin

and more!

Imagination
is a glorious liar
unrolling mercy
like a magic carpet...
for those who would believe.

*

At the gates of suburbia
the devil posing
as the household pet
red hide at the screen door,
grease fire jumping the black skillet.

*

Little black frying-pan,
such satisfaction to see
two eggs filling you
yellow suns above white cloud,
exact hold of iron earth.

*

On a family vacation
young Cleopatra
adjusts the iron armature
of her bathing suit, discreetly
lets fall the ancient grit of sand.

*

to be unadorned,
a bare forked shivering creature:
the infant's first right –
beautiful honesty...
and later, oh silken myths!

*

Eurydice sleeps
hair damp on the pillow
at the Hotel Hades.
Orpheus, insomniac, rolls over
remembering the sound of rain.

*

Soon faith will fail,
he'll turn, unsure of her,
wondering if she follows
in her dead-girl quiet
no sign of breathe or footfall.

*

Terrifying –
acrobats who tumble
lacking body-weight
gone to the ghostly bardo
to spin as unballasted mind.

*

No mere shades
some intrepid ghosts
come out all day
performing over our heads,
acrobats on a blue field.

*

While Amaryllis
the propped up trumpeter
pours red jazz
out of its slender hollow,
a sweet stain on its lips.

*

Ah, jazz: riffs, beat,
the tune is there somewhere
being made love to:
here it comes – full force again –
renewed by such hot-licks!

*

The hula women wave
at the edge of the volcano –
Pele's vicious lip!
She preaches fire and brimstone
flowing past smooth brown toes.

*

As to preaching,
Manjushri, Yidam of wisdom,
holds a book and a sword...
his consort, Sarasvati,
holds a book…and a blue flower.

*

This sword
believed to cut through
the skins of delusion
(this mist over the mountains
the touch of the beloved?)

*

Dieties in union
transforming energy
up from the root
through the passions of creatures
to Emptiness blossoming.

*

The rocks, content
in their sand-filled beds
to pull up the tides,
are they lovers of the waves,
their wild-eyed sisters?

*

Entering the sea,
naked, a surge of blood salt
spending from each pore –
this is the way to freedom,
return to the foam-heaving source.

*

A snake can't back up
once within its bamboo tube.
"Tie your nose-rope,"
says the lama, "to your topknot:
"let leading lead you, and go!"

_________________________________________________________________________

BARRY SPACKS, author of two novels and seven poetry collections, earns his keep as a persistently visiting professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, after many years of teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His poems have appeared in many literary print and on-line magazines, including Slate Magazine.

CISSY ROSS was born into the weekly newspaper business, where she watched her mother do the impressive business of forming words from spewing hot metal on a Linotype machine. She worked as a journalist for many years but recently decided to look for "true stories" in unlikely places. Teacher and friend Barry Spacks graciously introduced her to tankas and electronic
collaborations.

Barry Spacks offered the following note on the poem: "Tanka is the early form which led to haiku; sequences like ours are called either "strings" of tanka or use the old "renga" word for exchanges."

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