My poem “Night’s Turning” is live at The Bluebird Word. I am grateful to the Bluebird team for taking this piece.
Poem Up at The Bluebird Word
18
April 23rd National Poetry Month Zoom Reading: Poets in the Blogosphere
The theme for National Poetry Month 2022 is There’s A Poem in This Place. Two places to find contemporary poetry at its most vibrant are in the blogging community and at live readings. On 23 April 2022 from 4-5:30 PM ET, the two places come together when a select group of poets from the blogosphere present a live reading of their poetry at Poets in the Blogosphere. Most poetry is meant to be read aloud, and hearing poets read their own work is a heightened experience.The event is moderated by Elizabeth Gauffreau.
Please join me and my friends TODAY, Saturday, April 23, 2022 4-5:30 PM ET
Registration required: https://tinyurl.com/Poets-in-the-Blogosphere
It’s going to be fun!
Self-Portrait with Blue
Self-Portrait with Blue
Darker shades contain black or grey. I claim
the median and the shortened spectrum, near dawn’s terminus.
In many languages, one word describes both blue and green.
Homer had no word for it.
The color of moonlight and bruises, of melancholy and unmet
expectation, it cools and calms, and slows the heart.
Woad. Indigo. Azurite. Lapis lazuli. Dyes. Minerals. Words. Alchemy.
On this clear day I stretch my body on the pond’s surface and submerge.
Not quite of earth, blue protects the dead against evil in the afterlife,
and offers the living solace through flatted notes and blurred 7ths.
Blue eyes contain no blue pigment.
In China, it is associated with torment. In Turkey, with mourning.
Between despair and clarity, reflection and detachment,
admit the leaves and sky, the ocean, the earth.
Water captures the red, but reflects and scatters blue.
Look to me and absorb, and absorbing, perceive.
This originally appeared in the Silver Birch Press Self-Portrait Series, and is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press chapbook collection, IDES, published in October 2015.
Poets in the Blogosphere ~ Poetry Reading
How awesome is this, to be featured with such great poets! Register to attend, while spots are still available. (hosted by Liz Gauffreau) Register …
Poets in the Blogosphere ~ Poetry Reading
Life among the Prickly Pear
Life among the Prickly Pear
Rain’s twofold curse: not enough
too much. Still, I take comfort
even among the thorns.
There is much to like here.
Its moonlight flowers.
Paddles fried with minced garlic.
Wren’s jubilant shriek.
The fruit’s red nectar.
I wake to distant screech owls
purring their desires on separate
slopes. Late spring, storms looming.
I close my eyes and the creek rises.
* * *
A draft of this first appeared here in June 2015, and I posted this version in May 2016.
In the meantime, two of my guitar heroes:
Recording of “Door”
Door
What would you conceal?
Or open to. Could you unfurl
your fist to daylight
and shudder loss away — one key,
one digit, one death — presuming the universe
and all its hinges available for inspection
behind yet another unlatched presence.
And this spinning disk,
how shall we step off? Every moon
sheds its coat. Listening, I turn the knob.
“Door” first appeared on the blog in September 2016.
And All Around, the Withered
And All Around, the Withered
I total the numbers printed
on passing boxcars,
multiply by seven, then add two,
subtracting every third odd number,
only to find, in the end, myself
tethered to this empty platform,
spelling hapless with integers,
acknowledging Zahlen and
the infinite. Sometimes gravel, too,
calls to me and I observe space
in the path’s patterns, constellation
stacked upon constellation,
multi-dimensional galaxies
expanding in one swooping arc,
heroic eagles and exploding stars
complicit in their deeds and forever
locked in sequence, yet when I explain
my vision, the words emerge
as convex polyhedrons or inverted,
drooled gasps, and people turn aside.
That boy’s two bricks shy a full load, they
say. The lights are on but nobody’s home.
“And All Around, the Withered” was published in Steel Toe Review in January 2017.
Requiem
Requiem
That it begins.
And like a wave which appears
only to lose itself
in dispersal, rising whole again
yet incomplete in all but
form, it returns.
Music. The true magic.
Each day the sun passes over the river,
bringing warmth to it. Such
devotion inspires movement: a cello in the
darkness, the passage of sparrows. Sighs.
The currents are of our own
making. If we listen do we also
hear? These bodies. These silent voices.
* * *
“Requiem” was written in the 80s, in response to a piece of music. It made its most recent appearance here just a few years ago.
April 23rd National Poetry Month Zoom Reading: Poets in the Blogosphere
The theme for National Poetry Month 2022 is There’s A Poem in This Place. Two places to find contemporary poetry at its most vibrant are in the blogging community and at live readings. On 23 April 2022 from 4-5:30 PM ET, the two places come together when a select group of poets from the blogosphere present a live reading of their poetry at Poets in the Blogosphere. Most poetry is meant to be read aloud, and hearing poets read their own work is a heightened experience.The event is moderated by Elizabeth Gauffreau.
Please join me and my friends on Saturday, April 23, 2022 4-5:30 PM ET
Registration required: https://tinyurl.com/Poets-in-the-Blogosphere
It’s going to be fun!
N Is Its Child
N Is Its Child
If darkness produces all, from where do we obtain nothing?
As a line becomes the circle, becomes a mouth, becomes identity.
In mathematics, n signifies indefinite; in English, negation.
The no, the non, the withdrawal, the taking away.
A heart with trachea represented zero in Egyptian hieroglyphs.
My mouth forms the void through the displaced word.
Conforming to the absent, the missing tongue serves soundlessness.
Aural reduction, the infinite unclenched: n plus n.
Shiva, creator and destroyer, defines nothingness. As do you.
One and one is two, but zero and zero is stasis.
Pythagoreans believed that all is number, and numbers possess shape.
The letter N evolved from a cobra to its present form.
One may double anything but zero.
Unspoken thought, disorder. The attenuated voice swallowing itself.
* * *
“N Is Its Child” was first published in Issue 4 of Reservoir. I am grateful to editor Caitlin Neely for accepting this piece.
O at the Edges 