Category: poetry
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Song for My Departed Sharma
You were held close to mommy’s cheston that last day full of walks, belly rubs,and lingering in the rays of perfect sunshineand us delighting in so many kisses from you.You were named to remember the good boyswho left us seven years before you came- and as your head unwillingly left mommy’s chestand yielded to gravity…
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Last Day
She exists a clam shell folded in the middle of the bed, her bedspread forming a waterfall of somber gray tears. She hears her daughter shut the door, probably for the last time, and step into the clear, bright light all around.Yet the clam mother will remember it as a dark and overcast day. She…
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Walking Along the Seashore Without My Mother
The old negative of her with her hair pinned backI hold up to the horizon and see it fade into the waves.It was the one taken through the filtered window of her black car,her face half in night and half in day.Behind, I hear the echo of the sand cave.In front, the roar of swirl…
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Lifeblood
The new blood runs over the old scars on her wrist,the unforgiving crucifix held tight in her palmwhile the unwrapped fish stinks on the table.
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Phorcys Claims Medusa for the Sea.
Medusa’s soma falls into the Aegean,almost into the fatherly arms of Phorcys,almost close to the sobs of her sister gorgons,their monstrous grief now deformed into the cursed shriekthat is human terror, that is the horror ofall human existence.Her soma’s splash releases a thousand stars upward to the moon.Perseus looks awaylest the Ohia viper curlsheld high…
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The Road to the Sea
When I was a young boy my mother drove us in a white Plymouth to a road that ended even with the sea. The last tenth mile was paved seashells mortared with beach stones, the low shoulders no higher than my ankles- the carapaces of turtles, crabs, lobsters boiled and eaten over a century. She…
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Mirror Images
Today, in the car, you see the moving imagethat always traveled with youand was really always with you. Do you squint beyond the image of yourself reflecting back to you in the glass to see the church beyond?or do you concentrate on just the road ahead and the cars in front?But now you noticethrough the…
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The Slaughter
After 5 years Fatima hugs her sister Almaunder a gray sky.The wind whips Fatima’s kerchief backforming a mask that matches Alma’s dull stare into the browning field all around.Alma feels only the roughness of the green blanketwrapping itself around her,sees the small farm in the distancewith farmhandsloading cattle into the slaughter carand remembers the heifer’s…
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City Noir
The caged birds of unrealized dreamshang heavy from steel and glass skiesstooping the walk of pedestrians.They think it’s a heavy rain but it’s their anodized desire fracturing into a thousand feminines/masculinesin the windows all around them.Their noir has orange hair sirens with Klint faces blowing gray smoke, or the Private Dick who lives on past…
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Riding the Bus at Night
The night bus cradles the weary and those waiting for the dayonly those who know the city’s cocoon can appreciate the hustle and ritualof its morning butterflies orthe way speed blurs tenement lightsinto a stained glass display—diffused halos of red and green,blue and yellow.To ride the night busdemands you living with the shadowsmovingwith you,behind you,staring…
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Christina’s World Knows the Ocean
Christina imagined the ocean beyond the withering grass, the yellow hilltop, the gray house just above her vision. On the shore she would lift herself up without the fear of falling. Her hair was swept back by the considerate breeze. Her white dress flew backwards resisting the wind’s effort to delineate her body. The tidal…
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Things Just Caught Up With Her
It wasn’t all the popcorn, hotdogs, candy eaten in the dark that killed her.Those things just caught up with her.It wasn’t all the boxes piled highand then tumbling on her that cracked her head and made her a corpse.All that junk just caught up with her.It wasn’t all those clothes hung up on clotheslinesstrung through…
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Knowing the Face of the Land
If you wish to know who really owns the landlook at the faces the windhas carved into the mountains.
