Lee Herrick was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1970, adopted at eleven months, and raised in Danville and Modesto, California. He has also lived in Turlock and currently lives in Fresno, California, where he teaches writing at Fresno City College. He is author of Coping With Vertigo, a poetry chapbook and editor of In the Grove. His poems have appeared in The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, The Midwest Poetry Review, The Korea Times, Korean Quarterly, among others, and in several regional magazines including ZamBomba and Penumbra. He likes the rock group Pavement, reading poetry, playing soccer, and traveling with his better half, Polly.
Lee Herrick's poetry was also featured on page 6118 of the 1996 edition of the Central California Poetry Journal.
Web page for IN THE GROVE
E-mail to Lee Herrick at leeherrick@hotmail.com
I go around believing everything. I believe that
the leaves turn orange in October out of fatigue.
I believe that an acoustic can heal.
I believe just a little in all of your Gods
and even more in the compassion with which you
praise them. I believe what Nietzsche said, that
without music, life would be a mistake.
I believe in my own mistakes and deities.
The way they gather around me at night
like feeding birds. I believe in the sound of my breath.
I have discovered the pleasure of belief, the surrender
of the intellectual, and the moment when thought
gives way to the heart. I believe what Paz said, that
the many who read poems worm their way into
immeasurable realities, and in the mirror of words,
discover their own infinity. I believe in manifestos.
I believe in collecting and keeping and giving back.
I believe in the day I gathered fifteen petals of a fallen
pink rose, and let them stand for my failures and
aspirations. I believe in the strength of a tired
mother, reading poems in secrecy,
discovering the sound of her voice.
"Love heals from the inside."
--Yusef Komunyakaa
Last night I left the back door open
& yes, I could hear you Eleanor-
Into the darkening sky & call
This morning, when the moon was still there
Of bed & thought of you again. I wish
Hour at the café. I wish God
I know how much he wanted you, and how
So I’ll leave you alone. I’ll go now to
Angels, sweetened from the sun, whispering
& let the moon’s breeze come over me,
I could hear you whisper Andres’ name
Out the ice worker & all of his songs.
Begging for one more song, I crawled out
Andres, that we could have one more
Might declare it all a joke but
Much you wanted him, too. This is what counts.
The sun & imagine the actions of
To the moon about revolution.
A man peddles flowers from his cart--his face
a potato baking in Iowa heat. His post lunch
ribusto winds a chianti song & dissolves into air.
A brunette with Infinite Jest
clutched at her breast. Like a tongue
waltzes to a Coltrane sax.
A cab driver dreams of sleep, sex,
fluid. He is armed with a screenplay plot
& 8 tracks of Helfgott or Bach.
On this street, a perfectly parked car is
the cup’s last piece of ice, refusing
the smack of your hand.
When surfers depart & the sun gives way
To the moon, it is holy. Occasional seagulls.
A sleek seal watches. Tenderly
With eyes closed, a woman with no clothes
Suspends the air with her finest act of balance
To date. When everything falls away
See how she gathers the birds. See how
She gathers their sweetness. On the tongue.
With the skin. See how she carves in the sand,
This is where everything begins.
There are fragments
Of everything. An artist draws
The sun on the verge of arrival.
Andres the poet says you can't fight
This heat, it's too large for us,
So pleasure must be discovered
In the submission. Two boys walk,
One in front of the other, holding him
By a leash. A Chihuahua smiles
At the basil smell from Piemonte's,
And nods at the smokers in front
Of the Revue. A Mexican boy
Rides a low-rider bicycle slowly.
As his feet complete a rotation--
Coolio finishes a verse.
No one sweats here,
Where small dogs rule
And a girl with swirling tattoos
Excavates her lover's mouth,
Her tongue stud sparkling
From the sinking sun.
My arm on the sill, where a fly carves
Its space in dust. There is nothing outside today.
Inside, bowls go ignored and harden
For the coming summer. The fire grows old in the bricks.
Joan told me once how Janis died but I can’t recall it now.
I place the needle on the record and watch
Her voice scratch up and out through the window,
Fluttering like a moth gone mad. It hovers by the lightbulb
By which I’ve defined this year, twenty nine to the day
Since Janis went out and never came back.
How did that story go, Joan?
I thought whiskey was involved, wasn’t it?
Nothing violent, though---just excess.
And who said excess is a crime?
It’s all there in "Crybaby," but you have to prepare
To receive. So I scrub those incessant bowls in the sink,
Light an apple candle and watch the smoke
Surrender to the wind. The fire has expired.
The moon is full.
And I still haven’t figured it out.
All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway 1999. All rights are reserved. See main Journal page for
copyright information.
Authors and poets submitting original materials to this journal retain all rights to their
original work, except those rights specifically assigned in writing to Solo Publications including the right to publish the submitted work in The Central California Poetry Journal. The poems on this page are copyrighted by the author.
Copyright © Lee Herrick 1999.
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