Issue 11: August 2007.
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Home > Issue 11: August 2007 > Poetry
3 poems by Pattabi Seshadri
Chairs
The La-Z-Boy is a chair
that wishes it were a bed.
The folding chair is a chair
that wishes it didn’t exist.
Europe lies prone,
Africa has club foot,
but no continent sits.
It is too exalted
a posture, the position
of king and convict.
The throne in St. Peter’s
is only wide enough
for a child’s hips,
but hard enough that
an angel’s steel vertebrae
won’t puncture it.
The Yeoman Constitutionalist
He was distracted
yet cuddly, a farmer
with a pince-nez
who kept things in the bags
under his eyes.
Every time he cried
a roll of parchment fell out.
For many years
he detested slavery,
hiding in the neoclassical
arch of his nose
several Negroes.
Between sessions of Congress,
he invented the automobile
on a napkin,
which unfortunately
was soiled
when he caught TB.
Today he is still with us.
His eyes are coins
and his mummy
wanders the banks
of the Allegheny,
sticking its finger
incredulously
into sockets.
Nearsighted Birds
misjudge the size of faraway objects.
They swoop at dogs,
mistaking them for mice.
They dive at pigs,
mistaking them for worms.
Children drop pieces of bread,
but the nearsighted birds
descend upon their heads,
leaving the bread untouched.
Eventually, they give up flying
and spend the rest of their days
jabbing their beaks in the dirt
and getting plump.
They forget their former lives
in the air, but now and then,
when the flies circle above them,
they shake their limp wings.
Of course, these are not flies,
but the farsighted birds,
who are shivering
miles above them, trying
to find their way home.
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