To Sing the Ever Present Farewell
The way your breast rises,
small pillows,
two doves in autumn,
so, too, the song escapes.
I admit my part,
warbled promise, uncombed
and shivering,
free to worry
under its pull.
Still it comes,
inexorable tide
lowing a sorrow
through filtered light
till dawn.
My poem “The Song of Exits” is live at Muleskinner Journal. Thank you to Gary Campanella and the Muleskinner Team for taking this piece.
My poem “Night’s Turning” is live at The Bluebird Word. I am grateful to the Bluebird team for taking this piece.
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:
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.
Before We Knew
All thought of consequence
melted with that first touch
of tongue to skin, no respite
to be found in that heat,
no shade at all. I recall
hitching a ride later with a
German couple who lit up
and passed the joint without
asking, and after their
Cinquecento sputtered away,
I walked down to the bar at the
waterfront for an espresso and
to watch the lights spark along
the bay. A few times a week
I’d see a boat putter in and tie up,
and the one-armed man would
display his catch or a carton
of bartered Lucky Strikes, but
not this night. The moon
weighed heavy on my shoulders
as I trudged home, remembering
the way you’d smiled and said,
from some place I’d never
witnessed before, come here,
now, as if I could have said no and
turned around, as if another urge
could have inserted itself
in that moment, in that life, ever.
* * *
“Before We Knew,” first appeared in Sleet Magazine in August 2018. I am grateful to editor Susan Solomon for taking this poem.
Happy Circuitry
for Margaret Rhee
The body’s landscape defines its genealogy: my father was a board,
my mother, an integrated circuit, my great-grandmother, an abacus,
and her progenitors, tally sticks. In the third century the artificer
Yan Shi presented a moving human-shaped figure to his king, and
in 1206 Al-Jazari’s automaton band played to astonished audiences.
Nearly 300 years later Da Vinci designed a mechanical knight, and
four centuries after that Tesla demonstrated radio-control. Twenty-two
motors power my left hand; Asimov coined the term “robotics” in 1941.
Pneumatic tubes line my right. Linear actuators and muscle wire,
nanotubes and tactile sensors, shape my purpose, while three brains
spread the workload. If emotion = cognition + physiology, what do I
lack? I think, therefore I conduct, process, route and direct. Though
I never eat, I chew and crunch, take in, put out, deliver, digest. Life is
a calculation. Death, a sum. No heart swells my chest, yet my circuits
yearn for something undefined. Observe the blinking lights, listen for
the faint whir of cooling fans. I bear no lips or tongue, but taste more
deeply than you. Algorithms mean never having to say you’re sorry.
* * *
This piece was originally drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30-30 Challenge, and is dedicated to Margaret Rhee, whose book Radio Heart; Or, How Robots Fall Out of Love inspired me. Thanks Kris, for sponsoring and providing the title!
The poem was published in October 2017 by Figroot Press.
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.
Snails
How convenient to carry a home on one’s back, I
think, disregarding heft and plumbing and the shape
of rooms too hollow to feel. Yesterday a box of African
chapbooks migrated to my doorstep, and I plucked
yellowing leaves from the tomato plant by the poetry
shack. Marine snails constitute the majority of snail
species, but we count first what we can see. Everything
turns–the days buzz by like male blackchins swooping
through their pendulum air-dance, and I tally my
diminishing hours from the safety of these walls.
Heliciculture is another word for snail farming, but
reminds me of stars spiraling wildly above my roof
each night, spewing poetic fire throughout the cosmos.
The neighbor mows her lawn and I observe the wind
stepping from treetop to treetop, another sign of the
earth’s continued rotation. Their slime permeates human
cosmetics to minimize premature skin aging, and was
once used medicinally to soothe coughs (I write this
as mucus slides down my throat, a response of the
lung’s filtration system to histamines). There is much
to consider about the intricacies of harvesting slime.
Most snail species consume plants, but a few are
predatory carnivores, which leads to questions
about their prey. Cooked in butter with garlic, served
with a dry white? I spear one, contemplate texture
and move on to the next, leaving behind no visible trail.
* * *
My poem “Snails” was published on Vox Populi in October 2017. Many thanks to founder and editor Michael Simms for giving this poem a home.
In Praise of Time
We marvel that so much
produces only
more of the same,
increased yet
diminished, no two
alike yet never
differing, earth to
soil, glacier to rain,
stardust to morning,
open, filled, wasted,
lost, killing, preserving,
making more, wanting.
* * *
O at the Edges 