PENNSYLVANIA, LYRIC AND GOTHIC...

Jack Veasey (1955-2016) was a Philadelphia native who lived in Hummelstown, PA for almost 30 years. He was the author of eleven previous published collections of poetry, most recently The Sonnets and 5-7-5 (both from Small Hours Press, 2007); and two recent Poet's Press titles, Shapely: Selected Formal Poems (2013), and The Dance That Begins and Begins: Selected Poems 1973-2013 (2015).
His poems also appeared in many periodicals including Christopher Street, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Assaracus, Harbinger: A Journal of Social Ecology, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Painted Bride Quarterly, Fledgling Rag, Oxalis, The Blue Guitar, Bone and Flesh, Zone: A Feminist Journal for Women and Men, Film Library Quarterly (Museum of Modern Art, NYC), Experimental Forest, Tabula Rasa, Wild Onions, Mouth of the Dragon, Asphodel, Insight, The Irish Edition, The Harrisburg Patriot-News, The Harrisburg Review, The Princeton Spectrum, The Little Word Machine (UK), and The Body Politic (Canada), among others. His poems were also in a number of anthologies, including Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets On Pennsylvania (Penn State University Press), Sweet Jesus: Poems About The Ultimate Icon (Anthology Press, Los Angeles), and A Loving Testimony: Remembering Loved Ones Lost To AIDS (The Crossing Press, Freedom, CA).
His plays have been produced by Theater Center Philadelphia and Theater of the Seventh Sister (Lancaster, PA). He hosted literary radio programs for WITF FM in Harrisburg and WXPN FM in Philadelphia. He was awarded a Fellowship from the PA Council on The Arts and was a two-time honoree of The PA Center for the Book’s PENNBOOK celebration. For many years he hosted poetry readings in the Harrisburg area at The Art Association of Harrisburg’s Paper Sword series and at Encore Books and Music, Borders Books and Music, and Open Stage of Harrisburg, and also taught poetry writing courses at Harrisburg Area Community College Community Education Center, Martin Memorial Library in York, and for the Dauphin County Library System. He was a member of Harrisburg’s Notorious (Almost) Uptown Poetry Cartel.
Veasey spent the seventies and eighties working as a journalist for such publications as The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Magazine, Pennsylvania Magazine, APPRISE, The Philadelphia City Paper, and The Cherry Hill Courier Post, and editing a number of periodicals in Philadelphia and New York, including The South Street Star, The Philadelphia Gay News, and FirstHand Magazine. His articles for the Philadelphia Gay News won two awards from the national Lesbian and Gay Press Association. He wrote an article on Walt Whitman’s relationship with his longtime companion Peter Doyle that was syndicated to 40 periodicals nationwide by the Gay History Project, followed by another article about Whitman’s involvement in the United States Civil War.

A singer as well as a poet, Veasey released one CD album of original songs, “Build A Fire,” as lead singer of the folk-rock duo Open Book. In 2010, Veasey released a CD single of another original song, “Whether or Not the World Knows.” He sang second tenor with the Harrisburg Gay Men’s Chorus. He lived with his partner in life, David Walker, since 1978. He has left one additional book manuscript with The Poet's Press, to be published in early 2017.

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From The Moon in the Nest (Crosstown Books, 2002)

 

EXORCISM

Once, my mother burned my hands
on the gas stove.

I had been "bad";
I don't remember how.

What I remember
is the odor of flesh burning,
surely not familiar
to most five year olds.

I remember
what scars you could see —
the others,
there is no need to remember.

I remember
watching from outside my body,
as if this were on TV.

I do not remember
the pain — or, at least,
not the part
that was physical.

I do not remember
the role played by Love
in this picture.

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THE LEGACY

I own a house where I don't feel at home,
left to me by a relative now dead,
where mouths would rarely kiss but often foam,
and all seemed black and white when we saw red;
where tenderness would always have its price;
resentment would go hand in hand with love;
and each mistake we made would turn to ice,
reminding us no good was good enough;
with walls not just around, but in between;
with windows curtained off against the sun;
yet every tiny nuance would be seen,
and noted like one more debt left undone.
I am the king there now; tight is my crown.
If not for neighbors, I would burn it down.

