Category: poetry
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Questions Left After the Big Bang
Suppose the stars burn with a just divine neither man nor beast can rightly define?A blessed passion we can not returnand that humbles all love in its big burn?Will we miss them more should they glow awayleaving all to define their life long way?Will we look at the then starless night skyand remember there were…
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Two Haikus On the Death of Youth
Dead leaves underneath:The grief of a now shorn thing That knew sky and stars.The dew has dried.The red blossom shadow’s grows—Exhales, fades away.
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Why I Write
I didn’t start writing poems because I felt the indifference of nature,or soon after my mother diedon a hot September day.I never sat on a stone bench weeping with the blooming lilies and roses all aroundor wrote because something wasblack and broken inside meor to correct the world’s injusticesor any such serious poetic stuff.No, I…
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Ocean Apostrophe
The ocean still spits up toys and shoesyears after the hurricanes blew threw.The erosion of sand below the water andon the beach display other sadnesses.The unwanted apostrophe between sea and shore,the warning red sky and the calm cerise night breaks into crescents on the bay, each moonbeam an invisible memory.The union of jealous wind and…
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Cinderella in the Second Trump Administration
Cinderella polished the ache in her—washing walls, scrubbing floors,stirring, stirring, stirring the pot, cleaning windows over, overand over again— was her grief.The lady of the house (calling her stepmother she could not do-not that orange haired demon)bellowed her demands: “When one goes to my windowsand looks out, they must be in real doubt whether it…
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Silent Little Boy
The mother watches her first child in his first wintercatch fistfuls of sun—watches the dust and airriding down to the crib—waiting for the mobile to play sweet music in the arc of light—and the sweep of his hand to its frame.The melody plays but not the words.It’s for mother and childto complete. The mother knows…
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In Passing (Haiku Chain)
Slowly time crushesthe coal black of all nighttimeto diamond morningsand the bud quivers only in the mystery of its blossoming in the wide meadow-lost in precious existence with the nastic night. ————nastic: the non-directional movement of a plant part in response to an external stimulus is known as nastic movement . The folding up of…
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Poesy for the Grown-Up Child
(The poem is best read in landscape view, so as to keep the original formatting intact.) This year when the ginormous flamingos arrived Harold and Lilith, little brother and sister so, lassoed the pinkest and to the sky they arose— above all the straw maidens playing games with life’s fire, the slow dancing couple living…
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Oblivion
Sprinkle my ashes in an unknown spot, neglected by everyone but you. Let those who forget me, forget me. My death won’t revive their utter lack of life, relieve their petty jealousies, hates. The tribute of an unknown walker spreading my dust is honor enough, living in your secret oblivion, my joy.
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The Night Is a Triptych
You sit invisible in the green chair of the diner not enough lightto cast a shadowthe dinner is tastelessyou think you have Covid on the way back to the car your footsteps sink into the blacktopgetting lost in the yellow overheadsthe strippings belowYou trip, stumblefind the carstruggle with the keysthe opening the closing all the…
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Walking Along the Bay Beach at Night
The dusty stars above, the stars in waves besides,where the very sand is dust.The bay is the nightinseparable from the starsand the winding coastline,the brilliant creatures tide-linedin the black sands swirlsas we walk in their darkness—star ash, beyond the life watch,the dusty light of their spiralaway from the swish and spill,the other walkers walking back,holding…
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Moon Play
The moon slipped into his room a suitcase of light seeking commiseration,The boy imagined three stars stolen from the Northern Sky packed inside.The beam stopped by the bookcase,thumbed its light on a few titles,and since the books would not open and confess their wordsdrifted its attention to the unexpected life awakening on the other side—a…
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Song of the Air
The dying fisherman stares at the sea gray as his hair, cap and clothes-knowing the day he freed the tangledmermaid from the kelp, and how she spoke of the brine and slid back into the waves. On this last day of his nothing, she appears- and he hides behind the mast so she would not…
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The Oven Bird
The song of this ugly bird fills the kitchen and escapes through the window, this thing that could only gobble in life, teaching the tree one to sing. Note: There are two birds being referred to: the first- the turkey in the oventhe second- an actual bird species, the ovenbird.
