The Idea of Light
poems by
John J. Ronan
~ 76 pages, $14 (+ shipping)
Projected Release Date: May/June 2025
An Advance Sale Discount price of $8 (+ shipping) is available HERE prior to press time. This price is not available anywhere else or by check. The check price is $13/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 12180 Skyview Drive, Edinboro, PA 16412.
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John Ronan’s poetry has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Threepenny Review, Notre Dame Review, Woven Tale Press, American Journal of Poetry, and other journals. Taking the Train of Singularity South from Midtown (Backwaters/Univ. of Nebraska, 2018) followed the success of Marrowbone Lane (Backwaters/Univ. of Nebraska, 2010). He’s a former National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Ucross Fellow, and Bread Loaf Scholar, and has served as Poet Laureate of Gloucester, MA. His one-act play, The Early Bird Special, was a finalist in the Tennessee Williams festival. Ronan’s articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Dallas Morning News, Boston Globe and other papers. He writes regularly for the Gloucester Daily Times and other publications.
The Idea of Light
1/
A midday moon says nothing of love:
Albedo ash, atmosphere none,
Heedless of sign or madness, amour.
Philly-to-Phoenix wide but thumb-
Covered, the pale, distressed denim,
Attic of landers, forgotten tools,
The poked eye predicted by Méliès,
Le Voyage dans La Lune, 1902.
2/
Dusk summons the idea of light:
A western crescent in ichor white,
Bleaching demon detail, place.
Or full and orange, helped by horizon
In the darkened east, an Old Man
Or Selene, the mind’s eye. Hey,
Diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle…
The illusion of huge. Let us pray.
Nothing You Need
Main Street’s a Cheese Shoppe,
Galleries, and a bright brew pub
Featuring Pumpkin Harvest ale,
Free-Range chicken, and kale.
A retro pharmacy with show globes.
The state bank. Beyond Bordeaux.
Your candles-only. Your soaps-only:
Bricks spiked with pumice and coffee,
Angles cut in the chic but cruel
Way that marks artful vertu.
Nothing you need. No hardware,
No grocery or dime store.
No lumber, gravel, or paint,
Nothing to suggest sweat, like the ancient
Ford Escorts and Crown Vics
That appear weekday mornings to construct
Or plumb, clean and leaf blow.
Jesús. Mary Kay. Futbol!
No Pilates or favorite famines,
Peace on Earth, blissful chickens.
In the strip mall south of town,
Distressed denim, cell phones,
And our single big box, next
To a ten-screen – triple X
And noir at night, G matinees.
A JP and gaming arcade,
The Beer ’n Booze drive-thru.
Free Piercing with Large Tattoos,
A copy center and Mattress Mart,
The Urgent Care, Candy’s Bar.
Mowing Toads
Toads will bound out from the mower in May,
The prosperous knot annual survivors of sleet
And snow, northeasters, spring’s Biblical rain.
I scoop my fellow mortals up and set
Them gently down among the fenced flowers.
Ugly? Cause of warts? In need of kissing?
In a fit of sympathy, Dives ignores folklore,
Imagines the pounding pellet heart, escaping
The nick in time – even as adrenalin prompts piss
In the kindly fist bearing the beast to safety.
I do mow a toad at times, a foolish
Concern as the generations certainly succeed.
And yet regrettable: Bufo americanus, guts a-glay,
Violence on an otherwise perfect suburban day.
An A.M. April Sky
God-wandering Jupiter, Saturn and Mars
Clear a maple in our suburban yard and stare
Steadily down, the gaze behavior of gods.
Given the Romans’ needy, geocentric lens:
Light-Bringer, Harvest, Father of War,
Now in Capricorn (loyalty) and Aquarius (brains).
Post-Copernicus, we understand ecliptic paths,
The flicker-killing arc seconds of a disk,
Present metrics describing hydrogen giants
And rock: an earth-size hurricane, rings
Of water ice, bellicose iron oxide,
Fixed diameter and distance, temperature, mass.
Info courtesy of probes and rovers, orbital
Eyes and soil samplers, a branding bot that’s
Given us the Columbia Hills, the Rolling Stones…
Ardent, early-rising amateurs log
Coordinate sets, epoch and transit times.
Magnitude makes the planets easy to track
As they outshine stars in the slowly brightening sky
And the convenient names of deities are conserved.
