Forecast
Does the peach
blossom
count its
numbered days
in the lure of false
spring?
Smiling, you admit pleasure
in cruelty,
in assigning lots
to the relief of those
never called,
and those whose answers
remain open,
unfixed.
The freeze is coming,
you say.
Let us pray.
This first appeared here in January 2017.
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.
Celan, 1970
From frame to door,
the obvious defers, denying
entry as if
an eye could reclaim
or separate
the fallen tear
and the river’s skin,
or return
those words to
thought, water to
stone, intent
to cold
reason,
now to before.
He stepped into release.
* * *
“Celan, 1970” first appeared in October 2015. One of the most influential (and difficult) European poets of the 20th century, Paul Celan survived the horror of World War II but never escaped its shadow. A brief biography may be found here.
We Call the Neighbor’s Fat Burro Donkey Hotei, but His Name is Cantinflas
Certainty grows in corners, away from light.
From his mouth issues the breath we take, the words we keep.
Enjoy the collusion of shape and sound.
We share the hummingbird’s taste for sweet, but not its fierceness.
Its heart beats 1,200 times a minute,
and you ask me how best to bury money.
Hotei’s name means cloth sack, and comes from the bag he carried;
a man of loving character, he possessed the Buddha nature.
What we own cannot be held.
Most plastics are organic polymers with spine-linked repeat units.
The space you’ve left expands exponentially.
Left in the rain, the bell grows.
Christen me at your own peril. Agaves flower once then die.
Fluency in silence.
I dropped my pants when the scorpion stung my thigh.
The wind takes nothing it does not want.
After vulcanization, thermosets remain solid.
The Cantinflas character was famous for his eloquent nonsense.
Vacuum wrap the bills in plastic, place them in pvc.
Having mastered imperfection, I turn to folly.
Not the thing itself, but the process laid bare and opened.
Hoping to hide, the scorpion scuttled under a boot.
Thought to action, whisper to knife: which is not a curse?
The wind wants nothing; the burro sings his loneliness.
This first appeared here in May 2015. My failures often lead to success. I’ve never quite completed this piece, and don’t know that I ever will. But the first draft (nearly five years ago) set me off on a new path, one that has served me well. What more can I ask?
To That Dismal Train Somewhere Near Banff
Forgotten, you settle into the earth,
naming stones for each destination missed –
Kamloops, Jasper, Lake Louise – which is worth
each open-mouthed coin laid on the rail, kissed
and reformed into altered currency
no longer capable of carrying
debt or a tourist’s sense of urgency,
only dying days and the wearying
plight of the unmoved. If vines caress your
body, who’s to blame for accepting their
advances? When green subsumes rust, deplore
that too, but enjoy the moments you share,
leaf on metal and glass, the raspy light
tonguing your throat through those long, whistling nights.
Apricot House (after Wang Wei)
We cut the finest apricot for roof beams
and braided fragrant grasses over them.
I wonder if clouds might form there
and rain upon this world?
The transliteration on Chinese-poems.com reads:
Fine apricot cut for roofbeam
Fragrant cogongrass tie for eaves
Not know ridgepole in cloud
Go make people among rain
Apricot was a given. It offered specificity, and feels lovely in the mouth. Roof beams, as well. Cogongrass didn’t make the cut. It is indeed used for thatched roofs in southeast Asia, but it felt clumsy; in this case, the specificity it lent detracted from my reading. And rather than use “thatched” I chose “braided” to imply the layered effect of thatching, and to imply movement, to mesh with and support the idea of clouds forming and drifting under the roof. “Not know” posed a question: did it mean ignorance or simply being unaware, or perhaps a state of wonderment? I first employed “unaware” but thought it took the poem in a different direction than Wang Wei intended (but who knows?). “Ridgepole” seemed unnecessary. So I chose to let the reader follow the unsaid – using “form there” to reinforce the impression already shaped by the roof beams and the grasses “over them.” I admit to some trepidation over the second couplet. It may still need work.
“Apricot House” first appeared here in December 2014.
Directive to the Circumspect Texan
When the vowel trips through the consonant and knots
the tongue, remember this: artifice. A making. In one
hand, a knife. On the table, cured flesh and fermented
products. Imagine uncertain lighting, laughter, a narrow
opening and the uphill walk three days into the parametric
world of occlusion. Tell no untruths. Mention refrigerators
and your proficiency with duck. Admit failure and order
a second pilz. Listen. Discuss heat and issues of space,
personnel logistics and the pleasure of July departures.
Cite advertising and Ashbery. Savor what is rightly not
yours. Embrace inadequacy. Forego dessert. Express
true gratitude. Say y’all. Shake hands. Find the door.
“Directive to the Circumspect Texan” first appeared here in December 2015.
Nocturne with a Line after Kees
I close my eyes and see nothing but rain.
And after, take pity
for what turns beyond sight: the wretched
flower, a hiss from the road. Last night the wind
stole sleep from my body,
leaving me alone, wordless, listening
for her next breath. An alchemist,
I transmute the memories of old wounds laid open.
*****
This first appeared in Ijagun Poetry Journal, in December 2013.
After Before
A return to that
time when silence
reigned. The neighbor’s
guinea fowl have long
departed, but three cedars
drop needles in the driveway
even as reluctant growth
pushes out from the oaks’
limbs. Nothing circles
below the clouds, no
roosters crow. Feeders
hang still and empty.
The wrens remain
cloistered. You read
these events as separate
birdless chapters, all
hushed in the dappled
air, passages carried
yet confined by nearly
soundless threads
suspended from the
persimmon tree. You admit
a status as sentient
protein, one meal among
many, while you rest
and absorb
the soft ticking
of eighteen eager
juvenile mantises
on the porch screen.
“After Before” first appeared here in December 2015.
Where the Word Begins
I end, or so it seems.
Small comfort
in the light of that lamp
reflecting from the window,
a low, interior moon
subject to whim and
circumstance.
And how do we retract
those unsaid lines,
heartfelt and meant,
but never expressed?
The hoot owl voices my response.
“Where the Word Begins” was first published in December 2018 at Amethyst Review. Thank you, Sarah Law, for accepting this poem.
O at the Edges 