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The Red String
Her mother’s tale of the red string foretold that Miko and Makoto would be together, tied little finger to little fingerby a taut invisible blood line.What she didn’t tell her was that the line would fray, break, need to be retied over and over.In their wedding photos Makoto would stand stiff,sincere in his white suit,chrysanthemum…
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The Fitting
When her maman died Marie flew ten hours to the ancient French village where the houses steepled the church,their mansard roofs brown from neglect. The Weeping Willow in front of maman’s weathered hovel did not match Marie’s feelings. It never did. Inside the furniture had aged into antiques.The handmade chaiseswith ladder backs and unadorned ticking,French…
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Three Parables Stretching for Dignity
The blind do not need blindfolds.They wear shades just for useven as we turn our eyes away.We give them a stick to see.The one-legged woman stands just as tall as the two-legged man.The blind man in the wheelchair can go far,but he can go twice as far if he holds on tothe frame of the…
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Shadow Geometry
at what point do shadows becomenumbers and numbers become dustis it when sunlight and moonlight crossthe eye into our anatomical darknesswhen the zero circle helixes into shortexistence a rose, a cell, a dying memorywhen raindrops no longer liquefaction, leaving umbrellas a meaningless propor the grid that passes over unnoticed during the slow, long ride to…
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Life’s Moments
The child looks out her toy windowand imagines her adult self sailing on the blue ocean of the old hat box that holds her communion veil. Her childhood dances alone along the berm’s dawn light as the sloop plies onto the sand.They hug and gallop horses bareback in the vanishing mistwhile Tess, the sea turtle…
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Irreversible
The oceans recede,its pylons exposed.The great elephants rust in the junkyard they fell when Chukwa shifted.Even his severed legs can’t hold up the earth-sky.The sea grass stiffensto a verdant wave,curl exposing the horizon.The ivory house built on the beach(the one with the bench in back where children playedand the family picnicked,the one with the red…
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I See Only Silence
it’s easy to know where the leaves were before they fell,what her lips tasted after the caress of the loving hand,what was in the crib rusting in the forest of the night.Only the twins know why they nod to each in the fog,the thing the hound bays for in the lake of stars,what the alligators…
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A History of Dying Spaces
Only my grandmother came home to die.Her centuries old home was built with a birthing and dying room,two small bedrooms, a library and as was custom, no parlorShe went through the process of lifein private but away from the spaces entirely reserved for birth and death.Home was a place where she ate,sat still, stared and…
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Paramythology
If you accept the appleyou must accept the bite,the lips that bit the flesh,the legs that climbed the tree,the eyes that looked and lustedfor what was in between and abovethe white cleft rising in the speckled light,all the crucifixes after and the rising flags since. Pondering on the origins of poetic archetypes, religion, and the…
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Adhesion
In Vatican City a cardinal walks resolutely forward, his red trainflowing behind longer than a bride’s.It’s silhouette passes by the open windows of the atelier reflecting crosses over the bodices of thetailor’s latest scarlet creations.Another black smoke day rises from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. Blood shadows slowly abandon St. Peter’s square for the…
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Two Wheels
Two circles, two triangles locked in against a railexist as geometries of mobility in immobility,movement stuck in a silence never intended.The front wheel swings in the direction of desire,forward progress the only direction it knows.Yet, it seems impossible that it stays upright.Without a kick stand it falls easily into the dust.Without a peddler executing a…
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Night Beach Couplet
When the color goes away for the daythe night beach revels in the shadows play.
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At Sunset
Your death must mean just enough not to curse the day you were born,to stand by the water’s edgeand not want to swim with stonesuntil the first dark wave takesme under in a fetal pose,sinks me down in the last breath,the clear waters almost your ghostpushing me back, allowingme to walk away.Of course, I will…
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The End of the Journey
My grief sails through joy refusing to tack the line of others-straight, plain, flat and so so still-the reason why I love it so.No haven of pine and sand,just mangrove rootsgnarled but knotted strong,holding the beach against the hurricane .That it stands and so do Iis not a measure of what I’ve known, or even…
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Quotidian Life
A bicycle splashes over a puddle and its aurareflects down the streetlightspraying halos on the umbrellasof the pedestriansthat pass under.Down the blocktwo stop signson opposite streetsboth signal WALK,letting the crisscross of the quotidian begin.This moment it’s a blue umbrella scissoring around a red one.Earlier a chihuahua in a poncho sniffs and wants to nip at…
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Stage Directions for the Theater of the Absurd
Act One (The one and only act of which there is no other.)Vladimir and Estragon having waited for Godotlong enough decide to stand up and walk home. They dust themselves off. A boulder rolls on stage.It stops in front of them. Enter a sweaty Sisyphus.Vladimir: Godot!Estragon: Godot!Sisyphus: Not Godot. Sisyphus. Godot told me you two…