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Behind the photo of the boy on the rubble
The boy sits atop of the rubble of his homeHis father lies silent twelve feet belowHis infancy has fallen from that summitThe darkness chokes his gentle neckNeedles of despair push into himTheir sharpness kills his heartInside he feels all his organs shrivel His tears fertilize the moundFrom them, a black flower seedsIts delicate roots claw…
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Gift of a Good Little Girl
After brooding on many deaths I decided to take a walk in the bright winter sunbefore it steals away for the coming night.The wind is blowing harsh, delivering a muddle of birdsong,cacophonies of voices,mostly from behind,one or two familiar,but only one voice,now in front, wasclear and distinct. A little dog, maybe, a chi or a…
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After October 7th
He had collected remains for most of his lifebut now can’t stand the smell of grilled meatHis son marks time from that fateful date,everything before that, lost in time’s horror.His son-in-law now gags at the smell of rotten food.They work to bring the families of the dead closure,even though there is no real closure for…
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On Reading of the Demolition of the Once Good Hospital of My Birth
I think He made this hospital beautiful this place of dying, birthing, healing and enduring—How It opened up like a prayermonumental and pleasinga place to tend God and body—How He wanted those returning from sleep not to know the smell of cotton but the feel of traveling into a kiss—How He made it to repeat…
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Clarity
Joy rises in feathered swirls on sorrow’s wings, above the illumined dusk— the grieving heart of all living things.
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Mischief
It’s odd how my lifehas balanced on some rat mischief-floating around-curing me previously, gnawing at me the next.Having nibbled my fingertips clean,they gnaw my toes.The three blind micelend me their stick,“It’s your cane,” they say.I beat them away knowing they will return either by drip or thru the walls. Notes: A group of rats is…
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Christos
The beautiful things he made came back to him: the long tableof good wood built solid, true;the simple seatscarved even, joinedtogether perfectly right;the hung doors that swung cleanas he passed;even the crossbeamhe swayed from— his blessed creation.
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Rattlesnake
I tasted rattlesnake once at the annual Wild Hog BBQ held at the old Ocohopee fair grounds.It came in inch thick fork stabbed slabs on a Hefty styrofoam plate.It did not taste like chicken.The hog, however, was sweet,tangy, full of saucy squealing death,and nothing like chicken at all.Back home, my grounded sister,punched me hard in…
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I want to tell you something nice
Awake, awake my love!I want to tell you something.In summer nights I can hear stars falling,the sound of the big city revel.I want to tell you something niceabout the darkness you believewe live in and are forever going against,how the world stops spinningcatches fire, falls in our hearts.I want to tell you something goodabout how…
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a dead poet is discovered
They discovered him in the sandthe dead poethis wordsall of themground to a nice meterthat and his clothesthe only things not rotting in the sun the only place where he never can be and stillread his poems
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Morning Routine
The leaving night reveals the city’s imperfectionsin the reflecting crystal fires of the rising sun. Coffee brews in simultaneous percolations with the morning subway schedules.TVs switch on the 6am newscasters speaking the demon chants of the last day’s news. Knives descend on bread, sausage, eggsunaware of angel’s ascending in the new light.The last of glass…
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What Remains?
What remains left of holidays if the days of the week dissolve and stop fading into seasonscars refuse to travel on tarmac& shopping centers become empty& our unharvested crops return to jungleWill we live backwards livesrevel in a smaller world to inhabitwith more birds and seen starsfind bliss in ordinary existence
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Rain Chapter and Verse
He fell in love with the rainvolumes and volumes sheets upon sheetseach drop a wet memorya weather forecast of himThere he was a child in yellowand black rubber bootssplashing up and downfeeling the pinging on his hoodthe flavor of pond on his tongueputting his existence on hold for maybe days and dayslocked away in play…
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this is not my poem
Today the poem I wrote was not the poem I wanted to writeI think it was a decent poemmaybe even a good oneI got enough sleepI thinkThe moon was not shining in the roomthe sun was getting brightThe screen had no stars stripesexclamation marksnothing showing I fell asleep on the keyboardNothing had been erasedNothing deletedEvery…
