My poems “Do Not Retain Me In An Urn,” “Pinot Noir” and “Hotel of my Future” are live at Salamander Ink Magazine, a Nigerian publication. Thank you, founder/editor Salam Wosu for taking these pieces.
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Blackbody
1
It is a house. A small house.
A small dark house perched on the edge of town
near the river.
The river is constant.
A man enters the house, closes the door behind him.
Nothing emerges. We witness this daily.
No one emerges.
The house is dark.
A man enters.
The river is constant.
2
A pebble pierces the water’s surface.
I awaken to imperfection.
A blackbody allows all incident radiation to pass into it,
absorbing all, reflecting none.
The tensile strength of water decreases as temperature rises.
Hakuin said if you doubt fully, you will awaken fully.
Before sunrise I unshutter the window.
Angle of reflection, angle of incidence.
My doubts reinforced with coffee, I pause.
Perfect blackbodies do not exist in nature.
Opaque box with a hole.
3
There is a house. A small house.
A small dark house perched on the edge of town
near the river.
Nothing emerges.
A man enters.
The river is constant.
“Blackbody” was first published on Aubade Rising in May, 2014, and appeared on the blog in February 2016.
Scarecrow Questions
Though my tongue withers from disuse and
drought, I taste from across the sea astringent
smoke and the progeny of a hundred bullets
buzzing by like misguided insects through
the theater of the dying, and I question how
pride and greed, hubris and fear, unwind their
cords to detonate these differing yet tangled
lines. How to fathom such depth of mistrust?
The Christian paints her door frames azure, a
Muslim carpets his tile floor, the Jew panels his
walls, yet among each, various segments clash,
and all of their houses implode. I feel nothing,
yet shiver throughout the sun-blazed afternoon.
Then I consider the structure of zero, whether its
body contains or extracts, negates or compromises,
hollows out duplicates within duplicates, exorcising
with a blade so sharp as to peel away memory from
those it crosses without the faintest murmur. Gone.
Erased. Banished to never having been. I neither
breathe nor digest, but I absorb and recall. How do
you so willingly forget history? This post determines
my destination, but not my destiny, not tomorrow’s
promise, nor the returning birds and faith, the long
nights, their stars, their deaths, the following days.
“Scarecrow Questions” first appeared here in February 2016.
As Breath Defines Constriction (Solar Wind)
The snake swallows itself, integrating the opposite. Or, illustrating the
nature of earthquakes, encourages conjecture.
Wind meditation. The practice of circling mountains, of emptying oneself.
Matter accelerating away from the sun. The prickly pear on the roof.
The Tendai monks of Hiei run 40 kilometers each day for 100 consecutive days.
Only then may they petition to complete the thousand-day trial.
Coronal mass ejections temporarily deform the Earth’s magnetic field.
I sweat while driving to the store for cold beer.
The heliopause is the point at which the solar wind’s strength is no longer
sufficient to push back the interstellar medium.
No matter its destination, a comet’s tail always points away from the sun.
At which point does one hear the sound of sunlight entering stone?
They must complete the thousand-day challenge or die. To this end,
each monk carries a knife and length of rope on his journey.
A map is simply paper. Solar wind, cord of death.
Stones in the path, quivering earth. Eyes focused ahead.
***
“As Breath Defines Constriction” is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press publication, IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks, available on Amazon.
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.
Self Portrait with W
One might claim a double victory, or after the Roman Empire’s fall, a reclamation
from the slurred “b” and its subsequent reduction.
Survival of the rarely heard, of the occipital’s impulse.
The oak’s crook performs a similar function.
Shielding myself from adjuration, I contemplate the second family
root, weighted in weapons, in Woden, in wood.
Not rejection, but acceptance in avoidance.
The Japanese homophone, daburu, bears a negative connotation.
Original language was thought to be based on a natural
relation between objects and things.
Baudelaire’s alphabet existed without “W,” as does the Italian.
The recovery of lost perfection is no longer our aim.
When following another, I often remain silent.
As in two, as in answer, as in reluctance, reticence.
We share halves – one light, one shadowed, but both of water.
Overlapped or barely touching, still we complete.
* * *
“Self-Portrait with W” originally appeared in the Silver Birch Press Self-Portrait series in 2014, and was reprinted in my chapbook, The Circumference of Other, included in Ides, a one-volume collection of fifteen chapbooks published by Silver Birch Press and available on Amazon.com.
At Sunrise We Celebrate the Night’s Passage
And discuss not the darkness of crows, but the structure of phonemes
embedded in our names, the gratitude of old fences, of broken
circles and extinguished flame.
Two weeks ago he poured wine and declared himself Dog.
There are roosters, too, who cannot crow,
other speechless men, and lonely burros guarding brush piles.
What letters form silence? From what shapes do we draw this day?
Light filters through the cedars and minutes retract,
as the bull’s horns point first this way, then that, lowering themselves
through the millennia, becoming, finally, A as we know it.
With my tongue, I probe the space emptied of tooth.
Barbed wire was designed to repel, but when cut sometimes curls
and grabs, relinquishing its hold only by force or careful negotiation.
Symbols represent these distinct units of sound.
My name is two houses surrounding an eye.
Yours consists of teeth, the bull, an arm, the ox goad.
Originally published in Prime Number Magazine, one of my favorite online literary journals, in 2013, and posted here in September 2015. Cantinflas the donkey makes a cameo appearance in this poem…
Stephanie L. Harper’s new crown of Covid-19 sonnets, A Crown Most Unroyal, is today’s poetry feature at Vox Populi. I’m deeply grateful to Editor Michael Simms for his …
Crown of Sonnets Featured at Vox Populi
May I Be Familiar
Do we find you in what you’ve left or where you’ve gone.
In words you could not form, or forgot long ago.
Missing the pastels, the shades, all nuance.
With moistened hands, I pat rice into a ball and wrap it in seaweed.
By my reckoning, the word who no longer implicates.
Ritual accumulates significance in memory.
Forgotten fruit on the sill. A whisper nailed to the wall.
Honor and pride line your earthen home.
Though you never did, I pickle ginger. Make takuan.
The transparent house reflects no gaze and contains no one.
Gathering your absence, I coil it around my body.
* * *
“May I Be Familiar” is included in my mini-digital chapbook, Interval’s Night, published in 2016 by Platypus Press as #10 of their 2412 series.
My poem “The Inside Twitch” is live at Exilé Sans Frontières, a new international publication. Thank you to editors Daniel Nemo and Pryscilla Hebel for taking this piece.
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O at the Edges 