Aleppo
A father sings to his son,
dead two days,
and the platitudes persist.
Widow of night. Lantern’s trick.
What trace, you wonder,
exists of humanity in these etched
walls? Light bleeds through a crack
like rules unheeded and scattered.
Another sheer looming of hours.
The song, continued.
“Aleppo” was first published in Vox Populi in August 2018. I am grateful to editor Michael Simms for his continuing support of my work.
Letter from Insomnia
Accepting Li Po’s tragedy,
apocryphal or not,
we embrace her imperfect
reflection
rippling in the breeze,
but manage to surface.
I once thought I would name a child Luna
and she would glow at night
and like Hendrix, kiss the sky.
But that was whimsy
and only candles light this room
at this hour
on this particular day
in this year of the snake.
And what fool would reach for a stone orbiting at
1,023 meters per second?
There are clouds to consider, the stars
and the scattering rain
and of course wine
and the possibilities within each glass
and the drops therein.
We must discuss these matters
under her gaze, where smallness gathers.
* * *
This originally appeared in Middle Gray in October, 2013. It was written in response to a poem my friend Michael sent me, replying to this poem.
Another attempt at adapting Li Po. A note on Chinese-poems.com stated “at this time, the breaking of a willow twig was part of formal leave-taking.”
Laolao Pavilion (after Li Po)
Where do more hearts break under heaven?
This sad pavilion, where visitors part,
the spring wind whispers bitter goodbyes
and willow twigs never mend.
Transliteration from Chinese-poems.com:
Heaven below damage heart place
Laolao see off visitor pavilion
Spring wind know parting sorrow
Not send willow twig green.
First posted here in June 2014.
Tuning the Beast
I prepare contingencies for all outcomes. No.
I’ve prepared for this: a body. A key. As if
that cloth draped a leg. Not a leg
but the representation of a limb.
Another fragment, brought forth and opened.
Not a limb, an arrow, perhaps, pointing to the sea.
An oar, brought inland and unrecognized
for its purpose, directed or aimless. No, not an oar.
A neck, polished, and a chamber, with strings.
Repetition, fixation. Position. Intent.
I pluck and strum, pick and stroke, maintaining
space, steel above wood, bending notes,
moving sound in time, purposefully, from
this place to that, the left hand, creating,
conversing. The right, reasoning, controlling,
burning its past to the present, allowing,
preventing, rendering beat, consistent
motion, shaping only this moment, this now.
“Tuning the Beast” was drafted during the August 2015 30-30 Challenge, thanks to Sunshine Jansen’s sponsorship. It subsequently appeared in The Blue Nib in September 2016.
Awaiting Thunder, He Dreams
If all our voices were to meet in the atmosphere
what could the rain achieve?
When we give nothing we have nothing.
Is it enough to listen?
Wisps and heaps, ripples and sheets.
Accumulated, dispersed, fingers
unknotting death’s
grip, steps taken around the flames,
in caution, in delight,
imagining the greatest undoings.
“Awaiting Thunder, He Dreams” was first published in Red River Review, in August 2018.
Worms
Yesterday’s cored apple buzzes with light,
another vessel stored in sadness.
I have swallowed vows.
I have replaced air with earth
and enjoyed tongued flesh.
To think is to live. To live is to delay.
Burrowing through the soil’s rich
decay, this body,
accepted. Absorbed.
“Worms” was first published in Rue Scribe in September 2018.
I love this poem!
Pressing into the Depths
of an old-growth oak grove on your search for virgin peat having naturally preemptively considered the human calcaneus poised on its subcutaneous fat pad (the sturdy lovechild as it were of evolution & bipedal ambulation); you go whole-soled knowing nature engenders no freaks & that the point of weight-bearing actually is to sink-spring to life your very own rooted upward mobility—to elapse your mossy quiet’s once upon a time into cantilevered boom to mushroom & split your bark like a seething green superhero (who leaves you in tatters) harden yourself new gnarls to gather lichens & ever after phosphoresce the midnight fog like a moonbeam striking your cast-off glass slipper
“Pressing into the Depths” was published in the November 2018 peaceCenterbooks anthology, The Larger Geometry: poems for peace, edited byd ellis phelps.
Even at Night
That year it snowed
and possibilities sprouted
like secrets opening to
chambers in the deep cedars
lining our hills. What did you read
in the vultures’ loops, in those
spaces within? I recall striding
through a field of labor-drunk
bees burdened with pollen. Now
we trek from house to hovel,
carrying books and drills,
water and planks, moving
glass and stone and the dying,
finding absolution in task, in
ritual and folly, in soil and sky;
the sun touches us even at night.
“Even at Night” was first published in 13 Alphabet Magazine, out of Bangladesh, in September 2018.
Track (after Tranströmer)
2 p.m.: Sunlight. The subway flows
beneath us. Flecks of darkness
shimmer madly on the wall.
As when a man cracks a window into a dream,
remembering everything, even
what never occurred.
Or after skimming the surface of good health,
all his nights become ash, billowing clouds,
strong and warm, suffocating him.
The subway never stops.
2 o’clock. Filtered sunlight, smoke.
* * *
I’ve been dipping into Friends, You Drank Some Darkness, Robert Bly’s 1975 translations of Harry Martinson, Gunnar Ekelöf and Tomas Tranströmer, and I couldn’t resist playing with one of my favorite poems. A different darkness, a separate space, another landscape…
This first appeared here in April 2015.
Genealogy Dream
To recall but not recall: family, the swift curve
of evolution’s arc. One moment your knuckles
scrape the earth’s surface, and the next you’re
pinpointing mortar fire by satellite phone. Or,
having plowed the field by hand, you fertilize
with human dung (no swords in this hovel),
only to wake into a dream of high rises and
coffee served steaming by a blushing ingenue
who morphs into an uncle, killed in China
on the wrong side of the war, leaving his
sister still mired in grief six decades later
under the Texas sun. On this end of memory’s
ocean, we know poverty and its engendered
disrespect, neighbors’ children warned not
to play with you, for fear that the family’s
lack of nickels would rub off and contaminate,
that your belly’s empty shadow might spread
down the unpaved streets and envelop even
those who don’t need to share a single egg
for dinner. Years later the son will celebrate
his tenth year by suffering the indignity of
a bloody nose and a visit to the principal’s
office, a gift of the sixth grader who would
never again employ “Nip” to disparage
someone, at least not without looking over
his shoulder in fear of small fists and quiet
rage. Which half measures harder? In one
hand, steel. In the other, water. I pour green
tea on rice and recall days I’ve never lived.
“Genealogy Dream” was first published in August 2018 in Issue 4 of Lost River literary magazine. Many thanks to editor Leigh Cheak for taking this piece.
O at the Edges 