This is probably not the poem that I would offer my beloved, but then again maybe I would. It’s brilliant. Love Poem
“Love Poem” by Dorothea Lasky
12
Feeling Squeezed at the Grocery Store I Conclude that the Propensity to Ignore Pain is Not Necessarily Virtuous, but Continue Shopping and Gather the Ingredients for Ham Fried Rice because That’s What I Cook When My Wife is Out-of-Town and I’m Not in the Mood for Italian, and Dammit I’m Not Ill, Merely a Little Inconvenienced, and Hey, in the 70’s I Played Football in Texas and When the Going Gets Tough…
Feeling Squeezed at the Grocery Store I Conclude that the Propensity to Ignore Pain is Not Necessarily Virtuous, but Continue Shopping and Gather the Ingredients for Ham Fried Rice because That’s What I Cook When My Wife is Out-of-Town and I’m Not in the Mood for Italian, and Dammit I’m Not Ill, Merely a Little Inconvenienced, and Hey, in the 70’s I Played Football in Texas, and When the Going Gets Tough…
I answer work email in the checkout line. Drive home, take two aspirin.
Place perishables in refrigerator. Consider collapsing in bed. Call wife.
Let in dog. Drive to ER, park. Provide phone numbers. Inhale. Exhale.
Repeat. Accept fate and morphine. Ask for lights and sirens, imagine the
seas parting. On the table, consider fissures and cold air, windows and
hagfish. Calculate arm-length, distance and time. Expect one insertion,
receive another. Dissonance in perception, in reality. Turn head when
asked. Try reciting Kinnell’s “The Bear.” Try again, silently this time.
Give up. Attempt “Ozymandias.” Think of dark highways. Wonder about
the femoral, when and how they’ll remove my jeans. Shiver uncontrollably.
The events in this poem took place five years ago. Life is good.
May I Be Familiar
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.
Memorial Day
Memorial Day
Arriving at this point
without knowledge of the journey,
the slow collapse and internal
dampening – the shutting down, the closing in – lost
in the shadowed veil, my eyes flutter open to find
everything in its place, yet
altered, as if viewed from a single step
closer at a different height, offering a disturbing
clarity. Looking up, I wonder that she wakes me
from a dream of dogs on this, of all days,
only to detect under me linoleum in place of the bed,
my glasses skewed from the impact,
the floor and left side of my head wet. You looked
like you were reaching for something, she says,
and perhaps I was, though with hand outstretched
I found nothing to hold but the darkness.
“Memorial Day” was first published in Eclectica in July 2014, and was, much to my delight, subsequently included in Eclectica Magazine’s 20th Anniversary Best Poetry Anthology.
While Trespassing I Note the Sadness of Old Fences
While Trespassing I Note the Sadness of Old Fences
I write poems when I can,
in late morning or during
the afternoon, between chores
but before dinner. And sometimes
I duck through spaces
void of wire barbs, and consider
how to fill the incomplete, which words,
what materials could repair
those particular holes. I cut my own
fence once, to access our house
when the creek flooded the road,
lugging uphill through the snake
grass a jug of scotch, my mandolin
and a watermelon, essentials for a weekend’s
respite. To be truthful I cut only the lowest
strand, to help the dog get through — I
was able to climb over, but he couldn’t dig
through the limestone rubble to wriggle
under, and we’d come too far
to simply turn around.
* * *
This appeared in riverSedge, Volume 29, Issue 1, released in October 2016. I first encountered riverSedge in 1983, and vowed that one day my poetry would be published in this journal. It took a while…
Bandera
Bandera
I offer nothing in return, and in offering, receive.
My mouth is a river
whose current bears no words,
but the silence is not of my making.
Notice the streets and their grey
hunger, the rain and the sun
passing by much
as one passes an unopened door.
That question, unvoiced.
That shiver preceding the icy touch.
You may deny my motives.
You may deny my existence and
the very notion of shape unto form.
I offer nothing, and in offering, receive.
“Bandera” first appeared here in May 2015, and was subsequently published in The Basil O’Flaherty in November 2016.
Another Bird, Rising
Another Bird, Rising
The shadow behind you slides over
the ceiling, up and gone,
a wingless silence. The drafted swirl.
One morning shifts into two, and still
you won’t give in, each moment’s
gasp another one earned, a measurable
notch on the table’s edge, quarters
in the magic purse. They all count.
Pills, chemo, radiation. Ocean to sky.
Houses to ash. Your eyes see black.
“Another Bird, Rising” first appeared in deLuge in fall 2016.
3 Poems Up at Sleet Magazine
My poems “Scarecrow Ascends,” “Before We Knew,” and “A Step Closer” have been published at Sleet Magazine. I am grateful to editor Susan Solomon for taking these poems.
Poem Up at Vox Populi
My poem “Aleppo” is featured at Vox Populi.
I am grateful to editor Michael Simms for his support of my work.
How to Do Nothing
How to Do Nothing
First you must wash the window to observe more clearly
the dandelion seed heads bobbing in the wind. Next,
announce on Facebook and Twitter that you will be offline
for the next two days, if not forever. Heat water for tea.
Remember the bill you forgot to pay, and then cleanse
your mind of all regret. Consider industrial solvents
and the smoothness of sand-scoured stone, the miracle
of erasure. Eliminate all thought, but remember
the water. Hitch a ride on a Miles Davis solo and float
away on a raft of bluesy notes and lions’ teeth,
and wonder how to sabotage your neighbor’s leaf blower,
but nicely, of course. She’s a widow with a gun.
Now it is time to empty yourself. Close your eyes.
Become a single drop of dew on a constellation of petals.
Evaporate, share the bliss. Stuff that dog’s bark
into a lock box alongside the tapping at the door,
the phone’s vibration, the neighbor’s rumbling bass,
and the nagging, forgotten something that won’t
solidify until three in the morning, keeping you awake.
But don’t ignore the whistling. You must steep the tea.
* * *
“How to Do Nothing” was published in Volume 4 of Steel Toe Review.
O at the Edges 