SEAN NEVIN [19.194]

Sean Nevin

Nació en 1969. EE.UU.  Enseña en la Universidad de Arizona, donde es asistente del director del Programa de Escritores Jóvenes y coeditor del 22 Across: A Review of Young Writers. Sus poemas han sido publicados en The Gettysburg Review y en el North American Review, entre otras revistas. Recibió la beca de literatura en poesía de la Fundación Nacional de las Artes y es autor de A House That Falls (Slapering Hol Press) y Oblivio Gate (Southern Illinois University Press) que ganó el premio a opera prima de Crab Orchard.

Sean Nevin

1969. Poet and teacher Sean Nevin is the author of A House That Falls (2005), winner of the Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition, and Oblivio Gate (2008), awarded the Crab Orchard Award Series First Book Prize. 

Nevin has received fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. He directs the MFA Program in Poetry at Drew University.

Publicaciones y Premios

Libros: Oblivio Gate (Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), A House That Falls (Slapering Hol Press, 2005)

Antologías: Family Matters: Poems of Our Families (Bottom Dog Press, 2005)

Revistas: Blackbird , Gettysburg Review , Hayden's Ferry Review , Runes: A Review of Poetry , The Ledge

Premios: Nevin is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, a fellowship from the Eastern Frontier Education Foundation, as well as both a Poetry fellowship and an Artist Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. His collections won The Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Prize and, Oblivio Gate, won the Crab Orchard Award Series First Book Prize (Southern Illinois University Press).

Otra vez, amanezco con el gnomo

Hay una casa en llamas

en algún lugar de la mente,

alguien intenta huir

alguien no permite que el otro escape.

Michael Burkard

La luz del día se destapa sobre el césped como una enfermedad

esta mañana, como un incendio que viaja sobre las vigas,

y el gnomo y yo escuchamos

el atroz aumento gradual de la crepitación y los escupitajos

de los vapores de la carcoma. Silban para producir

el siseo de los que todavía no mueren, de la zarpa violeta

recién mudada que quedó salpicando en la cacerola de manteca,

y acomodan todos los tablones desbordados sollozando

como lunáticos que tocan el flautín.

¿Qué tal si así sucede, si así perdemos

nuestra íntima fábula? Los huesos porosos,

como las ramas madereables que son, ya colapsando

sobre sí mismos. Los aleros encendidos, dispuestos

al desplome desde la súbita levedad del ser.

¿Qué tal si esto es mi vida, en llamas,

la mecha de ganglios y sinapsis encendida

chispeando como mancha de cenizas doradas

que destella y después se esfuma?

¿Qué tal si mi vida es el perro aullador del vecino

que ha destrozado las amarras y va de patio en patio

rogando que lo dejen entrar?

Traductor: Armando Ibarra

http://www.revistadepoesiaclave.com/

Hinged Double Sonnet for the Luna Moths 

For ten days now, two luna moths remain 

silk-winged and lavish as a double broach 

pinned beneath the porch light of my cabin. 

Two of them, patinaed that sea-glass green 

of copper weather vanes nosing the wind, 

the sun-lit green of rockweed, the lichen's 

green scabbing-over of the bouldered shore, 

the plush green peat that carpets the island, 

that hushes, sinks then holds a boot print 

for days, and the sapling-green of new pines 

sprouting through it. The miraculous green 

origami of their wings - false eyed, doomed 

and sensual as the mermaid's long green fins: 

a green siren calling from the moonlight. 

A green siren calling from the moonlight, 

from the sweet gum leaves and paper birches 

that shed, like tiny white decrees, scrolled bark. 

They emerge from cocoons like greased hinges, 

all pheromone and wing, instinct and flutter. 

They rise, hardwired, driven, through the creaking 

pine branches tufted with beard moss and fog. 

Two luna moths flitting like exotic birds 

towards only each other and light, in these 

their final few days, they mate, then starving 

they wait, inches apart, on my cabin wall 

to die, to share fully each pure and burning 

moment. They are, like desire itself, born 

without mouths. What, if not this, is love?

from Oblivio Gate, published in 2008 by Southern University Press.

—Norton Island, Maine

For ten days now, two luna moths remain 

silk-winged and lavish as a double broach 

pinned beneath the porch light of my cabin. 

