Tag Archives: family

Mother’s Day

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Mother’s Day

The dog is my shadow and I fear his loss. My loss.
I cook for him daily, in hope of retaining him.

Each regret is a thread woven around the oak’s branches.
Each day lived is one less to live.

Soon the rabbits will be safe, and the squirrels.
As if they were not. One morning

I’ll greet an empty space and walk alone,
toss the ball into the yard, where it will remain.

It is Mother’s Day.
Why did I not weep at my mother’s grave?

I unravel the threads and place them around the dog.
The wind carries them aloft.

“Mother’s Day” first appeared in The Lake in July 2016.

Recording of When to Say Goodbye

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dried

 

My recording of “When to Say Goodbye,” which was recently published in Oxidant Engine.

Destined by Gravity to Fail, We Try

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Destined by Gravity to Fail, We Try

Having fallen from the roof not once, but twice,
I verify that it is not the fall but the sudden stop that hurts.

The objectivist sense of the little: the and a, my house in this world.

Galileo postulated that gravity accelerates all falling bodies at the same rate.

While their etymologies differ, failure and fall share commonalities,
though terminal velocity is not one.

The distance between the glimpsed and the demonstrated.

Enthralled in the moment, Icarus drowned.

Rumor has it his plunge was due not to melting wax but to an improper mix
of rectrices and remiges: parental failure.

Thrust and lift. Drag. Resistance.

Acknowledgment of form in reality, in things.

When the produced drag force equals the plummeting object’s weight, the
object will cease to accelerate and will move at a constant speed.

To calculate impact force accurately, include the stopping distance in height.

Followed by long periods of silence.

house

This first appeared on the blog in December 2015.

The Geography of Silence

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laundry

 

The Geography of Silence

 

1. Laundry drooping at midday.

2. She dreams off-key, in pastels.

3. With misunderstanding comes anger.

4. Mata! Mata! Again!

5.  Ashes crossing the ocean.

6.  Sweat, and the taste of separation.

7.  Reaching for past moons, she cries.

8.  Death’s shade.

9.  Rice.

10.  Self-sacrifice, the centered gift.

11. Inward, always. Inward.

telescope map

“The Geography of Silence” first appeared here in March 2016.

Portrait in Ash

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blue-smoke


Portrait in Ash

In summer, sweet crushed ice, and crickets pulsing through the night.

Brake lights, and always the blurred memory of nicotine.

I recall running through the glow, laughing, fingers splayed forward,
and the ensuing sharp admonishment.

Steel, flint and spark. Blackened linings and diminishment.

How many washings must one endure to accept an indelible soiling?

In retrospect, your body still resists.

Lovely smoke uncoiling towards the moon, residue of impurities
and substance. Desire, freed and returning.

You dwell underground. I gaze at the cloud-marred sky.

* * *
“Portrait in Ash” appears in Interval’s Night, a mini-digital chapbook, available for free download from Platypus Press.

I Have Misplaced Entire Languages

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ships

I Have Misplaced Entire Languages

Neither this tongue nor that still dwells in my house.
The hole of remembrance constricts, leaving behind only debris.

As a child I mixed three languages in family discourse.

Now only one is comprehensible, and I abuse it daily.

The woman in the blue dress stands alone on the pier, weeping.
A pidgin is a simplified language developed between groups with no

common tongue. Sounds form easily, but meanings struggle.

My father is shipped to Korea without warning.

Some words insert epenthetic consonants to separate vowels. Years
later we arrive in Italy and my mother starts receding.

A fourth language emerges.

This morning I asked, “Ame?” “Yes,” she said, “but just drizzling.”

Some families share no common language and must forge without.
We have used pain, pane and pan without reference to etymology.

Having abandoned the familiar, she chose another, never accepting the loss.

These forms we can’t articulate, these memories we have not traced.

* * *

This was originally published in April 2014 as part of Boston Review‘s National Poetry Month Celebration, and also appeared on this blog in July 2015.

bread

My “Moving” Poem is Up on Silver Birch Press

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image


This, too, was overlooked during the frenzy of the 30/30 Challenge in August, so I’m reposting it.

My poem, “Summer 1966: After France & Remembering Bobby, Who One Day Would Learn to Multiply and Divide, Write Love Poems, Define Home, Fight Unfairly and
Live with as Much Gusto as a 7-Year Old. Perhaps.” is featured on The Silver Birch Press “When I Moved” series.

This is a reworked version of a piece that originally appeared on the blog Holistic Journey.

Day Seventeen, Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, August 2016

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closet

My poem “Cleaning Out Closets in Anticipation of Moving Closer to Children” has been posted among today’s offerings of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project (9 poets have agreed to write 30 poems apiece in 30 days, to raise funds for Tupelo Press, a non-profit literary publisher). I am grateful to Darryl Williams who sponsored and provided this title, and last year’s “Something Lost, Something Trivial.”

Cleaning Out Closets in Anticipation of Moving Closer to Children

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…

Click here to see the rest of the poem.

Tomorrow’s poem, “Vision in Far Infrared,” was sponsored by Angela who provided not only the title, but also these three words: nebulosity, eon, maelstrom.

I still need title sponsors for the 23rd and 24th, and don’t forget about the 3-word sponsorships. Remember, you can combine the two (as in tomorrow’s poem) to force me to use not only your title, but also three words that I’d likely not use on my own. And can anyone challenge last year’s co-winners of Worst Title in the History of the 30/30 Project, Ron, Plain Jane and Mek?*

The  sponsored poems are a blast to write, and the titles lead me to poems I’d not otherwise conceive. If you’re inclined to sponsor a poem, Donate to Tupelo, and please let me know as soon as possible what your title is or which three words you’ve foisted upon me.

For a $15 donation, I’ll send you a signed copy of one of my 30-30 poems. Your choice!

If you need something to read, Think Dink! A $30 donation will get you my 2015 chapbook If Your Matter Could Reform, Barton Smock’s Infant Cinema, Jamie Hunyor’s A New Sea, and Tim Kahl’s full length work, The String of Islands, thanks to the generosity of Dink Press founder and editor Kristopher Taylor!  A limited quantity is available, so order earlier rather than later. I hear that Kristopher Taylor is providing a little something extra with the collection. You can read about it here, thanks to Ken at RIVRVLOGR.

For information on sponsorships (and my other incentives), click here.

Thank you for supporting poetry! Only 13 poems to go!

* The titles are, respectively, “Calvin Coolidge: Live or Memorex,” “Your Armpits Smell Like Heaven,” and “Reduce Heat and Simmer Gently Without Cloud Cover, Till Sundown. Serves 2 – 7 Billion.” “Nose-Picking Reese’s Hider” is definitely a strong contender for this honor.

The Geography of Silence

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laundry

 

The Geography of Silence

1. Laundry drooping at midday.

2. She dreams off-key, in pastels.

3. With misunderstanding comes anger.

4. Mata! Mata! Again!

5.  Ashes crossing the ocean.

6.  Sweat, and the taste of separation.

7.  Reaching for past moons, she cries.

8.  Death’s shade.

9.  Rice.

10.  Self-sacrifice, the centered gift.

11. Inward, always. Inward.

telescope map

The Ecstatics

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chimney


The Ecstatics

Divisions and separations, a summing of consequences,
the brother whose ashes remained forever lost. Two cities
and their survivors’ shame. The loud, kind young man
whose words fell to the restaurant’s floor, unbidden.
What came next in the drift, untoward and misspent,
in the grammar of between? Darkness, suppressed.
Smoke. Pleasure and fear, unclothed.


sorrow bw