My poem “Lying in Bed I Think of Breakfast” is featured at The Big Windows Review. Thanks to editor Thomas Zimmerman for accepting this piece.
My Poem “Lying in Bed I Think of Breakfast” is Up at The Big Windows Review
17
Monthly Archives: December 2019
One
One
I am Brahma
the straight line, the upright being,
fire that flares,
seed without end, manifold
self beyond all
polarity, radiating sun:
the all.
Philosophers considered one a non-number,
generatrix of all that follows.
Other.
The singularity. The lone.
From the Indo-European oi-qos we achieve solitude,
while the collective meaning of one derives from the Sanskrit sam.
United in itself, it changes nothing,
becoming everything.
On its side it represents the horizon.
Alone is all-one.
The Latin non is one negated, as is the German nein.
Symbol of intellect, the Hindu moon glows wide.
Atomic number of hydrogen, magician’s numeral,
monad and eccentric, I bear the empty product.
“One” last appeared here in September 2018.
The Real Question
The Real Question
I ask myself why I mourn
what has not yet
occurred. Will that last fledgling
fly or will a snake swallow
its gravity before descending
to a separate end? Coffee
darkens the carafe and an egg
poaches amidst the scent of basil.
Sprinkling parmesan on buttered
toast, I wonder where to unearth
the real question, when to look
into its eye. How to read its grief.
“The Real Question” was first published in After the Pause in June 2019. Thank you, Michael Prihoda, for accepting this piece.
Letter from Austin
Letter from Austin
Michael, when you say moons do you see
cold stone floating in the firmament
or phrases frayed in the mouth and spat on paper?
And does the Spanish moon simmer at a similar
pace to mine or yours? Which embers blush brighter?
But let’s turn to estuaries, to salt and clamor and gun-
running poets and interrupted words sold in stalls
between parenthetical gates, to incomparable cavas
and the deterioration of envy and intervening years.
Or perhaps mislaid passion – a friend claims love
is merely a bad rash, that we scratch and scratch
and inflame but never truly cure what ails us. Sounds like
politics to me. Or sports. And business. Or neighborhoods.
On my street people should cook and play music together,
laugh, raise chickens and read good books. They should
brew beer, swap tomatoes, recite each other’s poetry and sing
in tune. But we’re different here, preferring instead electronics
glowing in dimly lighted rooms. I reject this failure, as I also
reject the theory of centrifugal force spinning off the moon’s
body from the earth’s crust, preferring to imagine a giant
impact blasting matter into orbit around what morphed into the
earth, and somehow accreting the stuff into this orb we
sometimes worship. This, to me, is how good relationships
form: explosions of thought and emotion followed by periods
of accretion. But what I mean is I hope this finds you well
by the river of holy sacrament. Remember: brackish water
bisects our worlds. Turn. Filter. Embrace. Gotta run. Bob.
Originally published in Heron Clan 3, this first appeared on the blog in July 2015.
My friend Michael occasionally sends hand-written notes or letters to me, and I respond with poems. This is one. You might read some of his writing at Underfoot Poetry.
Sometimes Love is a Dry Gutter
Sometimes Love is a Dry Gutter
Or a restless leaf, a footprint.
Is fault on a blameless day,
scrawled on a washed-out sky.
My friend’s music orbits his home,
worms through the cracks
in the bluest lines, ever new
and permanent, staining even his hope
long after the lights stutter away.
And the rain’s attenuated sorrows?
They’re coming, he says. Like goats
through a fence. Like lava. Like tomorrow.
* * *
“Sometimes Love is a Dry Gutter” was first featured at Vox Populi in January 2017. I’m grateful to editor Michael Sims for supporting my work.
Shoe
Shoe
The right has only one option,
as is true of the left,
neither to mingle
nor disappear like washed socks
or loved ones in a casino.
There are those who believe
in fallen towers and pasts
burnished beyond recognition,
and truth, as it was written, for them,
in blood, with money inherited
from thieves. The puddle happens.
The door rotates. A snifter shatters.
The shoe’s approach defines its wearer.
* * *
This first appeared in March 2016, but somehow seems even more appropriate today.
Scarecrow Considers the Afterlife (with recording)
Scarecrow Considers the Afterlife
Gathering threads, I join them with a central
knot, producing a sunburst flower or constellation
of ley lines spreading forth and connecting their
tenuous truths – megalith to fjord, solstice to
dodmen and feng shui, suppositions entwined
and spat out. And who’s to say which alignment
stands taller than the next, which rut, which energy,
defines our direction? When I cease to be, will I
remain or dissipate, return in another form or
explode and scatter throughout the universe, the
residue of me sizzling along the starways for eternity
or perhaps just the next twenty minutes. It is clear
that I possess no heart, no internal organs. My spine
is lattice, my skin, fabricated from jute. Eviscerate
me and straw will tumble out. I do not bleed. Yet
the crows consult me in secret and conduct their
daily mercies, and I think and dance and dream
and wonder and hope. Oh, what I hope.
* * *
This was first published at Eclectica in July 2016, with two companion pieces.
The Most Intimate
The Most Intimate
How that blue turns gray over green
at a slight tilt of the chin,
and even upside down
anchors the tree.
Some constellations escape language,
stars looming without nouns and adverbs,
the utterances of the planets
caught in the gravity
of their own situations.
Laugh, but the trashcan is full. The lawn is brown.
There are no gods.
Unadorned statements abound.
Even this sky may shift again,
the most intimate twist
turned full.
* * *
“The Most Intimate” first appeared at Poetry Breakfast in May 2019. Thank you, Ann Kestner, for taking this piece.
Self-Portrait as Never
Self-Portrait as Never
Within the unknown or could-have-been,
this stance requires certainty, the ability
to stand upright, rooted, implacable,
relentless in the isand the noin time.
I dream of faith, despite knowing its
secrets. Atoms swarm, seed heads explode.
Rivers reverse, the galaxy rots, and at the
center, we fold our arms across our chests
and deny or accept at whim, leaving behind
no footprints, only lost words, some dust.
“Self-Portrait as Never” was first published in After the Pause in June 2019. Thank you, Michael Prihoda, for accepting this piece.
Featured American Poet at The High Window!
Stephanie L. Harper is keeping pretty good company lately. The last American poet featured at The High Window was the 13th poet laureate of the U.S., Ted Kooser!
My poems, “Brave,” “There is This,” “Anatomy of Hope,” and “Moon Cake” are now up in the winter 2019 edition of The High Window, a fantastic online journal hailing from the U.K.! Thank you to editor David Cooke for the incredible thrill and honor of hosting me as this issue’s Featured American Poet!
O at the Edges 