Jase Buck & Linzi Garcia
Live a Great Story
Review by Roy Beckemeyer
This chapbook of poems written on a trip to London opens with Jase Buck’s haiku:
“London is a ghost,
walking barefoot through herself
in search of England.”
Jase and Linzi may have gone barefoot as well. Nine poems from each of them, perfect souvenirs, moments preserved in word images, bring their trip alive as snapshots never could.
Jase’s mother asked him to toss a coin in a wishing well in London “for her good health.” He buys one, “… silver, / minted in 1956, / the same year she was born.” He carries it, “swimming amongst pounds and / pence deep in my pocket,” but finds the fountains dry:
“… no wishes to be had
by the likes of me.
Until one afternoon,
by a pond in a park,
on the sidewalk,
…
someone had marked out a
message
that simply read ‘wish here.’
So I did.”
His poems are vignettes that capture the soul of London, with titles like “Football Hooligans,” “Beggar on Regent Street, and “The Taxi Drivers”:
“All the taxi drivers in Bolton are
hungry.
It is Ramadan.
They long for iftar
and drive their cars sullenly,
one eye on the winding road
and one eye on the sun.”
Linzi’s second poem, “Leaves” lead us to a surprising truth:
“During the Bolton Whitman
conference, I ask my
colleagues to describe
themselves—
write a word
on birch leaves
plucked from the same tree—
pass ‘em around,
…
introvert
inquisitive
hungry
make-shift
…
unsure
multitudinous
chaotic
This is the heaviest
these leaves
will ever be, yet they
still catch the wind, still
carry.”
She captures a portrait of a “Roman / woman” in a smoothie shop; in “The English Pub,” she and Jase “…sip concern away, / offering each other / a taste from our glass, / a token of companionship, / our communion.”
And, in “Ode to London Pigeons,” she leaves a bit of her heart in London:
“We break bread
in the prayer tent,
where we find peace
and you find
brunch crumbs.
I like to think each
peck is a deeply
practiced bow.
May you find
peace, scavenger.”
Find a bit of peace for yourself: Live a Great Story by Jase Buck and Linzi Garcia (Analog Submission Press, 2019, 24 pp., saddle stapled, 25 hand-numbered copies, nine poems by each poet), Linzi and Jase’s Great Adventure. Available from Analog Submission Press. Check in with the authors on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/judas.murdok and https://www.facebook.com/linzi.garcia.5.