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The String is not the only Thing that Holds the Kite in the Air
If kites are nothing but a cross on a sailthey can only rise.Yet, the child running with all his joyin the brown fieldon a cloudless day will hold the string taut, thinking it’s up to himto keep the kite in the air and never let its line cross the path of birds.Today, he will learn…
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Getting It Right
I try on my death suit regularly, and even after my cancer surgery, it’s still too long in the arms and legs..This year I did manage to find a comfy pair of shoes in a size 9 1/2that don’t make my toes numb.in a few years I will come into a nice inheritance and will…
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Living With the Fog
The fog covers the bridge all around.Above the day blurs night. Belowships prowl slowand uneasy lines.Thosedriving or walking throughwill remember the cry of the sky,the sobs of those tiny sirensbelow warning away,warning away,those who come too close to touching themin this blindness-long after the light has returned and their soulshave safely reached the other side.…
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The Lone-some Cowboy
His horse whinny’s while waiting outside the church with the blue cross and tin roof.The loyal herding dog panting on the corner,listens to the lulling cows in the pasture,heels for the hand signal to start the gather.In the center of the town square,a marble angel atop a high stone column,inches below a cross of electrical…
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Facing the Stars
I see the starsand feel I don’t exist,that my grief is the only thing that has meaning. The grief that welcomes my own eulogy, reading my headstonein the decaying light,reminding me that I am mortal and must die,dissolve to indistinguishable dust and dirt, a man, an, a.The glowing cheeks of my parentsjust another flaw among…
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The Box That Holds My silence
At bedtimeI sit in my chairand turn offmy long lived hearing aids,putting them in the pine box with the gold leaf claspand a brown phoenixcharred into the lidThe traffic outside dies,the rasping of my dog is silent,my wife’s snoring is muteand the world is so so quiet now. In the morning only the light streaming…
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Celestial Fission
Stardust, the hardest thing to hold on to,forms our guardian angels,the ones that sway us to our favorite tree,settling each branch in a sugary light.We scamper towards it, all the dust of sun and star reflecting golden in our faces,adorned in the red and white regal robes of our younger self.God particles surround us,their soft…
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The Lesson of Our Puddles
Oceans are formed from the dropping of our tears.and in it we must all drown,knowing only the cold and the slow driftingaway of our flesh.We watch our fathers live extraordinary livesbut die ordinary deaths.It sinks our hearts downin the gush of a thousandmemories past and memories to be named,into expectations of what was andwas suppose…
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Lallo Dreams in the New Ways
(I liked the word baize so much that I created a poem entirely around it. Lallo assembles the town in his head all in shades of green, white and gray—grass, walks and streets scarring storieson the old sacred hillsof high steel hutswith Bianco Carrara walls and long hallsfilled with plains of baize tables, silver machinesand…
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We Need to Look Longer
The eye feels the light, the lens knows the truth:The children silentunder a blue tarpamongst the rubble— their little backpacks still on their backs offering the hope they still might stand upthen, the beat—and the realization that will never happen.You want to look awayyet you can’t. You must look closer.You must look for longer.Again and…
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Pact
I make a pact with my younger other self, my familiar in the crosswalk, the boy staring back not longing to be me,wondering where all that nice black hair went in our shadowed time and unwanted trusts, vows not to be our parents and just our mirrored selves. In spite of me/to spite me he…
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KAROSHI (Death by Overwork)
The boxes pile high above his head,beyond his ability to count them,beyond his ability to move them.He will work them. More twelve hour daysfor not enough pay. No days off until KAROSHI-death by overwork. He asked his family to bury him,in his small living room ,in front of the flicking embersof the big flat screen…
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Losing Track of Time
The childless widower in his third age sits beneath the frame of the toy store window looking away into the street while three Teddy Bears, one in a just-right high chair, mourn never being held in small arms.Long after the twilight has passed, under the darkness of the elevated train platform, he will stare, lost…
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Getting Married in the Shadow of Iztaccihuatl
She dreamed that shooting stars would stream the palaba roofson the night of her honeymoon,that Iztaccihuatl would spark embers approving of her love,glistening her wedding dress in ashes and a dozen golden sols. The next day she would drape the vestido on the line, it’s wetness letting the entire Pueblo know thatthere was spotting, consummation,…
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Fallen Fruit
It starts with the apple falling to the earth,dropped after the bite.From the rotting hole on its flesh, the worm wriggles forth to the light.The stem dies.The leaf turns grayand floats away.The worm penetrates deep into the ground,fertilizing the crypt.The Death Moth emerging flies to a veined sky fresh with purple pulp. This earth will…
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Side Effects
In my dreams I ride bicycles. In life, I once knew how to ride them.Now I am old and side effects have my feet missing the pedals and falling down.
