Tess Lecuyer is an Albany area native who fled screaming from Clifton Park, NY at the age of 17. After 4 years of undergrad work in Buffalo, she discovered the fabulous urban life offered by downtown Albany and has been living there in various apartments ever since. In Buffalo, she started doing poetry open mics and wrote and published some stunningly bad poetry. Grad school at SUNY Albany was next, resulting in better poetry and regular attendance at the QE2 open mics, some of which she does not remember. More years, more poems published, many, many more open mics, etc. One chapbook, Loping Through The Fields of Abandon, published by Kew Gardens Press. Thinks sonnets are cool. Is a bit of a hippy. Is kindasorta dabbling in fiction, which allows her to kill off in text anyone who pisses her off, which is a hell of a lot of fun. Seriously, give it a try some time.
POEMS
SONNET FOR A WATERCOLOR
for Maryann Stow
Bluer than a Summer sky, high,
hot, and crowning tree-tipped bowls
of grass where beagles roll and lovers twine.
Bluer than the flame on new-lit coal
but softer than sun on heartbreak cobalt.
Twilight blues the scattered, soft-topped trees
that climb the hills like a low Coltrane solo
inhabiting open spaces there with green
shadows that blue as well with night and speak
tree in creaking leaves to the treading boots
of the solitary witness. The light begins to leak
from blue and violet dances, briefly true.
No wind stirs, no low blue notes place palms
on indigo branches. The witness paces on.
BOB DYLAN ON MARS
In less atmosphere
than it once
knew a guitar string
makes what waves it can.
There are four chords here.
One is dirt unloved
by roots.
One is the ghost
of water.
One is the sound
of his breathing loud
in his helmet.
One is the Sun
that holds back
like a woman
out of love.
Imagine him
in a silver suit,
watching Earthrise.
Or in the dome,
in jeans and
a white sweater,
composing, in
dry, dry, rebreathed air.
He wants to call
it Subarean Blues.
He plays a few
thin notes.
He sings Mars
is a vast
smoky bar
with a dirt floor
gritty and dry and more
than a little
mythological.
Back up singers rasp
nasal harmonies.
The citizens like it,
calling in flat hoarse voices
for more.
FERVER
as the white road dots
churn into a mist that
holds the faces of ex-lovers she
twists against the tune
writhing in her head
and watches a porsche snake
through traffic as if there
were angels riding flattened
to the roof, wings streaming
back, faces open-mouthed
with wild glee
moments later a white
feather slaps against
her windshield, rests briefly,
and is gone, and the
mist, and the song
