Announcing Sketches of Spain and Other Poems

Sketches of Spain and Other Poems is the first book of poetry from Daniel W. Rasmus, author of Listening to the Future and Management by Design. Rasmus’s poetry has appeared for several years in leading poetry journals like Barrow Street, Indiana Review and Slipstream. For the first time, you will find the majority of his published work in one place. In addition to his published work, Rasmus includes two previously unpublished long poems that explore the human spirit, and the current place of humanity, through reflections on the Miles Davis masterpiece, ‘Sketches of Spain,’ and through the lens of recent discoveries in physics. This eclectic volume of poetry is sure to entice, intrigue and enlighten even the most discerning reader. This is poetry for the 21st Century.

Buy your copy today!

Sketches of Spain and Other Poems

Los Angeles, Griffith Park

August 4, 1984

The airtight vision of poets and lovers
covers the world:
three die of love in Los Angeles

and the merry-go-round swirls in air
and arias of machines swirl in ears
claps of hooves and muscle
bubble-gum blooms from a nostril
steeds and mares painted once a year
with the same colors
the same lipstick and marker—
and the same mother
slaps another quarter in the slot

motion without children
and laughter

and the mother wrinkles in the background
dreaming of pigeons and laundry

heat saturates parked cars
Pico of white t-shirts and knives
the stabbing of a summer afternoon
and blood dried to a door
comes to life in flakes and flashes
a red snow of steeples
of cemeteries and families

music surrounds the women
dancing in gas stations
hothouse hairdos bristle
and matchbooks full of children
climb into the air like screams.

 

Published in Illya’s Honey, Winter 2003.

of everything

like glass
slick after a rain
then spotted with the reminder of rain
if only
the space between stars

is

filled with something

they tell me
light might have weight
after all
assumptions
torn quietly
while you work
so you
do
not
notice
until the children come home
with questions that cannot be answered any longer
in

this context

on my hand all of it
just as though God
tattooed it there
in
one
dimension

a

simple

line

examined closely enough
to reveal
the transparency of everything.

 

 

Awarded Special Merit in the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award for 2005.
Published in The Comstock Review, Fall/Winter 2005

Drawing

The face is still paper.
A line.
A shadow.

The top of a lip
wanting a kiss,

a bridge of nose,
a hint of eye.

The face is manufactured
from stumps,
charcoal,

erasures,
lines
searching for a finish.

It is as though we made love on paper
and molted our shadows.

Published in Bitterroot, Summer 1988

"I was about to" published on Belletrist

 

Bellevue College has re-launched its literary magazine, Belletrist, and I am honored to be in its first issue.

I was about to

remember
the first time I saw you
sitting
on a bench…

Read more of I was about to here.

Sea Air and Brown Pelicans

From Ecopoetics, August 2009

 

She Sells Oranges Quietly

She wakes early
releases her algebra for a day
puts her essays on hold
forages the appropriate tee-shirt to
state the appropriate statement
or just wears stay-cool-jersey to stay cool
on hot spring days
paints dawn with her fingertips
on the way to the farmer’s market
a kind of retro trip
cool in its own way to
stack oranges and
tangerines with

plastic glove-wrapped fingers
and sell
oranges quietly
early on Sundays
before churches accumulate and empty
before the malls open

tuck satsuma mandarins
deliciously
into thin plastic bags
do the arithmetic
quietly
in the back of her mind
multitasking on last-minute projects and prom dresses
feel her fingerprints through the gloves
unique as wrinkles on orange rind
as she returns change
scented with clementine and tangerine

the oranges whisper
about people
who buy apples and potatoes
say they will get scurvy
that they do not understand the sensuous aspects of fruit
the joy of bathing in the juice
wrapping in peel like a second skin
putting a slice in your mouth
peel first
to make children laugh

oranges stack quietly
ask for little
she helps them find homes
among Brussels sprouts
baby carrots and
freshly baked multigrain bread

samples pummelos and ugli
disperses kumquats and limes
adds small adventures named citrus reticulate
or aurantifolia
to lemonade and margaritas
and just squeezed by hand
into clear cold water
against the skin of fresh salmon
takes a mental note for creative writing class
about detoxifying citrus daydreams

smiles quietly
tells customers to enjoy their mandarins.

 

Published in Illya’s Honey, Spring/Summer 2004

This Poem was a 2005 Pushcart Prize Nominee

Stacking Stones

I
I stack the stones by size
until they rise to five feet
like donuts stacked on a stick
why can’t I ask you
force myself into your eyes
like I force the rocks to obey gravity?

II
Let me love you
like the rocks love each other
smooth faces pressed together
unbreathing
their imperfections
save them.

III
We count them
and hope for an answer
rake the sand around them
make them uneven
we hear their talk in our sleep.

IV
The rocks are not so much rocks but
different colors bathing the sand
we stack the color and
raise a myth
when we retell it.

V
We stack fire
the fire heats the stone
a single bird chirps in a tree
we can never find it
it burns our ears.

VI
The caption reads like a prescription
stack the stones like this
we do not read instructions.

VII
Stone strikes stone
a kind of music
music that can kill
we listen to our heart beats when we dream
the sound of the stone kills our sleep.

VIII
There is no gravity when we dream
rocks of fire, stone
the bird has learned to sound like a rock
he answers us
we hear what we want to hear.

Published in Red River Review, May 2002

This was the poem that inspired the cover of my new management book, Management by Design

Without

connection
we imagine
all possibilities
the dark wet sky
reemphasizes the
dispersal of atoms
just step off the curb
not where it is supposed to be
circle the hotel a dozen times
blame everything on magnolias heavy with rain
blow cold breath into heaven
hear the
concentration of curse and prayer
blame everything
without target
no venom misdirected
no invective
continuity —

if I had only known
you were effectively
removed from the equation
your body rebelling against itself
quiet and small
tasting morphine to abate the
distance
between healing and pain
taken out of the world
to channel Frida Kahlo
understand in some small way
her obsession with obsession
to have known this
not only the maddening silence
of missed appointments
more poignantly
for all the expectations
pushed into the so few hours
the attentive courses
retrained by adaptive algorithms
organic and bloody
rushed into the rain
to bathe in the big black sky
leave things behind
let lack of light inform the evening

forgive my fantasies
churned in channels too long filled with noise
but you understand this poetic shorthand:

maybe because we must
stay in love
want no
imprecision in our worlds
to hold your hand
along damp San Francisco streets
to test relearned passions
completely

open

maybe

to a conversation
about how the possibilities

end up

together

how the dark skies
feel more like velvet
the bass tuned more eternal
focused on

resonating with bone

screams now

optional

nothing completely

reused

to just lie between arm

and chest

to

relax

into a disbursal pattern

that seems to work for

now.

Published in Red River Review, August 2005

Tell Them

Tell them you are not satisfied.
Shake your fists at heaven,
raise hell to the angels—His
customer service, indeed!

Never around when you want them,
hiding in His glare
singing so loud they drown us out.
That’s it.
He has asked them for so much
they no longer hear our prayers,
shouted,
shoved into a crack,
placed in foil,
Tupperware,
sent up for inspection,
reaction.

It is hard to believe,
literally,
when we have to make up miracles
out of everyday things:
clouds, blooming flowers,
people walking, smiles and
other platitudes of religious school.
I’m not buying.
If He wants belief,
He’ll need to come down
and shake his fists at me.

Published in Drash, Volume 2, April 2008