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Smelling and Seeing the Brightness of the World
I smell the freshness of uncut spruce un-trampled snowin the whiteness all around me.The hard freeze has piled high the world. I dare not crush it less it reekof cat piss and gasoline. Have I gotten too close or too far?The world is too fragile to be h e l d.Soaked in the river its…
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Trying to Stay Even
In the mild June heatjust outside my windowa mom with strollerraces by menever to be caught.My slow tingling feet envyher swift muscle flow.I imagine her heart beat rapid yet smooth like a robin in flight,mouth full with new twig,no sore wings from miles flown—happy with joyand accomplishment.Yet, my heavy breathfalls heavy and slow,lingering,dropping my soul…
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Sixty Degrees and Clear
Sixty degrees and clear.She dies -morning hospice shiftwhile I’m getting ready to visit her.Waxen in her white bed,arms bruised and quiet now,mouth wide in a gaspas if in scream, as if sayingah, no! Both eyes closed,turned down for my visit,denied all further light,sky or even ceiling.I touch her hand. It iscold. It’s only beentwo hours.…
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Our Last Suppers
They pass the plate between themmother to daughter, father to son,a communion stretching to foreveruntil the plates are fulland father and son retire to the living room to watch the game.The mother advises on the adornment’s of the daughter, the father pats the son for his stratagems of the future.They have always been this way…
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The Promise— More and Less
After, the awe returns with less shock. A father lives in a quiet unannounced moment. At his celebration of life service all the children wear black leather. They refuse to die, be strangers, vow to know their names, remember their world. The sound of traffic on the way back home leads them to a smelly…
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Everything Known Will Be Unknown
Soon, all I know will die, be buried or burnt in the bonfire, lost to senses and thought, become un- known. I will fall to my knees and become a turtle carrying my home on my back. If I cry out, who will hear me? Who will know me, when everything known is gone?
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Bury the Children of War in Their Good Things
Bury them with their Motanka,doll tight in their hands.Dress them in that yellowfleece wanted and put back on the shelf,two wreaths of roses and gerberasadjacent their crypt,filled with their birth smells,the sandalwood, jasmine of the crib,a towel and a bowl of waternear to wipe their tears.Flood the nave lightly dark so they may chase the…
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Ubasute: Carrying Life to Death’s Mountain
I listen to his wheezeand watch the machine ascendfor a full breathe thenfall back down againand know I must trek to the mountain once again.Like my mother, heedless of self and for my sake, will he snap twig after twig to point my safe return?She died clutching a small cross,a loblolly branch,her bones resting on…
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Mothers Can’t Live in Your Future
I treat the future as past,a bright yellow house I inhabited,filled with broken furnitureneeding repair, replacement, to bequickly put to the match or just all thrown out.There is a kitchen with pots and panseverywhere and much flour dusting everything— and bread, bread, bread, so so so much bread. Maybe I will keep that aqua sofa…
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Knowing the Spaces of the World
I wonder aboutthe life of spacesI have passed through.What songs have they heard that I have not? When did the stench of death pass through?The honey scent of life?The particles of the pastlinger in the air eternallykeen to the nose of houndswho can discern every atom of this invisible world thatI can only know via…
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The Dick and Jane Primer of Parental Grief
I open memory to gut it. My dad empties out to a red sea. I can’t swim. He never taught me. The tide flows to the shore and I am saved. I now see my father floating submerged face down. He bloats purple. I think he’s dead. The waves beat furiously against his body. I…
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You Can Never Return and Never Know
Even those who can never go back dream of returning back home, taking the long long way back on a rusty Indian motorbike belching white pass the whitewashed high school, the wounded buildings housing black lung renters choking in the cigarette smog of late winter, pass the signs of the empty supermarket the shredded leaves…
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Making Miracles
She’d get up early and secured the world for Milagro:Making sure the window latched and wouldn’t lose a dream,that the new bread would rise and be ready for tomorrow’s stove, that the kitchen would always smell of promise and hope, the two of them forever making good meals,making familia, in the rise of heaven,that the…
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Buying Shoes in Five Easy Steps