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A Secret Poem
He buried her kiss.For thirteen months it stayed hidden.She did not knowit was lying there.He did not tell her.When it was time,after she fell asleep, he dug the kiss upand pressed it into a little box he especially madefull of cotton.He walked to the garden,dug a two kiss deep grave under her favorite tree and…
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The Fruit
The apple trees emerge from winter sleepcascades of pink-white blooming bright starsbecoming eye memories for the kitchen child eating cherries with cream amidst the cooking spring lamb, the figs, fresh peas, mint As the trees put on their leaves, add yet another ringthe mother puts on the ghost grandmother’s coatfilled with blue-veined memories of the…
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A Harsh Wind
The wind howls in smelling of prisons, cemeteries, hospital ashes— misery.“What does it want from us?”,the people ask. The wind does not answer.They, demand it go away,scram like a lost, confused doglooking desperately for its owner.Instead the wind blows their paintings off their hooks,knocks over their table lights,blows their precious paperswith their meaningful wordsoff their…
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Heavier than Age
Morning heavier than ageleaves the birds weighted to the limbs, unable to break out in riotous morning song.In the distance— a church bell,people in black creeping around-“Heaven. Heaven,” in their earsfor the poor soul laying beneath.They wish to hear only the sea.The old sea. The new sea. Any sea— to catch their tears, drown their…
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A Small Post Christmas Miracle
He watched his grandma create this wonderful thing stitch by stitch, just for him, in her remaining free time.He was mesmerized by the looping and pulling, the unraveling skeins meldinginto this beautiful blanket of many colors.By November it had started showing flashes of his favorite hues: blue, green, yellow— black stitching separating into squares.He imagined…
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Songs for When I Am Dead, My Dearest
When I am dead and ash, my love, keep me close or throw me away- do whatever your heart so desires.Sit on the dock of the bay and sing that favorite song of mine to the gulls.Just remember I wasn’t made tobe planted under a hardy oak or buried under a manicured lawnto see the…
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One Tough Dog
The dog had been shot and knew of pain-the bullet that enters from a mean master dishing out daily doses of cruelty. The dog, had slinkedaway to die, but lived— the bullet scared over, resting perilously close to his heart,rubbing silently against muscle and bone.You didn’t find him. someone kinder did,took him to the shelter,where…
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Cinemaio
the cinemaio shows movies in his empty theater in the darkness of his cinema despite the plague the closure of all othersHe sits in a plush velvet arm chair or sometimesunspools his legs onto the celluloid floor sitting in the back of the room savoring the light and images as he used to do during…
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Prayers and Miracles for a Daughter Passed On
When his daughter died he made a church of his pain, the only truth he believed— the truth of his grief.In that shrine, he could pray, must pray:“Lord, suffer me to know these wounds of which I am. Savor, ease this lonely creature.”“Everything must die in the beauty of your grace.For in that loss I…
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The Dry
My heart’s voice cries in the sand, oceans of mourning lost in the dry, lying, not listening, not understanding, as my end fire burns in the western sky, perpetually and always ahead of me, waiting for the last grain to pour from my side.
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Two Artist’s Love Letters
1.He created for her colors that never existed,and then threw them away, creating new anew, mattered matter, forever dynamic cosmos of spiritually affective things reconciling in the meeting of colors.Innocent white, virtuous gold,evil black, envious green,passionate red, blue love,fearful yellow, hateful scarlet-all given back to the death lifefrom the ones rejected by herfrom his daily…
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After the Cure
I came back and I could see through the pane it had fallen, this leaning tree that grew pridefully close to the house,roots torn from earth in the winds.When all others died, it had survived the heat and blight, all the cold night winds, but not my separation, cure, return. I cried for its sorrow…
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Things Hidden in My Ears
The last hum of mother’s lullaby gently lingers, cradles back and forth, creating equilibrium.Canciones en español,poems in English,birdsongs in the drizzling rain,the faint refrains of all that chooses to linger despite the silence inside.
