Acceptance Charm
She’ll take the river’s trace
over curl and leaf
and the street’s
dead end,
riveting eyes
even as they blink.
The narcotic’s benediction.
Renewal. Sleep.
That bed remains unmade,
stripped of purpose: no
caress a thigh would
recognize
dark fingers writing in air
“Acceptance Charm” last appeared here in April 2018.
Self-Portrait as Hoot Owl
Who do you think I am, what will
grace serve, where in this moonless
void might you lie, can we echo
through the hours and never attach
ourselves to one discernable tree?
Is query my only song? Is sadness
yours? Wrapped around these
priceless silhouettes, our voices
merge downhill near the creek’s
rustle, below the seeping clouds
and stars yet somehow above the
night and tomorrow’s slow ascent
into more questions, more doubt.
* * *
“Self-Portrait as Hoot Owl” first appeared in Issue 125 of Right Hand Pointing. Thank you to editors Dale Wisely, Laura M. Kaminski, F. John Sharp and José Angel Araguz for taking this piece.
“Mask” is the second section of the seventh poem in I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes), my new chapbook.
The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.
Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
“Salt” is the first section of the seventh poem in I Have a Bird to Whistle (7 Palinodes), my new chapbook.
The book is available here to U.S. residents for $7.50, shipping included.
Non-U.S. purchasers can order it directly from me by emailing aBirdtoWhistle@yahoo.com.
My poem “Home: Living Between” is up at Allegro Poetry Magazine. Scroll down to read it. Thank you, Sally Long, for taking this poem.
I confess that I’ve ordered multiple copies of this book, because I know I’ll give some away. And the pre-publication sale price of $6.50 is nearly 50% off!
I saw the flags come down—
their masts falling like the trees
flattened by shockwaves
in those clips of old footage
from military nuclear bomb tests,
spliced into high school history documentaries.
They weren’t projected celluloid etchings
that teenagers confined to plastic chairs
could summarily cancel
with one hand motioning No
in the universal vernacular…
Caught in a wash of floodlights
on the indigo summer dusk,
the red-white-blue swaths crushed
in on themselves like torn parachutes,
& all vanished at once—deposed
by morning’s first, grainy insinuations
that breached the blinds’ periphery,
& accreted into a single, silent force
creeping along my bedroom walls,
as if to thwart illumination:
In this country of my own
birth & citizenship, I’ve, in turn,
given birth to two, precious children—
my riven heart’s two halves now trussed
in a spectacular fiasco of feathers & wax.
“What a…
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My odd poem “No Rain Will Fall” is up at Thirteen Myna Birds. Scroll down to read it. Thank you, Juliet Cook, for taking this poem.
One of my favorite poets spreads the love!
Self-Portrait with Orbit
An arced path around a central point, bound to but held apart,
as in night’s returning grace, or standing waves.
In periapsis, you reach out as I slowly withdraw.
Gravity does not prevent departure but prolongs it.
The acceleration of a body is equal to the sum of the gravitational forces,
divided by its mass. I rise from the chair but can’t escape.
Not circular but elliptical.
Where falling away and curving from never meet.
Realizing that I am neither focus nor center, I discover place
in symmetry, in flow and subtraction.
A cloud obscures the sun and you close your eyes.
I wither at the thought of scaling or relative size, or your departure.
In the simplest Klemperer rosette, four bodies cycle their dances,
heavy, light, heavy, light, in a rhombic configuration.
My arteries fill in opposition to desire.
Wanting you, I absolve weight and listen, accept my place.
“Self-Portrait with Orbit” last appeared on the blog in October 2017, and is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press publication, IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks, available on Amazon.
Self-Portrait as Compost
Beneath the surface find warmth,
the fruit of decay and mastication,
of layered mixes and intermingled
juices. Disintegrated or whole,
still I strive to speak. Bits of me
meld, to be absorbed slowly; I
process and am processed: here,
within the pepper bush’s deep red
berries, there among the dianthus.
Scattered, deliberately placed,
having been, I shall emerge again,
forever changed, limitless, renewed.
* * *
“Self-Portrait as Compost” was first published in Issue 125 of Right Hand Pointing. Thank you to editors Dale Wisely, Laura M. Kaminski, F. John Sharp and José Angel Araguz for taking this piece.
O at the Edges 