MARE LEONARD - POEMS

Mare Leonard lives in an old school house overlooking The Rondout Creek.  Away from her own personal blackboard, she teaches  through the Institute for Writing and Thinking and the MAT program at Bard College. She has published four chapbooks of poetry and a new one, The Dark Inside the Hooded Coat is available at Finishing Line Press.  ( One of her poems, published in A Pickled Body, was recently nominated for a pushcart)

After viewing A Vintage Car Engine Photo
​

​Printed on metal, the photo surprises with sweeps
of blue and orange swirls, some sunlight glare,
a sensual background for what looks like a sax
lurking at the center. Look closer, see only engine
parts, at the bottom knurled acorn nuts line up
like asparagus stalks to be cut, steamed.
 
 
Imagine this engine's diagram: a maze of numbers,
 arrows, a,b,c's in coded reds and greens,
 a guide the owner squints at to restore
 Sting Rays, Peugeots, fantasy play like kids'
 Erector sets in the forties. Step back, this photo's
                  a Rorschach:
 
Watch pistons resurrect as piano hammers.
Listen to a child touch the keys, hear Chopsticks
Frere' Jacques or see a desert landscape burnt
by the sun or shimmer like a well cut diamond.
Look again: the cobalt sky brightens the Catskills,
but nothing glamorous in this landscape.
 
You move fast on highways in pre-owned
vehicles. Under the hoods valve springs dance
with water pumps, click their heels with tie rods.
One part stops, another starts. Applaud for the air intake.
Fill up the used Honda with gas to drive to Shoprite,
backseats loaded with cheese bites and tuna crumbs,
jammed with kids, muddy scooters, smashed bags.
 
No Peugeot, no Sting Ray no tinkering
with engines, only a haze of numbers
on unpaid bills and dreams of beers
             at Applebee's
 
 
 
 

 Pour It On  

​Out my car window      clouds float
splatter  drip     Pollock's canvas up close
 
Rain splashes   wipers swish
 souls studded with chips of glass
 
  Faith is hot  she turns me on
    Send love to the other sluts
         Hope and Charity
 
Did his moral compass exist
            inside the root cellar
 but hurricanes toppled the weather vane?
 
Did he twist to hell and back
            circling  the never ending
wars from the East?
 
 Rain splashes   hail
            signals
 a drive-thru   I order the Deluxe
  
 Out my car window
             detritus floats  explodes
  Pollock's canvas up close