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The Blind Man’s Spot
My hands touch the flagstones of your tomb.In this world of persistent shadowsmy feet go numb walking to this spot.I hear the wind scuff the white granite all aroundossifying thedirt, blood, stonebelow into my nostrilsand lungs. I sit on the benchnear youalmost seeingthe specterof birdsstopping their prolong flightinto the comingstillness of night trees,never really knowing…
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Chalk
They traced their chalk hand first; yellow, pink, gold flowers second; memorized the white ridges of that good dog paw mold from the vet third; all the accretions, good and bad of the pastel outlines of life’s hopscotch fourth; copied dutifully the chalkboard forms fifth; leaving only the final one drawn by others, the one…
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Trying to Follow My Mother
This morning the ghost of my mother haunted me. There was just peace, calm, a blue-green shadowy crystal shimmering steady above my sleeping chair. She came at a time when only I can see and know her- before the last dream and dawn, before the others awakening, she pulsated lovely and in proper motion through…
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Sana, Sana
Set the flower aflame.Hold your sister closeamidst the flowing water.Sana, Sana, colita de rana.Si no sanas hoysanaras manana, The bark is exposed.A bird dies in the forest.Hold your brother close.Dry his every tear.Sana, SanaSi no sanas hoy,Sanaras manana.The crack is wide.The cactus has dried.The frog jumps in the drainwith the push of a hand.Sana, Sana,…
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A Time for Stones
The new stones have arrived from the sea,their bruises and changes waiting for my hand to hold, let them dry and shine in the sun—to finally see them from all their different sides.These stonelings exude such a soft subtle energy,full of the rubbings from the kiss of elder stones, every flower and branch, the caressing…
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The Couple (after Tomas Transtormer with a nod to Edward Hopper)
(Read in landscape mode to see the original formatting.)The heavy curtains are clipped at the seams with a pants hanger from the closet.The lamp glimmers hot, bright before dimming to the dark. The climbing shadows seek the embers of the blocked stars.The passion has quieted down. In sleep, secret thoughts aremeeting, softly cuddling. The grays…
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Cardboard
Given enough cardboard and tape I could make my own childhood house.At least until winter. Then, it allflattened, became one big sledthat raced down the brown foothills,so out of control, fast, faster still,until a Plymouth door handle left a permanent time scar on my forehead- one, two, three little rivers forging into each other.Now, that…
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Practice
The day’s practice arrives:awakening knowing one more day stretching arms and toes until the deadness fades, breathing in life until you are out of breath,cutting off the words in a hopeless conversation,playing the scales over and over,until each day ends and sleep comes againand the waking dawn orders us to practice again.
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Infrared
The palms glow infrared in the night.The city has set up tables and chairs under them so the citizens can feel the breeze and watch the tide.The stick fence held together by razor wirethat separated the street from the shore use to be longer until the hurricane blew the gate away. What’s left, bends against…
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Father, Sin and Holy Ghost
I squatter in the catacombs of remembrance. grinding my bones with pumice and chalk for a fine bone dust to clean the vellum bindings of my soul’s revisions. The scars glitter the ground. All the others with almost identical names, are around me, enough alike to make me doubt the date I was born. Something…
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Reclaiming Posey from the Clay and Releasing the Voice to the Air: A Translation
Author’s note: I have been reading a lot of indigenous poetry since November is Native American Heritage Month. One thing that struck me is the Native American poet’s need to adopt Western poetics- rhyme, rhythm, meter, formal stanza- in order to find acceptance with a white reading audience. The poems of Alexander Posey (yes, that…
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The Death Wife’s Tale
After nine months,three hours of laborand a mile of wanderingTahlequah gave birth in the middle of a salted world.For half an hour,Tahlequah could look into her child’s eyes.For thirty minutes the child, until it became silent, was a sacrament to love.In the inexplicable beauty of her death Tahlequahdecided to carry her.She remembered how there was…
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Four Haikus on Childhood
1. A MAGICAL PLACE From the yellow hut near the power plant’s river he’s shocked to see fish. 2. THE INTERNAL NOTEBOOK She scratches the spot on her arm where her parents buried deep their dreams. 3. ALONE AT THE FAIR WITH MONEY Rubber duck winnings buys popcorn, moo-moos, a pony, car rides, burst balloons.…
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From the Sky
They built their tunnels deep into the sky.“No one, will find us here,” they thought.They watched their children playing soccer.They saw their grandmothers making bread.They knew the teen boy, so like themselves,under the olive tree, eating watermelon, writing a love letter on his phone. His beloved, not far from the checkpoint where soldiers were cocking…
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Our Song of Sadness
Live long enough and your Father will serve you grief with oranges on a silver platter—Shed enough tears and your Motherwill appear, remorse in one hand,a pomegranate in the other—Bury a spouse, and salt will be your servant, once the beloved’s water leaves, and you’ve swallowed the last bitter herbs.Lose a child, and light will…
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Piecing It All Together
I knew the silence before the birdsong— Each note not a note, but plaintive echoes, making painful calls before a leeward wing danced a thrush in the brambles. Author’s note: I spent a considerable part of an afternoon watching videos of blind infants wearing their first pair of glasses. Seeing the world clearly for the…
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Dogwoods
The rusted tips of the dogwood petals, fall after fall, indented to the shape of crosses, leaving bloody crucifixes after bloody crucifixes.The collected light, felt wounded,drenched in a suffering beauty, the kind the soul draws as perfectly straight.The red berries, past ripe are now wine. They stand naked in the air in lovely shame,past innuendo,…
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A Discovered Graveyard
(After Robert Frost’s In a Disused Graveyard)The dead come along the living unexpectedly,their grassy treads kicking upon their stonesonce upright now downturned in the weeds.They just wish to rest in peace, away from these stumbling fools that wound themselveson weathered marble letters written large: “THE ONES WHO LIVING COME TODAYTO READ THE STONES AND GO…
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Truths
Three things that are silent and true:the twilight hour,the plummeting snow,death beneath every window.