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STARING DOWN ASH WEDNESDAY

No ashes on my forehead now;
not this year, and not
any year again

no more penance,
no denial
of enjoyment.

I'be grown too close to the earth
to buy that notion.
All of life is lent,
and not for long.

I have watched loved ones
careening by
like blurry riders on a carousel
that only turns away,
no turning back

I have watched this tree
in which my soul is sealed
grow gnarled, and lose
leaf after leaf,
in this short year
called life, which only has
one autumn,

watched the whole great landscape
inching toward oblivion
with shrinking dignity,

and while I know
that there is something more
beyond,

I know, too, now
that this this
is the only this there is,

and this this
will be ashes
soon enough —

so let the Mardi Gras go on and on!

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ASHES

You show me the covered bridge where you want me to scatter your
ashes. The spot is remote and rural, green and lush.
The bridge is particularly old. We can see the flowing water
underneath our feet through gaps between the creaking boards.

You tell me that Nancy Culp, the actress, has her ashes scattered
here. I guess I should wonder why you would want
to spend etermity with Miss Hathaway from The BEverly Hillbillies. But
all I can think of is that this place is where I'll one day say my final
goodbye to you. Grief floods me suddenly. I start to cry.

You don't respond. You don't rush to comfort me with
caresses as you usually do when I weep. You walk on the groaning
boards and gesture at your surroundings as you explain them: the age
of that bridge, and its role in local history, the efforts to preserve it. You tell
me that vehicles are no longer allowed to cross it, only people on foot.

I guess I should be angry with you for ignoring my feelings, but I'm too
busy trying to memorize you, your every expression, word, movement,
tone of voice.

All your instructions are written down, I hear you say, in
an envelope on the shelf under the wooden table next to your old easy
chair. But now it is my turn to not listen, to
focus instead only on what floats through my mind, all at once more
vivid than this moment:

the gritty feel of ashes slipping through my fingers.

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Poems from Handful of Hair, Jack Veasey's first chapbook, published by The Poet's Press/Grim Reaper Books in 1975:

NOTE FOR THE TEACHER

when i was nine
i threw rocks,
had dreams, had
you

you were forty,
you were the reason i behaved so badly.

the cardboard boxes
were houses
only to hide me from you.
my plastic spacemen gunned for you
        inside their bag.

you stood in the daytime pointing;
at night

your fingers sprouted from the fields
i dreamed through, running,
tripping, ankles
tangled in that poison grass.
your face

was the sky, a balckboard screaming
in my handwriting a hundred times,

I MUST NOT ACT LIKE AN ANIMAL.

i didn't act;
i was.

you trained me.

the absence of your handprint dangled
bonelike near my face.

i sniffed, i sniffed; i followed;
you will never know the things i learned.

your screams broke those windows
heat from slaps left your face red.

most important,
forty was your age;
nine was mine;

students eventually will outlive their
teachers.

that burning house i drew in class
was yours.

---

loving,
in your language,
means i tear chunks from you like some half-
       starved bird;
in my language,
means i tear them from myself.

we talk all night.

 

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Other Poems —

From The Captain Of The Bats

We bats are quite amused
that you think we’re
the blind ones. We mock
how you “look” at life  —  
hear our high chatter?
Even darkness has its anthems;
even distant things
are closer than you think
for those of us who live — yes, luckily —  
at this velocity.

We live
laughing, we
with our dead eyes,
big ears,
and bony wings.

We love the way you doze all night,
then slave all day at desks.
We love the way you duck
behind, or underneath, your arms
when we play pest.

We dance now
through the darkroom sky:
flashback pictures
riding on the moonlight,
leather kites
left from your nightmares.

We hear you there,
you grounded ones
still stumbling on each other,
madly perching,
searching one another’s
eyes, looking for something
you
won’t
find.
 

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CANINE INSOMNIA

Your dog is tired of steak.
He lies awake
beside you
in the canopied
four-poster.

He cannot sleep;
he is thinking
of his little
mausoleum,
a whole building
just for him.

That thought
is the only thing
between him
and your throat.

All poems on this page Copyright © by Jack Veasey. All Rights Reserved.

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