Tag: poetry
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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…
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Rainy Day
Only the rain moves,nailing the houses into their own coffins. In childhood daysthe rain sailed down alleys.merrily sweeping motley papers, leaves,once, a tiny pink shoe—everything, to the sea, a rollicking circus calliope. Now the rain, the iron rain,lets the sky place itstombstones onevery single roof.
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Mothers and Daughters: The Strawberry Smear
It may be hard to remember through all the broken plate moments that your daughter once looked you in the eye,that you were mermaids swimming in synchronicity in a clear blue ocean, that there was a time when her ideas would sprawl out of her head all over the homework, a big bang onto to…
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New Wave
I dangle my legs beneath the sea wall,the tingle of water making me aware of my existence between ocean and sky. Below, rainbow scales slip in and out,in perfect duplication of wavespounding, curling away from gabions.My feet follow the streamlineebbing away to the global mass just below the refracting sun.My hand fins, cutting S’s in…
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Statue
Inside this sculpted stone— the voice of a captured angel.“Why me?”, it cried to the sculptor and not to God-its lyric voice rustled from heaven’s memoryto be man’s inspired art.
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Sea-Son
The shells and scales will wash away.He has chosen to be a man.She will watch as the slick of him vanishesno longer swimming but walking away.He has chosen to be a man.In the cold crisp air her throats turns dry.She casts her whale song to the waves,but he can no longer hear it, feel it…
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What to Do with All the Love that Remains
The most beautiful thing is always the thing in front of you, my mother use to say. And she was a beauty, always smiling, a beauty markfollowing in front. To see such beauty was to die a little in the heart each day- Each day to give your heart away until there is noting left.Love…
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Juanito’s Dream
Juanito grew up with a velveteen rabbitin his hand and a gun by his side.On his sixth birthday his junkyard owning Dadgave him a clutch of rainbow balloons.He climbed the rusted skeleton of a Cadillac, held the beautiful Mylar to the sky and prayed to be taken to heaven.The answer was the sour tasting rain.On…
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A Desert Story
The desert scorched their lips,broke the heart of their embrace-a pink blister on their foreheadsthe sun’s reminder on how impossible it will be to hold on to these knowings.He will be left standing alone in the swirl of shadows and dust,abandoned by the mountains,living only in the patina of dwellings turning to relics. She will…
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America Seen
The pictures of their dead childrenare strapped to the chain link of the ball field they played on.A bullet holed flag waves raggedly from the outfield,dawn’s light filtering every hole. The cowboy and his horse have long since bowed in grieffrom the red pitcher’s mound.The children in the tenementsjust behind, live in fear that the…
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Under the Tree of Knowledge
Let me lie here and knowwhy over this ground this apple tree makes a long shadowand a light sound.For a moment death will wait,but this tree will not,nor will it mourn for me when there is sweet birdsong all around.My sapling moment has passed, my winter comes and I have climbed and shaken every boughand…
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Answered and Unanswered Prayers
Many are the mothers who cry to Godfrom the release of woe for slain sons.How mother and child, prayed innocently with pure heart, to be spared violence’s plagueBut from the high placesthe prayers that are grantedis for power, power and gloryand honor forever- and nothing more.
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Talking Away
I use to think about grief,building loss on loss, sorrow on sorrow,into a silent groan in my bowelsof ever churning lamentsmourning for the comfort of dead faces.All the sorrow and lost infused my words. It leaked out to the white spaces betweenunwanted vowels and syllables : to the house gone, parts removed,friends lost, the broken…
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Rivers of Tears
We cried when the surveyors came and broke up the land into lines unseen.What the prophet had said became true:this land will be taken from us.We cried the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, Arkansas to overflowwith the waters of our sorrow, leaving behind trails of tears.We cried because you would not love it as we once loved…
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Opening Her White Parasol
With the push of a button, the delicate porcelain releases lace ribs from the handle- little dove wings- shading her dreams, memories of father, creating this object to protect her from the shriveling sun.
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Nostalgia
They would feel it, every new moment- the echoes of who they use to be and what was once theirs-now dirty sheets caught in a dark tree.Everyday, the black river rolls by in blue remembranceand lilies float and drown in the burning stream.Here, the air hurts in the light of a browning sunand the stars…
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Wooden Boats on the Water
Under familiar stars the water blesses this wooden fleet.The carvers shavings fall away, oak leaves in the wavesdrifting behind, until only jug beams remain- the last swayof city lights, torches yielding to sky, night and moon-until only water remains- water waving forever.
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Poetry
It has been said, by someone wiser than me,that poetry is a wind from God.Than why do I find such beauty in the rhyme of dirt—Why do I listen to the lonely voicesof dead poets—Why do I want to excavate their bones,roll in them until they break—or burn them in the crematorium of my soulto…
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First Snow
This is the gift the world has given him: snow in hallows on roofs, branches, streets, the long white candle on the window, burning to dusk while snow fills up the city— all these white contours filling his life— starlight behind daylight wherever he gazes.
