Recollections from the Ring: A Conversation with Ferdie Pacheco

Recollections from the Ring: A Conversation with Ferdie Pacheco: "Joyce Carol Oates writes that 'watching the best boxing match is like hearing Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier perfectly executed.'"

Owlhouse

Owlhouse: "You cannot write for children They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them. Maurice Sendak"

Brendan Kennelly Said"'Poetry is, above all, a singing art of natural and magical connection because, though it is born out of one's person's solitude, it has the ability to reach out and touch in a humane and warmly illuminating way the solitude, even the loneliness, of others. That is why, to me, poetry is one of the most vital treasures that humanity possesses; it is a bridge between separated souls.'"


Ledge

In my parents house was a wretched ledge.
Unspoken, distant, loathing. Rod of Oak
That was destructive, not creative.
A stick that was leaned on during the rosary-
Visible reminder.
Catching thighs with stinging accuracy
Like tipping a clumsy steer for branding. Striking
Cruel, rising stiff. Injurious wood
Used in a wild dance called the rosary.

Quote: Mark Strand Poem Tom Delmore

Mark Strand said, "Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention."



Coffee Shop Conversation


She sits across from her husband
They could be strangers except for the nearness.
Reading the USA Today to her New York Times
She speaks, completing coupleness. “Honey,
Less than one percent suffer from suicide headaches
Just like mine. A pain in the eyes for an hour
Than dissipating and coming back.”
He does not lower his section to say:
“just like yours” overlapping a painful truth.



She sits across from her husband
They could be strangers except
For the nearness.

Reading the USA Today
To her New York Times.
She speaks, completing coupleness.

“Honey, less than one percent
Suffer from suicide headaches
Just like mine;

A pain in the eyes for an hour
Then dissipating and coming back.”
He does not lower his section

To say “just like yours.”
Overlapping a painful
Truth.

Holy Week

With Holy Week upon us I wrote this poem recently.


O Prince of Peace

Each year the same man
Picks up the whip of scourging
And you are at the post-
Shit-stained and bleeding.

That blood you sweated
Now re-enacted with thorns.
And there you are in the church.

Crazies broke you to bits.
Old women want you
Back on the damp eastern wall
Not in that corner niche.

All this time you could tie
Yourself to that column.
Give the man his whip
Even tell where each pull
Of skin will originate.

The story has metaphor.
And each year someone believes
And someone denies
And that rooster reneges
In every courtyard in the land.

And you say: feed my sheep.