This is Not Just to Say
Okay. I ate the damned
plums. But it’s not my
fault you left them
sitting there on the top
shelf, so sweet, so cold,
enticing me, as only
you, or perhaps a ripe
peach, or strawberries,
or Asian pears or even
pomegranates, can do.
Besides, you need
something substantial
for breakfast. How about
donuts, or bacon, instead?
* * *
My apologies to WCW, but I couldn’t resist. You can find the original Williams poem here. The poem first appeared here in September 2015.
If We Burn
What flares instead to replace our
privileged nights? And which
assemblage of words could reorder these
deaths into comprehension,
change I can’t breathe from epitaph
to actuated plea for help?
Are words ever enough?
Can we stack our indifference and fear
into a mile-high pyre, and torching it
watch them rise to nothingness,
disappearing through the clouds
into the streaming light of cold, dark stars?
Raise your hands and sing. Blow softly
upon the ember. Inhale and recall.
Do you still feel? Will you breathe?
Every fire needs oxygen.
* * *
“If We Burn” first appeared on this blog in December, 2014. It’s also included in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform.
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.
My poems “Bent” and “Because You Cook” have been published in Ristau: A Journal of Being, available for purchase here. A great deal for $3!
What Are You Going To Do (Cento)
Not everything can be set to music,
you have to understand that.
If I went to the end of the street,
would I be at the center of myself?
Now ends. Now begins.
Still, we sing the same songs;
we live in the sound – no love
of miracle or numbers helps.
I wonder if my body
is outline. A far point rendezvous.
A smoke plume taken, but not
into a hot, dark mouth.
Or perhaps it never had a name.
Bruising’s not the end of it.
* * *
Credits: Maggie Smith, Michael Chitwood, Carol Frost, CM Burroughs, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Dan Beachy-Quick, Willis Barnstone, Lauren Camp, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Maggie Smith, Lawrence Raab, Natasha Saje.
“What Are You Going To Do” was drafted during the August 2016 Tupelo 30-30 challenge, and was published in the February 2017 issue of Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art.
Galveston, 1900
First the wind, then a tide like no other
uprooting the calm,
a visage tilted back in descent
as if listening for the aftermath.
And later, the gardener’s lament
and the building’s exposed ribs,
light entering the eternal
orchard, nine children tied to a cincture.
Not even the earth could retain its bodies,
and the sea remanded those given to its care.
“Galveston, 1900” first appeared here in January 2015.
Scarecrow Dreams
If by night I move without aid,
what then? Precious flesh, precious
bone, never mine to lose – the difference
between nothingness and no thing. A
pity that my friends fly at the merest
movement, but when the air’s breath
stills, they sing and rattle among the
grain, scribing their days in song
and footprints, seeking the available
on the ground. And what scrolls lower
than the sound of sunflowers turning?
The laughing daughter runs around
my lattice spine, scattering joy like so
many seeds, and when my hollow
fingers clench, the earth quivers, or
so it seems. Then midnight returns
and I disengage and stalk about,
scaring rodents and their predators,
hooting in harmony with the owls
reveling in the night air, remembering
the holy shirt, a yellow glove, corn
silk’s gleam at noon and the warmth
of your fingers against my burlap skin.
I do not breathe, I say, but I exist. By
morning what joins me but the tune
of yet another bird, unseen, melodious,
the pulse of morning’s dew. Eternity.
How my straw tongue longs to sip it.
“Scarecrow Dreams” first appeared in the summer 2017 edition of Eclectica. Many thanks to poetry editor Jen Finstrom, for publishing several of my scarecrow poems.
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.”
Buddha’s Not Talking
He looks out from the shelf while I consider
manure, sharp knives and the hagfish’s second
heart, or whether odors differ in texture when a dog
retraces his steps through the park, and do they really
lose themselves or just quickly shed their pasts,
forever moving towards now. Sometimes I say hello,
but truthfully we seldom interact, unless I bump his
shoulder when retrieving one of the books leaning
against him, and then it’s only a quick “sorry” on my
part, and a stare on his, perhaps a slight nod if
I’ve not yet had coffee. I fear I’ll never grasp
the difference in having and being, that my true
nature has splattered on a trail and the dogs will
sniff it and lift their legs in acknowledgment,
or perhaps acceptance of the infinite, with wisdom
far beyond my reach, before moving on to disquisitions
about soil and fragrance and the need to justify art
with decimal points. Yesterday I roasted chicken, moved
books, sipped ale. Today I’ll sweep, discard papers and
wonder if I’ll become what I think, whether reincarnation
will be cruel or kind. Either way, Buddha’s not talking.
* * *
“Buddha’s Not Talking” first appeared in July 2017 at Blue Bonnet Review.
With gratitude to editor Cristina Del Canto for taking this piece.
My poem “Sometimes Love is a Dry Gutter” is featured at Vox Populi. I’m grateful to editor Michael Sims for taking this piece.
O at the Edges 