Two of them, patinaed that sea-glass green 

of copper weather vanes nosing the wind, 

the sun-lit green of rockweed, the lichen’s 

green scabbing-over of the bouldered shore, 

the plush green peat that carpets the island, 

that hushes, sinks then holds a boot print 

for days, and the sapling-green of new pines 

sprouting through it. The miraculous green 

origami of their wings—false eyed, doomed 

and sensual as the mermaid’s long green fins: 

a green siren calling from the moonlight. 

A green siren calling from the moonlight, 

from the sweet gum leaves and paper birches 

that shed, like tiny white decrees, scrolled bark. 

They emerge from cocoons like greased hinges, 

all pheromone and wing, instinct and flutter. 

They rise, hardwired, driven, through the creaking 

pine branches tufted with beard moss and fog. 

Two luna moths flitting like exotic birds 

towards only each other and light, in these 

their final few days, they mate, then starving 

they wait, inches apart, on my cabin wall 

to die, to share fully each pure and burning 

moment. They are, like desire itself, born 

without mouths. What, if not this, is love?

from Oblivio Gate, published in 2008 by Southern University Press.

Heart Of The Tyrant King 

The carpenter bees leave their sawdust dunes

heaped on the porch beneath the wood railing

like ancient pyramids returning to sand,

and the damn termites have taken the walls.

Last night I dreamt I was the dead pharaoh,

the tyrant king mummified in his tomb.

A carved history fading from stone tablets

as looters filled satchels with gold. The worms

had already come and gone, picked the skull

clean. My chest was a winter honeycomb,

a bee's papery nest seized by hoarfrost.

While thieves sifted my organ jars for jewels,

I grinned jawbone through the din gauze. I felt

the hive stir, all the bloodless wings thrumming. 

Losing Solomon

Things seem to take on a sudden shimmer

before vanishing: the polished black loafers

he wore yesterday, the reason for climbing

the stairs, even the names of his own children

are swallowed like spent stars against the dark

vault of memory. Today the toaster gives up

its silver purpose in his hands, becomes a radio,

an old Philco blaring a ball game from the 40s

with Jackie Robinson squaring up to the plate.

For now, it's simple; he thinks he is young again,

maybe nineteen, alone in a kitchen. He is staring 

through his own reflection in the luster and hoping

against hope that Robinson will clear the bases

with a ball knocked so far over the stadium wall

it becomes a pigeon winging up into the brilliance.

And perhaps, in one last act of alchemy,

as Jackie sails around third, he will transform

everything, even the strange and forgotten face

glaring back from the chrome, into something

familiar, something Solomon could know as his own. 

Alzheimer's

A blizzard, late in the season, arrives

with its sudden cannonading . . .

It sends a lost soldier wandering, alone 

towards the center of what he perceives 

as a vast clearing in a dense pine grove.

Snowdrifts will billow up past his thighs 

and the chalk-blue terrain will forget

its own landmarks by nightfall. He will drop

his rifle and his rucksack on the snow,

hallucinate his dead mother

young again, then collapse. Then the moans,

the deep creak and clatter when the gray slab 

of lakeice gives way. A braid of bottom grasses 

will hold him down, a frost will heal the sky. 

Solomon's Tool Shed

The three pine steps

have worn soft.

The sagging runners

bleached from sun 

and rock salt,

warped and grain

tattered from boot

treads and spade tips

lifted then dropped

as walking sticks

at the tired end of a day. 

The toll of winter's

hammer and grind

grows heavier

each year. Sunlight

worms through

cracked cedar shakes,

vermiculates the dark

clutter of workbench

and plywood wall,

where years of rusted

tools hang on nails

bent like bluefish

hooks. A coping saw

and its dust shadow. 

The kitchen clock 

whose hands, dizzied

and tired, have given up

the chase. And the one 

crimped wood shaving

held in the block plane's 

dull blade, furls 

like a dried petal,

a forget-me-not. 

A small tribute to the end

of beginning new projects.

A settling in, a settling in. 

Montclair Vespers

The evening light of suburban New Jersey 

has in it smears of newsprint and the Khaki

shades of trench coats slung over seatbacks.

Commuters descend, single file,

the concrete stairs at Watchung Station,

each hauling the glum luggage

of shadow hunkered at their clicking feet.

A train's whistle blares behind them,

scatters a murmuration of starling

that swoops down, banks, then doubles back

into themselves like a black shawl raised off

the shoulder, alive by wind. It's November

and the maples, having emptied their branches,

rake over their darkening plots of sky. 

Sean Nevin

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