IHe slipped on a pair of silver heels for my mom to try on, and though she was past the time for balls andpageants— she married him anyway. IIWhen I was three years past my first stepsmy mom bought me my first pair of kid’s shoes:brown and white lace-up buster browns that tookfour rabbit ears…
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Everything that Matters
Is this howling coming from my soul’s basement from me?. Or them?The ones who betrayed life, death, me?I’ve done everything expected of a son. Outlived them. They taught me everything—but I’m not even sure I know the truth. I have more questions than answer.Why have I spent a lifetime runningaway from them only to build…
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American Sonnet for Spanish Aunts
Aunts sewed their lives bare.Their needle, thread made rich dressesthey dare not wear,ironed straight all the creases of great rich white silky minds.The Gringos wore their handiwork without praise. Aunts dreamed their small dreams inSpanglish, Castilian, Rioplatense,the unknown languages of hope.They prayed and chanted as they cut, sewed and ironed.To watch them slave away is…
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Choices Too
I see sky from my window.Beyond the fence there are treesand a road that fronts them.Further, I know that there are mountains but I see only hatchlings tweeting from the topmost branches.A car flies by anda birdling falls below the fence.I make a gilded cage from spare bricks and steel.I place the little one insideatop…
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Our Dead Fathers
Fathers seldom die in their own bed.They slip in the tub, choke on a machinein bloodless ways you never imaginedor hoped or feared.Neither a blessing nor curse,just a life cut short or one lived too long. The blood they no longer need is drained to a pail. Arms that held babies and worked all their…
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Cold Snap
A mother out in a cold snapstumbled on an odd little notehalf buried in the snow near her boot.It seemed a bloody torn clothbut opened to a small half wing.She almost, in shock, let it slip her grasp.Yet, it rang a tender bell,for it felt like her baby’s pink palm,even though, the cat was sitting…
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the tongue- knows only- sixty breaths before it lives, before it dies
The tongue remembers all the death it has tasted. It teaches us the name and memory of things. The aquae of the womb’s ocean as it dries in the first gasp of air. The vitae coughing out so the lungs can start its invisible cycles of dying and renewing. The taunt of the nose denying…
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Wide-hipped Mothers and Wives
My mother was a wide-hipped woman. So is my wife. They have cuddled me in the clouds of their bodies. All of my life exists in their bigness, broadness, grandness. All of my imagination cribs in the jiggle of their arms embrace, the wide outlines of their curves, the soft pillow of their stomach. I…
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The Art of Graffiti Removal
I always believed until long after my mother died that she was the onlyperson who loved meand thatmy father was a shriveled man at heart.Once my mother fell hard on the floorand he never bothered to lift her up orgive her a helping hand. Then my mother died andhe tried to replace her,becoming more generous,more…
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Build-a House
I built myself a house to home my lonely bones,a house on a noisy-silent streetopening to a quiet skyin colors my wife loves—mostly a whiteso transparently clearit absorbs shadowsfrom dark yesterdaysand sick brown partschemically cured.I built myselfa house thatunderstands my lousy Spanishand knows my gringo accent needs subtitles. I built myself a house with big…
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Leaves Falling for the Fawn to Graze
Leaves were falling from the great oak at the meadows edge, falling from all the treesthis cold cold night.So many have fallen off,so many were torn off,that the new buds to come were but a memory of a sun that once shoneand gave them warmth,warmth they needed again.They’ve fallen down unaware of the secretblooms yet…
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Dead Old Hearts for Auld Lange Syne
Dead love was the grief that brought her down.She buried him oft in her heart’s graveat night ‘neath the Noble fir near her front door.Dreams had him smiling wide-eyed in the morn. Her da followed rudely into her futureseized by fevers and chills she couldn’t shake.She left him boggin’ near the auld grapeuntil he popped,…
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Winter Solstice
In indifference comes my winter solstice—my life now groping more dark than day— just one less even second now—to a temperate gloom and a forever stasis. I neither want to live shorter than my mothernor any longer than my father—an oh so happy mean is just my preferred destiny— death at eighty on an overcast…
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Dia de Muertos Cancion
I feel my father’s ashes on my tongue.His strange death sitting on the edge of my teeth humming that oldSpanish balladthrough the night’s fog. The song you so hate,yet love.He sings it in his own perfect pitch.He sang it for my mother years ago.I hum it off key, hearing his lies.
