James Marcus Schuyler Poems

Up from the valley
now and then a chain saw rising to a shriek, subsiding to a buzz
“Someone” is “cutting in his wood lot” another day
shows they are not
...

A tree, enamel needles,
owl takeoffs shake,
flapping a sound and smell
of underwing, like flags,
...

My thoughts turn south
a white city
we will wake in one another's arms.
...

I do not always understand what you say.
Once, when you said, across, you meant along.
What is, is by its nature, on display.
...

Under the French horns of a November afternoon
a man in blue is raking leaves
with a wide wooden rake (whose teeth are pegs
or rather, dowels). Next door
...

We pullmaned to Peoria. Was
Gladys glad, Skippy missed
Sookie so. So Peru-ward, home.
“I’ll sew buttons on dresses yet.”
...

a commingling sky

a semi-tropic night
that cast the blackest shadow
of the easily torn, untrembling banana leaf
...

And accustomed ungentle hands of two blue-uniformed attendants
wrap the patient in suffering’s white bed gown
sewn with bright invisible emblems of virtues,
or pinned with them, as with fraternity pins, or mosaic pins,
...

Crying is a habit with me.
You mustn’t mind: onions make me
smog
headlines in the Daily News,
not getting enough sleep
...

last night
locked in
the castle
of pride and
...