Agave
It might deceive.
Or like a cruel
window, live its life
unopened,
offering a view
yet reserving the taste
for another’s
tongue, ignoring
even the wind.
The roots, as always, look down.
* * *
This first appeared in Ijagun Poetry Journal in December 2013, was featured in poems2go in April 2016, and is also included in my micro-chapbook, You Break What Falls, available for download from the Origami Poems Project: http://www.origamipoems.com/poets/236-robert-okaji
Mirror
The attraction is not
unexpected. We see
what is placed
before us, not
what may be.
The mirror is empty
until approached.
* * *
One of six short poems included in my micro-chapbook, You Break What Falls. Available for free download here: http://www.origamipoems.com/poets/236-robert-okaji
“Mirror” first appeared here in May 2015.
The Politics of Doors
With every doorway, decisions.
Accept, deny. Turn.
How to resist the ajar,
the barely closed?
Is what emerges
expelled or escaped,
free or released?
Resistant as always,
I swivel,
pause to inhale.
Every Wind
Every wind loses itself,
no matter where
it starts. I want
a little piece of you.
No.
I want your atmosphere
bundled in a small rice paper packet
and labeled with strings of new rain
and stepping stones.
I want
the grace of silence
blowing in through the cracked
window, disturbing only
the shadows.
Everywhere I go, bits of me linger,
searching for you.
Grief ages one thread at a time,
lurking like an odor
among the lost
things,
or your breath,
still out there,
drifting.
* * *
Music: “Gymnopedie No. 1” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
“Every Wind” first appeared in The Lake in July 2016, and is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for order via Amazon.com and Finishing Line Press.
Well Pump
To be within, yet without: the rootless seed.
Staring through glass, we see only the surface
sliced thin like cell-thick specimen slides.
I dream of knowing, of inclusion.
The well pump is fried, but only thieves
return our calls. How to deflect the lure
of complicity? Stack stone, observe clouds.
Tap the cistern. Absorb its hollow tune.
* * *
“Well Pump” first appeared in January 2018 in Amethyst Review.
Many thanks to editor Sarah Law for accepting it.
Landscape with Jar
(after Wallace Stevens)
What vanishes more readily than the breakable
and transparent? Not here, not now, it says,
never voluble in the morning. I have work.
The horizon exists simply in perception.
Try to touch it – the hill meets the sky
only from afar, offering discordance
up close, no measurement possible.
And among the trees and vines, a glimmer
of spite, twisted open. Moving closer, we see
through. We see rocks, a bird. We see air.
“Landscape with Jar” was first published in Birch Gang Review in July 2017.
Inscrutable
The river fills her body
like handwriting on a scrap
folded into a book
and found years later.
No one reads that language.
Undiscovered,
she remains closed, cleansed,
awaiting interpretation.
* * *
“Inscrutable” was first published in Volume 3, Issue 1 of Ink in Thirds. Thank you, Grace Black, for taking this piece!
Self-Portrait as Wave
Feeling limited, I succumb to surge,
disperse, reassemble, return
in the calming swirl. Nothing
resembles me. I relinquish this piece,
retain that, and reinforced,
reside in the whorl, swollen,
winnowed to a point and capped,
roar and rumble, shredded,
whole yet apart, a solitary
fist crashing through another
watery torso in response, in
resonance, again, again.
“Self-Portrait as Wave” was first published in the inaugural issue of Kissing Dynamite. Many thanks to editor Christine Taylor for taking this piece.
Emptying Haibun
Waiting, I open myself but nothing enters. Even music’s comfort avoids me, preferring calmer ports or perhaps another’s wind choices. I drop the weighted cord through the flute, pull it, and watch the cloth ease out. Some days pain drags behind me no matter what words emerge, what phrases follow. Last night brought the season’s first fireflies. This wall of books grows taller each day.
exhaling, I note
smudges in the sky —
oh, dirty window
Between
1
Living between, we watch what flows below us shed itself.
And what remains after the drought subsides?
I don’t recall the instance of assignation, of color-imprinted
awareness and stones erupting from the earth,
nor the paper’s texture and the faint odor of chemicals reacting,
but in this moment I embrace bitter coffee, the wrecked-nerve
hammer-strikes pulsing from hip to ankle, squealing brakes
and the rain shallowing morning’s ridge as if to say
enjoy me now
for I may never return.
2
Faith flickers in the wind, darting among the weeds.
Risen from payment, penalty, punishment, revenge, the word pain
establishes justification where none need exist.
Interpreting light and sound, scent and heat, we converse.
The dog shivers in bed and I lay a towel over her,
affixing content to involuntary movement.
Stepping through space, crossing the stream.
Those things we don’t know.
Three feet below me the snake’s head ripples towards the far side,
a V of turbulence dissecting the calm.
Everything that can be contained contains us as we in turn
envelop one another. I take your hand and press forward.
3
Connected, we part, only to return and part again.
My hand stopped inches away and the diamondback slithered off
under the workbench, seeking peace.
Abandoned skin, abandoned words. Even the cactus grows thirsty.
The paradox of becoming what you are not. Today, sitting hurts
and standing provides little relief.
In one of two halves I find myself. In the other, your laughter rings.
Like rumblings of earthen discontent or the hiss of air
exiting waterless pipes, we emerge, aimless, exhausted.
Inhabiting one world, we seek others.
* * *
“Between” appeared in Clade Song, one of my favorite poetry journals, in August 2016.
O at the Edges 