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The Gifts of the Magi: An O’Henry Christmas Poem
I don’t remember their names yet I witness their shattered tree being placed in the old bent stand.Its wind-shorn branches supplicate to the sky. Placed beneath its boughs area Red Cross box and stained pics, the bluegrass relics of father, mother and infant son— all exiles from my wife’s side of heaven, huddling like a…
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Living With the Disappeared
Each of their syllables floats into the ether leaving memories of little talks, of things not said, until the letters separate away. mother to other drifting away other, other- “Momi, donde esta?” Father ather falling further down at her, at her- “Papi, quien eres tu?” They didn’t fall. They were thrown to leave me without…
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Son of Monarchs
The monarch flutters above the ash and in its black and orange beautyexists all day and night. It flies up to meet the sun,the gentle maternal hand of life lived in the light.Only the scent of milkweedlures it down to ground for the paternity of feasting and breeding.In its flight between earth and sky, I…
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Leaving Tranquility
Not far from the cove, the stones worn smooth from the tides weeping, the salted breeze, removedfrom all tranquility, is the grand windowed house. The ashes will be spread on the beloved soil,the October browning still green to cover this assembly of forgetfulness. The house awaits the noises of the feast,the jeer, the final clearing…
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Palinode
pal·i·node/ˈpaləˌnōd/nouna poem in which the poet retracts a view or sentiment expressed in a former poem. My father stands in my memory seriousness, good intentions intact. He has shifted in my time from distance to closeness, shed his professional ambition and all his focused successes to enter my life still wearing his white coat and…
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House Ghost
My new home needs some ghosts!The ones that hover in memoryand find their way to the floorboards,a patina of cremains that creaks with old joys, hurts, triumphs and defeats—the bark of good boys sitting patiently in their mahogany box above the dust of Cleopatra in her oaken tomb,always the silent bitch with the sad brown…
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Listening and Searching through the Rubble
They called off the search to wait for the winds to pass,the demolition to collapse the weight of concrete onto flesh to make it safer for the cadaver dogsto locate their scent amidst the rubble.They called their names out bothin English and professional Spanish,mainly for show, mainly a memorial,loudly at first, then just a mumbled…
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Homeless
It’s hard to know home without rootsfirmly planted in the soil of stay, when cancer and cure move the lifeline.and a tornado the geography of property beyondthe winds of summer squalls and hard rains.My heart is not a sedentary plot.it knows no fixed seasons:winters blow into summersand summers into winters not allowing me a crag…
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I Know the Night and Sky
I have cried,I have grievedand therefore I have loved.I have twinned my existence:once in the joy of life and the other in the nacre of cancer.I have seen death, known it’s slow, sad and sometimes violent approachthrough the collapse of everything alive-how it roams throatless,holds tight,then lets go.if there is no heaven full of sunbeams…
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Wrestling With a Stained-Glass Angel
The Holy Ghost is freely pinned as sin is from the Devilamongst the broken back pews of a somnambulant congregationdreaming of the post church pot luck buffet.Release it to the wild,it flies to heaven,anointing a stained-glass angel peeled from the wall as second.The angel says,”You must wrestle me,”I dream of catching the uncatchable,holding that one…
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A Mother’s Bread
All life mother kneaded him from her ma’s-g’ma’s pain and joy,from the bodies who all knew her into the one she knew well,collected from all the raw bits lost, found, saved from breads baked-unbaked,while the yeast swelled her stomach and pocked her skin. She said, “Eat, child,”and he fed ‘till her flesh broke. In the…
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Mother’s Day/Mother’s Day Not
Is it so terrible to mourn a mother,to cry for the ones that shut the door and never returned,those never equipped to nurture a newborn from birth to death,the ones who desperately wanted to be mothers but couldn’t be,those who lost a child or never wanted to be mothers but are—should this be a day…
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Pain Knows the Wolf
I should have broken my back by nowwith my lupine spine, feet screaming as if in a wolf trap. My outrage prowls the low valleysearching the arid land for water to slack the thirst,the howl inside.Once there was real silencebut no answer.Now, rage is my lone truth.The lamb has been eaten.Nothing stays in my broken…
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A Visitor in the Target Moon
Brother, I await you outside the windowamongst the night traffic zoom and scent of pine,story sitting on the throat’s knife edge,the truth unable to roll out from blood fear. Mother, I feel your harsh breath outside my soul.Father, your praise is hidden in the hot stones.Brother, the moon slices you,tripling fear across the unforgettable,a memory…