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Night Cat
Mine, mimes the black cat putting out his paw to her darkness. Let’s walk in the wood, black eyes imply,the scent of shadows rising from him.The snow, the city, the night dissolves. Mornings to come he will purr to her face.She hears a word of fur and thinks it’s love.Nights, he will slip out like…
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Dust
I find it easier to collect dust than move it around from feathery place to place.Dust is history. It holds the flavors of myself.Dust contains my words.It sits on my mantle adding more specks every year,life upon life on death.I see God in its ashes—He is dust and Dust is everythingIt swirls in endless ribbons…
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nocturne in pastels for hibakujumoku
they fall like a strange red bird in a old snare they fall like a strange pink koi in an old net like a shadow of a Cherry blossom on a stagnant pool like a dying pearl in the depths of the East China Sea like Akiko Futaba singing forever beneath her casement these hibakujumoku…
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In the realm of twilight
the wind is dying in the umbral night all aroundthe small bridge becomes the canal’s umbrella weaving a shy blue garment for the waters,a silvery gown across the imponderable blue the moon glides free, an argent shadowthe rain dove purls a plaintive lay, drenching the darkening streets with a drowsy kissin these hours of tears
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Tell Me Why
Who can tell me the name of all my lost thingsthings so small not worth rememberinglike coins gone through a hole pocketgiven by mother father to buy the sweet things of life back then my ignorance was eternalmy world my own private thoughts not ready for the mourners hymning their dead all the walking apart…
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The Many Shrines of Mama Cruz
This is not a story about my mother,not even one about your motheror grandmother. It’s about Mama Cruz,someone else’s mother or grandmother.Mama Cruz believed with all her heart that Jesus shouldn’t wander far from her sight.At her small church she was the first to communion, confession and contrition.Her only sin, she knew of, was an…
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An Endless Telephone Call
I knew this pulse had traveled thru spacewith a shivery speedto reach this felt sole,these five yards of ancient twisted wires that gave it sound-striking its bell three times in mournful bursts.it was too early to hear the good news of friends.Yet, even not quite awake,I knew between the sounds of hello and goodbye my…
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Stranger Miracles
“There are two ways to live your life – one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.”– Albert Einstein Nancy was a dancer until her toes crossed.Forty years later she met a salsa teacher.“I admire you. I’m going to teach you.If you try hard you can…
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An Old Poet
The old poet walks downs the streets of his dying city.The ancient tenements, stories upon stories of them,rise up before him. He thinks he may have inhabited them. He remembers- he built them but never inhabited them. He looks closer and the bricks are in the shape of his mothers teeth-square and right and just;the…
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We Dream Our Babies Dreams
Mother’s? Father’s? Which dreams will you acquire ?Heritage will whisper them to you. The universe its others.What you choose will steer future mothers/fathers.Just know, you will cry before you hope, will grasp for tomorrow and maybe catch a star or just dull sky.Throw the best out to the universe, the worst bury far.For now, sleep…
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Fireflies
The spark that comes from their belly denies the darkness its dominion and reminds the rest of a shining worldhow lonely the light really is. This light is brief in a darkness vast,an echo of the quick flare of tiny planets and suns filled with the enveloping night between. These bugs spend themselves and then…
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An Approaching Train
You’ll hear it, long before you feel it, feel it long before you see it.The train whistle is a glorious shriek, full of choral bass and tremble, Something that startles your skin— an unexpected scream from a well-known space. Train steam splits the sky, its wheels sunder the earth. The water in its way parts,…
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Kisses from a Dark Piazza
From shadows he blew a kiss. It blossoms, rises to my lips.“If you’ll come back, kiss my walls.”North, South, East, West, he kisses them all. His peppermint teases my tears.I ache for this soldier once near.I am now his shadowy grace.Outside, there are geese returning to their mating place.Spring soon nears. Each new footfall brings…
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Taking Orders at the Caffe Florian
For Goethe, a Decafe to help him dream.For Lord Byron, a claret in his Abbott skull mug,spiced with a tuff of pubic hair from a girl he loved.For Marcel Proust, a Corcellett with milk, a croissantbrought to him at the brisk ring of his bell. For Charles Dickens, espresso shots, next to notes on Great…
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The Smoker
As is his habit, he smokes the rolled cigarette down to ashes before taking up the brush. He waits for the smoke to linger over him, for its aroma to stay in his hair— the cue to push the first arc for the grey stones on the hill he so desperately wants to capture before…
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Travelers
The train takes them, these sleepless travelers, from a land known to them, to a land unknown. from a familiar sunrise to a foreign dawn. They are moving to a new country where the roads are not filled with shadows, the skies are not thatched with rain and shattered metal doesn’t block the sky.They notice…
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Mirrors of Her Self
It’s the exact opposite of herself she sees,the cast away light she can’t cast away.the ugly reality that lives in her unrealitya reverse Narcissus drowning in her reflection.The things she hates are all there- and also all the things she loves.All she has to do is look awayand it will vanish from her sight.Yet, she…
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Girl Really Crying
She looks out of the corners of her eyeswondering whether to flee or stay.She had been a punching bag before, but this is much worse. This is not shame.It is fear. A fear grown deep in her heart and soul.Her tears are almost real,jagged specters of her inside-not part, yet part of this comic book…
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Down Swing
I’m too old to swing in the air,let the wind blow my hair wild.I have grown beyond childish things. Gravity-time has chained me here.Now, I hold all of my fears dear,huddled in all my tears to care.This cheap pipe playground has rusted,lasting just one trusted summer.Childless, I’m not my mother’s peer. She exists all dead…
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Sunflowers Flash Bye
In my car, I speed by a field of sunflowers following the light as the sun follows them, their life with me over in the flash of an eye, leaving only remembered halos in the shadows of buzzing bees whose journey, like mine, will be over by day’s end.
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Parrots Call the Colors of a 1000 Names Remembered
They meet everyday in the vermillion walltender colors of viridescent and lapis lazuli thatcaress the blood before it stains then fades,calling the colors of a thousand names rememberedThey drop their cracked seeds to be mashed into the mud of the cobbled street belowpreening each other’s feather to a quiet array,moaning softly, butting heads in ritual…