Live Encounters Poetry & Writing April 2025
Azaleas, poems by David Rigsbee.
Azaleas
Sunlight inside the green zone of firs.
Magritte-land: an apple greeting
the bowler hat. A starling draws
its scissors across the blue, some clouds still
pink beneath—but fugitive, separating.
Moon to the east. To the right
of that same east, a silver river
followed by a teapot roar. To the left
a bird so high its seems to hail
from the moon just now easing into sight.
I sit in the garden grass looking
for the moment when azaleas’ ultramarine,
simply by staying still as the last birds
fold and return en masse, to the realm of ideas.
Bakery
A cold day in spring: whitecaps.
A man kicked loose the rubber doorstop
to the chilly bakery, his sandaled feet
trim but blue. A man and woman bend
their heads over coffee whose steam
rises in the space between them.
A crow discovers that to fly straight
into the wind is to be hustled backwards.
Several try like Ninjas that the Master
orders against a supervillain. Each tries,
peels off, and dives out of the screen.
Bakery goods beckon from their trays
like students on the first day of class
positioned to see the new kid whose reputation
preceded him just when he thought anonymity
would at least get him through lunch.
The wind accelerates and the limbs twist
to see the pack of stock cars race past
the grandstand, and in turning their eyes fall
on others like themselves, not in the race
but jumping in the same spot, inspired
by the hot smell of gas and oil.
Cunard
On a warm winter day,
I sit outside like an old playboy
knee-covered, on a Cunard deck.
There is water enough to fill at least
half of the view every time I look up.
There are also ridgelines and spokes of snow
coming off the mountain over the water.
The land after that goes on rising and falling.
You don’t have to see it, any more
than a believer has to review his life
or a mayor survey a parade
before which he sits,
the little cars pulling up, then weaving
in formation before the reviewing stand
as the silly old men being justified
in faith, and careening
in their turbans, don’t crash.
Well Down
I would wake to find
my father hunched over the Star,
a genie rising unnoticed from his coffee cup.
By the time I woke the second time
he was well down the beach, his breakfast
seat parked under the table.
Our trailer is gone, the narrow island
bristles with development.
Weekenders have moved on down
the coast—or inland where bait buckets and gear,
canoes and ice chests—lean against the trees.
Possums take over where alligators stop.
Of course there were no alligators,
just stories, or some bullfrogs
in May when the world was mating.
Or something my father saw
looking down at a newspaper photo
and took as image when he walked
by the shivering cattails marking the place
where the sea took over from the road.
The Old Commandante
Clouds part and a tremendous ray
like one on the back of a Baptist fan
spills, and doing so, lights up the March mud.
I have come to my terrace again, as I try
to do every day, to watch the ferries
embark and disembark as if pulled
by invisible rope, churning between points
where land’s advance meets the rocking water
indifferent to prodding advance or attention.
A breeze about the size of a dishcloth
tries to caress the cheek but is turned away
by the crow whose sudden recourse to noise
causes your head to swing around
like the vane on a chimney top,
and a helmeted Hussar snaps to attention
as the old commandante
drags his way through the room.
® David Rigsbee
David Rigsbee is the recipient of many fellowships and awards, including two Fellowships in Literature from The National Endowment for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities (for The American Academy in Rome), The Djerassi Foundation, The Jentel Foundation, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, as well as a Pushcart Prize, an Award from the Academy of American Poets, and others.
In addition to his twelve collections of poems, he has published critical books on the poetry of Joseph Brodsky and Carolyn Kizer and coedited Invited Guest: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Southern Poetry. His work has appeared in Agni, The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, The New Yorker, The Southern Review, and many others. Main Street Rag published his collection of found poems, MAGA Sonnets of Donald Trump in 2021. His translation of Dante’s Paradiso was published by Salmon Poetry in 2023, and Watchman in the Knife Factory: New & Selected Poems, was just published by Black Lawrence Press.