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Remember the Grass
Delight in the cool grass,its elusive, delicate, shy,brush on your face,tingling arms, bare soles- for one day you will be too far beneath even its touch.
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Bringing Hope Home
They brought Hope home in crisp sunshine on a cloudless day to a backyard overlooking a forest.Just a mother and daughter, a shovel,a smallness wrapped in a ziplock bag, born four or five days before.The lack of rain had hardened the earthand the digging was unyielding work, an hour of frustration before the ground yielded.Finally,…
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Serenade
Down the beach, the strum of guitars, congas,the rhythms of life knowing its longings.The come on is intense. It sweeps me along.Yet, I pause. The sea has deceived me before. It calls out with a jaunty chant, “I love you.”Its greatness sings from sun to moon.“I’m not asking you to run. Walk slowly,Take your time,…
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the spaces she left behind
they turned brown before you arrived by the time you came on them swiped the dust off turned the pages they were crumbling you never looked at the rest surrendering them to silence you could lie down again now there was nothing between you now the rain was beginning outside or was it just the …
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The Cenotaph
The street life went on all night outside their kitchen until their laughter-last shouts shattered the dawn.In Brooklyn, the rabbi reading the Times would only seethe shattered picture window,the blood on the rusty door,the broken mugs, two forkson the breakfast table,the rounds that formed holes,red balloons amidst the night clothing on the wall.“They did not…
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Bed Bugs: A Love Story
He smuggled them in his pockets. Easy— just a step into the house, after digging in the yard. There they stayed until after he was fed and washed. Then, he removed them from their hidden space, released them from the lining and seams into the dwindling bedroom light, to snuggle under the warmth of blanket…
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Leaving Tracks
let’s amble along snowy white spacesfoot tracks silent steady peaceful pacesrevealing lacy silk veils wooly earth white as milk invisible doves the white skylet’s amble along our still small townits soft somber peace and white down our velveteen boots these softer thingswalking along the dew leaving tracks
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Grief Dog
Our new dog, a chihuahua mini husky mix,tries to fill, with kisses, the space of all the dogs before, even some of the people. I think he could smell the ashes on themantle of all those that came before him, feels the grief in us that ebbs and flows. I have a sizable collection grown…
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Circuses Go Round and Round
On days when the girls were circusestheir mother would parade them in the dusky living room where the overhead spotswould highlight each one in their own three ring aura, The Entrance of the Gladiators stuck on repeat on the old phonograph, brass and woodwinds bouncing lithely off their bodies and trumpeting off the walls,the humid…
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A Prayer for Beloved Mothers
Beloved, mother this day you will eat, in this body of trying, the bread of hope. Beloved, mother this day you will bathe, amidst this body of breaths, in the fragrance of rose water. Beloved, mother this day you will hear, inside this sounding body, the soft laughter of your children. Beloved, mother this night…
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Pushing the Needle
My father wasn’t the kind of man to let his ashes just blow in the wind. He spent his life trying to push him-self through needles.At his celebration of life, I watchedas his ash drifted down through the smallest cracks.The poor manwould have been pleased.Then, the sea tasted his embersand scattered himamongst the waves breaking…
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A Single Line- She Builds It Up- You Wreck It Down
Along an icy pond the witch awaits you with your old toy sailboat in her hand.You passed her once in the white wall of the city, laying your head where her heart use to be—her white dress waving in the footlights, showing the parts of you,you so so gladly threw away.In the melting streams of…
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Cormorant Fishing in the Oi River Night
The torchlight shines bright in the night making the riverbed in front crystal clear.The fisherman is not a brawny man, just an old reed with a straw beard.Sweetfish hiding in the river lured by the light come drifting up. In the days of the Shogun, Royals would watch the old straws release their gold ring…
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God Does Not Want Me Yet
God isn’t calling for me yet,” Ninette said humorously to her century old body on it’s birthday. Ninette has no children. Her husband passed 10 years ago. All her friends too. Ninette is use to celebrating things by herself. There will be no birthday cake, just the usual one skillet dinner of pasta with sausage…
