Chord. Rick Barot

      

      © 2015 by Rick Barot

      FIRST EDITION

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquiries to:

      Managing Editor

      Sarabande Books, Inc.

      2234 Dundee Road, Suite 200

      Louisville, KY 40205

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Barot, Rick, 1969–

      [Poems. Selections]

      Chord / Rick Barot. — First edition.

      pages ; cm.

      ISBN 978-1-941411-03-2 (softcover : acid-free paper)

      I. Title.

      PS3602.A835A6 2015

      811'.6—dc23

      2014032732

      Cover image: “Landscape #7” by Vanessa Marsh. Pigment print from Photogram Negative. Image copyright © 2014 Vanessa Marsh.

      Design by Kirkby Gann Tittle.

      eBook ISBN: 978-1-941411-07-0

      This book is printed on acid-free paper.

      Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization.

      This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

      The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

       to my comrades—

       Michael Dumanis, Rigoberto González,

       Salvatore Scibona, C. Dale Young

       CONTENTS

        Title Page

        Copyright

        Dedication

        Acknowledgments

      1  I

      1  Tarp

      2  On Gardens

      3  Looking at the Romans

      4  Black Canvas

      5  The Wooden Overcoat

      6  The Documents of Spring

      7  Child Holding Potato

      8  Some Roses & Their Phantoms

      9  The Poem is a Letter Opener

      1  II

      1  Brown Refrigerator

      2  Daguerreotypes

      3  Ode: 1975

      4  Particle and Wave

      5  Virgin of Guadalupe

      6  Ode: 1986

      7  Question Arising While Listening to a Lecture on the Nature of Metaphor

      8  Tacoma Lyric

      9  Chord

      1  III

      1  Inventory

      2  Syntax

      3  Whitman, 1841

      4  Exegesis in Wartime

      5  Election Song

      6  The Man with the Crew-Cut

      7  Coast Starlight

      8  Triptych

      9  After Darwish

        The Author

       ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I am grateful to the editors and staff of the following publications, where the poems in this book first appeared: American Poetry Review, The Asian American Literary Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Cerise Press, Diode, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, Memorious, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, The Threepenny Review, Tin House, Tongue, TriQuarterly, Waxwing, West Branch Wired, ZYZZYVA.

      “Child Holding Potato” was reprinted in The Best American Poetry 2012 (Scribner). “Ode: 1975,” “Ode: 1986,” and “Particle and Wave” were reprinted in Field of Mirrors: An Anthology of Philippine American Writers (PAWA Press). “Election Song” was reprinted in In Tahoma’s Shadow (Exquisite Disarray Publishing). “Whidbey Island” was reprinted in Alive at the Center (Ooligan Press). “After Darwish,” “Inventory,” and “The Poem Is a Letter Opener” were reprinted in The Rag-Picker’s Guide to Poetry: Poems, Poets, Process (University of Michigan Press). “Looking at the Romans” was reprinted on Poetry Daily. “Brown Refrigerator” was reprinted on Verse Daily.

      I am indebted to the Artist Trust of Washington, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and Pacific Lutheran University. Last but nowhere least, my thanks to the good people of Sarabande Books for their continuing support of my work.

I

TARP

      I have seen the black sheets laid out like carpets

      under the trees, catching the rain

      of olives as they fell. Also the cerulean brightness

      of the one covering the bad roof

      of a neighbor’s shed, the color the only color

      inside the winter’s weeks. Another one

      took the