Self-Portrait as Glass
Find form in chaos, precision
in the random. This door,
this flask, this lens. A jar
on the hill. I look through
and see myself staring back,
thinking of sand and salts
and the durability of love
in this transparent world.
But I am obsidian, a dark
iris of volcanic fire and
debris. Try as you will,
you’ll never touch my light
.
“Self-Portrait as Glass” first appeared in Windows Facing Windows Review.
Ode to Bacon
How you lend
yourself
to others,
enhancing even
the sweetest fig
in your embrace
over coals,
or consider
your rendered
self, how it
deepens flavor
with piggish
essence, coating
or absorbed,
blended or
sopped. O belly
of delight, o wonder
of tongues,
how could I not
love you
and your infinite
charms, even
when you resist
my efforts and
shoot sizzling bits
of yourself
onto my naked
hands? I pay
this toll
gladly,
today and
next year
and all those
days to follow,
till the last piece
is swallowed
and our sun
goes dark.
Hyperbole
becomes you,
smoked beauty,
salted love,
and I shall never
put you down
or leave you
behind
on a plate
to be discarded
or forgotten,
unloved.
“Ode to Bacon” first appeared here in July 2017, thanks to T.S. Wright’s challenge.
A Word is Not a Home
A word is not a home
but we set our tables
between its walls,
cook meals, annoy
friends, abuse ourselves.
Sometimes I misplace
one, and can’t find
my house, much less
the window’s desk
or the chair behind it.
But if I wait, something
always takes form in the fog,
an arm, a ribcage, a feathered
hope struggling to emerge.
Inept, I take comfort
in these apparitions,
accept their offerings,
lose myself in mystery,
find shelter there
in the hollowed curves.
Self-Portrait as Two Halves
No epiphanies in these woods,
no prayers yanked about,
currying favor from the loneliest
god of a fruitless tree, its DNA
unraveling at thought’s speed.
Never having greeted us,
the other world waves good
riddance and this one turns its
back, both torn in equal measure
yet admitting no guilt through
their narrowed eyes. Oh, to be
whole in this splintered self.
“Self-Portrait as Two Halves” first appeared in The Dew Drop in November 2020.
Self-Portrait as Window
When you look through me
which darkness illuminates
your vision, outlining the
ghosts of never was and not
yet? Or do your eyes glare
back in silent terror, knowing
the power of liquid made
solid, of light transformed to
electricity and by inference
these words or the shades
drawn by voice command?
Transparent, elusive, evident,
I stand alone, clear. Hidden.
“Self-Portrait as Window” first appeared in The Dew Drop in November 2020.
Morning Covers You
1
We extract
light, bleeding
it out one
diamond-shaped
hole after
another.
Finger the results.
Remediation
in form
or placement
to best
advantage?
At night
loneliness cradles
our bones.
2
You arrange our bodies to greater effect,
presuming lesser horrors
to be less.
A list emerges.
Refuting one,
accepting another.
Choices fixed.
Ecstasies of failure
purged.
Morning covers you
like a blue
shroud, so pale.
So cold
and bitter.
This originally appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine in April, 2014, and on this blog in October 2015.
Laocoön
This figure of complexity
persuades a lingering
glance, the two-fold
inclination entwined,
horror expressed
in tandem, the sons’
limbs compressed
as the father struggles,
realizing true
sacrifice, the inward
grasp of storm and
wrath and serpent,
his face
echoing those yet
to come, breached
walls, a city in
flames, the cries
of warnings unheeded.
Laocoön, through Virgil’s Aeneid, is the source of the phrase “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” The poem, which first appeared in The Blue Hour Magazine, was inspired by the sculpture “Laocoön and His Sons,” which resides at the Vatican. You might find Wikipedia’s entry of interest. Originally posted on the blog in February 2016.
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.
Self-Portrait as Circle
Ever-bounded, I express myself in
limitation, in one-dimensional
anxiety looped around the blank
self which is not me; unfilled,
or forever open, intuiting the history
of resemblance in tree stumps,
in concentric pond ripples and
entrance wounds at the instant
of penetration. Or, closed, as
barrier to all extending beyond
my linear border, I accept this
trait, knowing that even as I
surround this empty field, the
center is never mine to hold.
* * *
“Self-Portrait as Circle” first appeared in ISACOUSTIC in October 2019. Many thanks to editor Barton Smock for his tireless efforts to promote poetry and poets.
Some Answers You Never Considered
At the cusp of night, before the sun steams out in the ocean,
and blues abandon the reds.
Nothing rests at the core of zero.
Cerulean blue was first marketed as coerulium.
What we consider sky includes only its lowest reaches.
Even considering a dense history with kites, I humbly concede,
and admit sacrifice as atonement, with grace.
No. I say it again. No.
Your visual system constructs the colors you see.
Only when the wind unbuttons its greatcoat, or at the tip
of an icicle, just before the drop catches itself.
Release the line and know the freedom of loss.
Transparent yet wide, unfolded like a fist freeing
a swarm of bees into honeyed air, it contains us.
Your inability to see it does not refute the horizon’s base.
If I knew I’d tell you.
* * *
“Some Answers You Never Considered” first appeared in Underfoot in October 2017.
O at the Edges 