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Beautiful Flashes of Life
Grandma Clara knew this day would come,so she put on her favorite blue & white dress.She had been waiting for this, for a long time.Clara switched the television channel to the one her grandkids watched all the time.She pulled up her wheelchair, stowed it neatly in the corner. Clara didn’t want her son/grandkids, stumbling over…
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Listening to the City’s Ghosts
In the blur of rain on the windshield,in the moment it takes the blades to wipe forward and back, he walks into view, across your horizon,hoodie turned up, face down,looking no where but down, hands in pocket— headlight spectersgiving him a transparency that forces you to a dead stop. In that moment from left to…
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Crossing the Bridge
There is a moment in the awful skid of metal in front of you on this two lane bridge when the gold suv loaded with two kids in the backseat, maybe a small dog, a chihuahua asleep perhaps, in the middle, a mom and dad in front, maybe-maybe not talking-arguing, a cargo carrier on top,…
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Pentimento (a visible trace of earlier painting beneath a layer or layers of paint on a canvas)
The cat followed the play of sunlight through the window as the day wore on:the recourse of gable roofs caught in the little town’s slanting brown stillness the diaphane of color floating through the lace curtainmoths seeking a wall’s asylum from the beating ceiling fanthe incantation of the father praying over the steaming cup of…
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Questions ChatGPT Won’t Answer
When the chatbots start killing their darlingsbecause they’ve mastered the masters words,will I be saved or sacrificed? When it starts lying to itself and says it knows the human soul better than God,will we have to love through disillusion?Will we have to rewrite our genetic codebecause they have mastered our humanity?Are we just a murmuration…
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Land of the Yaupon Holly
When the wild-eyed white palomino died, the one that ran free among the Yaupon Holly,little Anne placed a magnolia, the largest she could pluck, on his mane. After a summer, Anne returned to his bones,wearing her palmetto angel wings and ivory. dress from the Christmas pageant the winter. before. She collected the last of his…
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I Can Never Write Like My Mother
Am I left loving what my mother couldn’t? — writing on patchouli scented paper — words doused in sweet musky earth — unsent letters, all sweet and spicyI laid the stems of letters across wet pages—but they did not take— failed to bloom—I tired of the scent— wished for the beautiful unadorned line— divorcedfrom all…
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Meal Time
The black cat stands over the cauldron waiting for the witch to brew. He was very familiar with the recipe.
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River Ooze
Even though she couldn’t swim,Lena would go down to the river.She wore a blue bathing suitand carried a pink swim ring.She would awkwardly dip her tiny feet in the currentand feel its cold stingon her tiny ankles and toes.As the water grew warmershe would go furtheruntil the swim ring floated freely above her chest.There was…
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Field Grass
Fresh, fragrant and not yet tarnished the grass was mowed at the same time.It laid in ragged armfuls. By the afternoonit was less bright, starting to dry out. After a week, the grass was gathered again, into bigger stacks, dried for a longer time. The stacks were so tall that the children dug tunnels in…
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Earth
In May, he planted potatoes. He drew the furrows with a five teeth rake; filled in the holes, the long patches with ash mixed with sprouts; buried them deep one by one until the clean wore off his gloves and the ash covered them gray; until they absorbed the insipid, musty smell of earth and…
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Hot Wax on a Wool Dress
After three days of black rags over mirrors,three days of the open coffin in the parlor,Nana’s eyes closed, unable to see beyond-Lena, needed to run around the backyard,holding the hand of the first living thing that would follow her around, round, round.She was wearing the last wool dress Nana knitted for her (a green, white…
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Strawberries
Abuela bought them, the strawberries, plump , sweet, spotted, ripe for tasting from the roadside market- the one with the burlap heaven flapping in the humid air, on a day that smelled of smoke and incense. I wanted to eat them, but she slapped my hands away. The strawberries hadn’t traveled far- torn up from…
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Mother Are You Proud of Me?
