Poetry by Christopher T. George

                      ​Kaoru CC



The Naming of Parts

I can’t stand the naming of parts
I can’t stand the fire hydrants
orange pumpkins with male accoutrements

I can’t stand the politicians
their faces like wrinkled prunes
whichever wins we’re in the shit again

I can’t stand the naming of parts
your wrists and that knife
your bitchiness and my indifference
your blood on the bedroom floor
and Life open to Marilyn Monroe

I can’t stand the naming of parts
I’m in a bookstore
doing poetry and nostalgia
and the hotel on the hillside below
explodes like a wheel of Camembert

A severed hand lying in the gutter
a severed this or God knows what
the ground is exploding under my feet
and I can’t stand the naming of parts
​



The Day the Egrets Came Calling

As ever I sought a glimpse of the blue herons nesting
in the woods east of the Anacostia River as my train
drove into D.C., but today there were three white
 
egrets heads bent among the roosting herons. Or perhaps
they were snowy herons. Do snowies associate with blues?
White-robed Holy Men! Prophets! The Dead! The Wise,
 
perhaps the spirit of my late Father. Don’t laugh. Wipe
that smile off your face. Wipe that face off your face.
I may be wrong, but I’d be wrong to express no regrets.
 
Father, forgive me for my neglect of my aging Mother,
your widow. You died far too young, in your sixties,
and I am sixty-one now. O, cruel world, embrace us
 
with your savagery! Sweet Embraceable You — Life!
How I loathe you for the pain you deal me but I need you.
I saw a blood red-leaf on an ornamental pear tree
 
at New Carrollton Station in dark green foliage,
the same tree clothed in white blossom weeks ago.
One spot of blood. Oh, Savior! Be the saving of me.

​

Christopher T. George was born in Liverpool, England, in 1948. He emigrated to the US in 1955, but returned home to experience the “Swinging Sixties.” He re-emigrated to the US in 1968 and studied poetry with Sister Maura Eichner and Elliott Coleman; his writing has been published in journals worldwide.

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