While Listening
to a Hundred Thousand Harps
Mary-Marcia Casoly
After scenes made strings
Circular stairs
After strings made scenes so many books
Stops and pauses
Pauses and stops Espresso by Touch
Ruffled pages Feathers Striking Strings
After flowers paint by number black
Glissando Moon Move over Irving Berlin
What identity? Charades
When will I see you again?
Cruel brief sweet embrace Harpo Harlequin ducks
Hundreds of parts Gathering and amassing
Crumbs of Rousseau
Melody not so much heard as what underscores song
The Lovers Embrace
Tiny abstinence Remember
Blocked wood Strings pedals tuning knobs
Minstrels within deviations Harpo Etudes
Thousands of moving parts
Her phallic spine Impromptu feathers
Children of Claude Cahon
Deft bare feet of Martha Graham moves through the Cave of the Heart
Pigs-in-Clover guardian angels Sailing Away on the Henry Clay
Now Voyager
Six Novellas of Djuna Barnes Remember
Cruel sweet brief embrace
Sidewalk sparrows popcorn
Such a notion was possible Waltz Me Around Again
Popcorn Sparrows Sidewalk Questions (sheet music)
Photomontages of Dali’s women in states of rapture
To play an extended chord simply touch the root note
Harpo Ellipses Honk! Honk!
A touch after long threads soft hair strings
Taunt inversions of the triad
Blondes dancing across black spaghetti string bridges
Eight fingertips sleeping inside removed pockets
Modest echoes remember
Island of Mysterious Bells Harpo Rebels
Strings of beaded curtains part
Their chairs placed close together
Gestures of Animals Island of Mysterious Bells
Overtures of resurrection
Ruffled Pages Movements of Feather (sheet music)
They can dance as they were A Night in Casablanca
What identity
When he sat down to play the harp, Harpo became Arthur
Willows and Birches
Blind doves sleeping Apppalachian Spring
Oberon
Thousands of moving parts sound gathers
Constellation of Midsummer Night’s Dream
Hummingbird black sun Prayer from the East
Gathering and amassing Harpo after Harpo after Harpo
after Harpo…
Harpo never spoke a word
Surge of Orpheus Desire 55 and below
primrose mirrors possible and in-
Caravan of Castanets
Sweep of Barcarolle Harpo’s feet up on the ottoman
The Smoldering Chimneys
-different light brushed within deviations
Missed indifferences Angel dancing across white
stiletto bridges
Stones from the Great Wall
The Cocoanuts Waltz Me Around Again
A weakness their strength extending chords deftly
Tropic of Cancer
Nature is an Æolian harp Romance 80 and above
A female body is here inverted so that instead of the head appearing
Love Me And the World is Mine
Skintight Moon Glissando Awakenings
so that the uppermost part, the curvature of hips and
buttocks
Bells beneath wings
Cruel sweet brief embrace
Nobody has seen anyone play the harp as Harpo did
Wings beneath bells
Takes their place The fluid form is recognizably human
Tiny abstinence yet unfamiliar
The bright lights conspire to this effect blurring
The receding angles of the body Man Ray in Paris in 1929
Arguing for their liberation of artistic treatment
Deformation of the academic modern
Breaking ground Love me and the World is Mime
Tango for Harpo’s Thieves
Mary-Marcia Casoly is the author of Run to Tenderness (Pantograph & Goldfish Press, 2002) and the editor of Fresh Hot Bread, a South Bay area zine for Waverley Writers and an open poetry forum which holds open readings with featured guests. Her chapbook Lost Pages of Bird Lore is part of the Small Change Series (Word Temple Press, 2011). Her chapbook, Australia Dreaming, is included in The Ahadada Reader 3 (Ahadada Press, 2010). Her work has been included in the ebook Shadows of the Future, The Argotist Otherstream Anthology (Argotist Ebooks, 2013). She has appeared on several poetry shows on public television and has work in the forthcoming anthology “Her name is . . . Adelle, Clara, Mary Ann, Mary-Marcia” to be published by Poetry Hotel Press.
