Bone to Bone
He claims two sides frame every story.
I count three, sometimes more,
believing in multiplicity,
threats concealed
but never
buried. A dust devil twists across the path.
What ascends, what dies?
Heat, ashes. A shadow’s flesh.
The earth, restraining all.
“Bone to Bone” first appeared here in June 2016.
In Praise of Darkness
Night falls, but day
breaks. A raw deal,
no doubt, but fairness
applies itself unevenly. Who
chooses weeds over
lies, flowers over truth?
Last night’s rain fell, too,
but didn’t crack the drought.
Again, we think injustice!
Again, we consider falls.
“In Praise of Darkness” last appeared here in March, 2016, and is included in my chapbook If Your Matter Could Reform.
A Brief History of Edges
This road leads nowhere. I live at its end where breezes
wilt and the sun still burns my darkened skin.
I’ve sailed to Oman, but have never seen the Dakotas.
My friend searches for the concealed parable in this truth.
An early clay map depicted Babylon surrounded by a bitter river,
and an island named the sun is hidden and nothing can be seen.
Fitting the limitless within boundaries, she remembers no one.
The lighted sign says boots, but I see books.
Venturing from the shadows, she offers an accord: intersecting borders,
we must retain ourselves, deliver what calls.
In our place between the hidden and the invisible, consider
that neon gas possesses neither color nor odor.
What lives in creases and at the periphery? The isle called beyond
the flight of birds has crumbled from the lower edge.
Where I stand defines my portion of the spherical earth.
Crossing lines, I look to the sky, its bisected clouds.
“A Brief History of Edges” first appeared here in April 2016.
I’m staring at the flight of beers that Jon has placed in front of me. On the left I find Real Ale Brewing Company’s Phoenixx Double ESB. Next to it rests Ranger Creek’s Saison Oscura, followed by Revolver Brewing’s High Brass Golden Ale, and finally, Southern Tier Brewing’s Creme Brulee Stout. I sip the Phoenixx ESB, and am delighted to find it just as I remembered: dry, but sweet, without being overly bitter. Rich, deceptive, caramely odor, amber color. Overtones, hidden layers. I immediately think of Cole Swensen and her book Try, my real introduction to her work, how she reflects tone and imagery, perception and language, intricately weaving them into patterns, into narrative bits to be experienced and savored. “There’s a world out there that isn’t there,” the Phoenixx, evidently a fan of Cole Swensen, whispers.
I linger over the last sip of the ESB, and move on to the Saison Oscura, which quite frankly, surprises me. And that’s good. My preferences edge towards the bitter, and most of the saisons I’ve tried have finished a tad fruity and sweet for my palate. Not so with Ranger Creek’s rendition. Its beguiling light body, with notes of pepper and spice, end with just the right note of bitterness. But which poet, which book would I pair with this dark saison? Someone who juggles the lyrical with harsh realism, whose voice blends and releases the bitter, the forsaken, in distilled snippets of striking clarity. Ah, yes. I have just the book, The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, and the line:
The whole world tastes like salt,
crows overhead shout, Gone, gone
gone. She can’t help me any more.
I’ll have to walk.
It’s much more difficult to pair the Revolver Brewing High Brass Golden Ale with a favorite poet, because, sadly, I find it lacking. It’s light in the mouth, and, to take Gertrude’s quote totally out of context, there is no there there. If I’m to choose a blonde ale, I’d much prefer Real Ale Brewing’s Fireman’s #4. But waste not, want not. I down it, and consider which poet would not only transcend this disappointment, but also hand it a one-way ticket to, perhaps, Stein’s lost Oakland? Easy. G.C. Waldrep, whose Goldbeater’s Skin sets its barbed hooks into my flesh each time I open it. And for this particular occasion, I find no poem more appropriately titled than “What Begins Bitterly Becomes Another Love Poem,” in which he writes:
We stood without shadows on asphalt at midday.
What we call patience is only fire again, compressed.
And fire should accompany Southern Tier’s Creme Brulee Stout. A crackling fire fending off the icy, shingle-ripping wind, with Miles Davis echoing in the background, an exquisite meal resting comfortably in the belly, and the pleasure of knowing that the book you’re about to dip into is an endless well. Quite simply, it’s a liquid dessert. Light coffee, a tad chocolatey, with big vanilla. Medium body, sweet. Smells like creme brulee. Tastes like it. But it’s beer. It tells the truth, but tells it slant! And who better to accompany this frothy delight than Emily Dickinson?
Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth’s superb surprise…
Onward to the next flight, and more truth. More poetry. More beer. More surprise!
This last appeared on the blog in November 2015.
Kites
Will viewpoint shift with my spine’s slow
compression, or will this
window admit only true images
in the shortened days to come?
I pencil phrases on bone-shaped kites
and release them to the afternoon.
Call them prayers, name them moans.
Each string is a regret freed, a separate
skeleton, let go. My two selves shudder
in the attempt. I await the perfect breeze.
“Kites” first appeared here in July 2016.
Memory and Closets
1
She came with the house.
A skull, spinal column, ribcage, tibia,
scapula – the list goes on, not quite to 206,
even including an extra lumbar vertebra.
Edna (long story) attended Halloween parties
and convivial gatherings, dressed in finery.
Silk suited her best, with linen falling just
behind. And hats! That green fedora,
like a parrot perched on a smiling egg,
never spoke, but stirred the conversation.
2
Old boots, worn left heel explaining the damaged meniscus.
Portable record player. Scratched vinyl.
Shopping bag of VHS tapes. Two empty scotch bottles.
The 30-year old suit that hasn’t been worn in 28 years.
Yellowed newspaper clippings of diet recipes.
The lost carton of wrapping paper.
A cheap guitar case, sans guitar.
3
If memory could speak, what would it not say?
Who else has rubbed this dust across his skin?
Only death is irrevocable.
In this darkness I find you.
Fearing withdrawal, we grow closer.
Things, and more things.
Everything we need travels with us.
Always.
* * *
This was originally drafted during the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30-30 challenge, and subsequently published in Quiet Letter in April 2017. It’s original title, sponsored by Darryl Williams, was “Cleaning Out Closets in Anticipation of Moving Closer to Children.”
Mole (Pipian)
Always the search beneath texture,
layers captured in subsidence,
the drift to interpretation: a mixture, meaning
sauce, and its journey from seed to mouth,
the careful blend of herb and fire,
dismembered chiles,
the crushed and scorched fruit
rendered to preserve for consumption
the most tender qualities
and their enhancement towards art.
* * *
This is of course not about the mammal with the subterranean lifestyle, but rather a version of the Mexican sauce, pronounced “mo-lay,” which includes, as a main ingredient, pumpkin seeds. It takes a while to put together, but is well worth the effort. “Mole (Pipian)” last appeared here in September 2016.
Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome
Nothing about me shines or sparkles. If asked,
I would place myself among the discarded —
remnant cloth and straw, worn, inedible,
useless, if not for packaging intended to
convey a certain message, which I of course
have subverted to “Welcome, corvids!” Even
my voice lies stranded in the refuse, silent
yet harmonious, clear yet strangled, whole
and unheard, dispersed, like tiny drops of
vapor listing above the ocean’s swell, enduring
gray skies and gulls and those solemn rocks
bearing their weight against the white crush.
Why do I persist? What tethers a shadow
to its body? How do we hear by implication
what isn’t there? Bill Monroe hammered
his mandolin, chopping chords, muting,
droning, banging out incomplete minors
to expectant ears, constructing more than
a ladder of notes climbing past the rafters
into the smoky sky. What I sing is not
heard but implied: the high lonesome, blue
and old-time, repealed. Crushed limestone
underfoot. Stolen names, borrowed sounds.
Dark words subsumed by light, yellowed,
whitened, faded to obscurity, to obscenity.
“Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome” first appeared in Crannóg, in June 2017.
Memoir (Cento)
Your hands touched
everything. Will you
be a fountain
or a sea?
A woman sleeps next to me
on the earth. Now
nothing else keeps my eyes
in the cloud.
Each rock is news.
* * *
A cento is composed of lines from poems by other
poets. This cento originated from pieces in:
77 Poems, Alberto de Lacerda
Because the Sea is Black, Blaga Dimitrova
Body Rags, Galway Kinnell
Song of the Simple Truth, Julia de Burgos
Love Poems, Anne Sexton
For further information and examples of the form, you might peruse the Academy of American Poets site: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetic-form-cento
This last appeared on the blog in May 2016.
The Simplest Coercion
Each portrait betrays a similar
attraction: faces
swallowed by the artist’s
eye, his sight being
beyond optic, that assumption
inherent in every expression
but one. Yet this, the self-
portrait, reveals a hint
of secrets – an unwillingness
to confront,
the simplest coercion.
This first appeared on the blog in May 2015.
O at the Edges 