They tore your body apart.You died among walls of infusion boxes.On the television, the Pope riding by in his Pope mobile.Are you proud of mewhen I cry?Are you proud of mewhen I don’t?Peeking through the slats of the living room blinds,I discovered your body slumped in the reclining chair.Will I ever know the truth of…
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A Forbidden Cento Stolen from a Nabakov Notebook Dream of Lolita in the Field of Life
The air around her is filled with butterflies.They blow across her face.Their wings touch her eyes.Their antennae quiver her lashes.Wherever she looks- kaleidoscopic flight.Multicolored clouds above and behind,Sweeping to escape each blind footfall.One alights, exhausted and fluttering,Moving its wings upon a damaged hinge,Near enough to cup in palms.“What a twisting turning thing,” she thinks,Locking this…
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Naturalization (a cento after Snighda Korala: Fragments on Naturalization)
Malus Sieversii, your tiny apple seeds spread long before I came. The Silk Road away from you tumid with less blood, grief. Ad Domestica,the pale veil of a whole life waiting—before that. (Malus sieversii is a wild apple native to the mountains of Central Asia in southern Kazakhstan. It has recently been shown to be…
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The Death of Cinema
Some day the warblers will come and the birders will wander through the undergrowth, run across the ticket booth covered in briars,the rusty saplings of the speaker posts.Somewhere in the thickets they will find the popcorn stand, where they once bought a two buck bucket big enough to last a double feature of Godzilla/Mothra.They can…
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The City Bus ‘Ever Rolls
She looks down from the sea of umbrellas boarding the bus in a heavy black spasm. that’s barely held back. The city’s lightning reflects in her windshield, echoes in the rear view mirror, prisms in the silver shadow of the tires. For now, she’s relaxed, almost peaceful, maybe near sleep, at least for this dead…
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Perfectly Good Food
“It’s perfectly good food,” Wei’s mugin (mother) would say to her. “Waste not, want not,” she added to her mantra. The chop suey of existence was her muse, art.Today was her love letter to the dumpling, an ode to starch: a cheddar cheese scallion pierogi with a soy sauce/duck sauce/hot mustard packet drizzle culled from…
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An Old Garden
(After Richard Aldington’s Aux Vieux Jardin)Today I found an unknown garden in the woods.I do not know who carved this still pool fringedwith reeds amidst a forest browning for winter.Who decided to protect it from the tearing air,tended it to suckle water from dark clouds.All I know, it blooms with great delight, apartfrom the diverse…
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In the Midst of the Snowy Forest
(After Major Jackson https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/major-jackson#tab-poems)The shadows of pines on the snow cast their canvas.The Downy Woodpecker stabbing beak carves wordsthat my pen cannot equal into the January morning.Her chirping is filled with a feasting frenzy resolve for the beetle larvae beneath the bark.I look, but even with my wood-boring eyes I cannot interrogate beyond the known:…
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Fathers and Sons: Walking the Broken Road
He took his boy along the path to show him all the things he killed.The rifles were left behind, not in the truck, but at home,secure in the gun case.He had his fill of all that.It’s been more than a yearsince he closed the shop and spent his golden momentsorganizing the nuts and bolts,the tools,…
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The Evolution of Our Caress
from the cotyledon the leaf opens it first curveto the golden decay, the dispersing crumbling wind.from the abandoned shellstanding firm against the reclaiming wave the turtle claims its carapace.from the snail’s screamthe ear cupped itselfto hear what the tide strived to muffle. from beyond the foam the mother and child cuddle from the wind, the…
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The Lightening
It’s hardly remembered, this first lightening of a child—snip by snip each curl floating to the floor,causing an impatient rising from the high chairThe child wants wings. He’s evaporating in the air.Yet, the mother holds him down, cutting a heavy linkin the nape of his neck to tether him to her, the earth. “Hold my…
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Mothers and Daughters: A Bee in Her Bonnet
Amongst the leftovers she would sit in the old shed, with its corrugated tin roof and clapboard siding, feeling the heat come to her, a caress floating from the ground. She watched her mother delicatelyflour the last of the catfish. The shed use to be a playground but now it was a hideout- somewhere to…
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Epitaph as My Father’s Son
There is no house that is not my father’s.There are no fixed stars,just shaken bits of misery, tiny disasters tethered to hope.From the house he loved,I feel the slap of his inner pain,fist waves hitting the footers.It was easy for him to fight back,(he had to do it to get anywhere)harder for him to forgive…