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Super Nova
I destroy the gold house inside my soul— the nova of light ongold archway, gold mantle,gold walls. The last bits of real places that once shined.l thought, forever in the aura of sun-shine on oncegold rooftop, gold windows, gold doors. Look in,search and see, find: black gold steeped in the darkburned down to ash ofgold…
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On Seeing My Mother’s Clothes on Someone Else
It appears just weeks after the last tear,my mother’s sky blue dress on her life ghost:same walk, dove shape, soft voice, brown hair cut short-at least from behind, in the same love lightthat moved from donation bin, rack, to herin the way that the poor are damned to wear the dead’s clothes, hand me downs…
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When I Am Among the Trees (not after the poem by Mary Oliver)
When I roam the real forestgrumpy apple trees spit their spoiled rotten children on my shoulders knowing I will collect them and mash their cores into cider.Their leaves refuse to form shadows nor shade me, letting the sun scorch my monk’s crown deep cardinal red.The weeping willows shed snickers not tears.The oaks refuse their goodness…
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To Eat a Peach
As I exitthe world of green dinosaursfused from abandoned rusty automobiles and steaming in the sun,a child offered me a giant peachharvested from a Palisade treegrown in the valley’s katabatic winds. It tasted of harsh-sweet stolen pleasures,lust and greed and love and dried fruit,full of Ute tears and diverted waters,memories between prayers and laments buried…
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Always Previously Owned
After Adam died Eve designed a house of wooden ribs. 2 She created it to never burn down. 3 It was full of happy walls and bright colors that never faded. (The next owner painted them gray.) 4 The rainbow colors would daub off on every guest’s fingerprint, an intended souvenir. 5 Nautilus shells placed…
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Homeric Simile
As when his son, a pensive animal lover,on his first hunt,had to face the doe in his scope,his first kill lined up for the taking,breath held firmly before trigger plunge,the forest circling, fear trembling his lips, doe moving from view, gaze,his father behind, a looming granite mountain crushing himlike an avalanche of scold that he…
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The Projection Room
If lucky I will die in a room of non-hospital green, on plump pillows, good linens, with good family and good friends,the ghosts of loves, the odoramaof nitrate seas, forests or mountains on walls.Room where well-cast dreams lived and died. Will my death be the end of a long love,mystery, tragedy or comedy,flashback to life…
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The Dig
Blow the dust of history off our bones. In the excavated ribs of ancient sailing shipsfind the burial chambers of kings. Blow the dust of history off our bones.In the dig just below them, but just over the rubble of the blitz are the cracks in the golden cathedral’s dome.Blow the dust of history off…
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For My Unknown Anniversary
Every year I knowingly cross the unknown date that will complete my tombstone,the day last fires will turn ice and my deafness will make the silence my true and final friend- and I will cradle the earth that cuddles my mother.Maybe I will share that anniversarywith her or some dear friend but undoubtedly with other…
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The Forensic Cleaner
they took the body out but the blood/bloodstain stayed there. the investigation begins. that’s the police’s job. but after the death the cleaner cleans. he cleans up blood, pieces of bone, skin, maggots, flies everything that a corpse/body leaves behind. the smell of decomposition/death will be gone by the time he finishes…
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Only God Knows Dove from Spoon, Man a Hawk from a Handsaw
“I am but mad North North west; when the wind is Southerly, I know a hawk, from a hand saw.” (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2) Only God sees and knows dove from spoon, can feign the smoothness of heaven, let the mind see hawk and handsaw open in the wide shed behind the house,…
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Dead Flowers in Small Arms
I did want to do it with dead flowers the pressings of leaving here— flowers made of truths held openly in front from a fallow field left to nettles, the broken pebbles hammered by a vengeful sun. I plucked it up, plucked the good root of all our great hopes and best dreams and watched…
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Knowledge
he knows the earth beyond all seeds the earth that is untroubled in the scorch of afternoon light the petals of the angry sun
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Doves Always Return
On the white dry limbs of the sycamore, disrobing bark etiolated in spring flash, three doves roost. “Peace,” they coo to the desire of my heart to calm the violent world so like the Lord’s small ship in the tempest ere the rebuke of wind, sea, the faithless in their fear. I will…