My poem “Nebraska” is live at ONE ART: a journal of poetry. Many thanks to editor Mark Danowsky for taking this piece.
Poem Up at ONE ART: a journal of poetry
17
Tag Archives: love
Magic (with recording)
Magic
You give me nothing to hold, and for this
are blessed. Devotion
is a mirror and breath, one
solid and illusory, the other
needed yet expelled, taken, dispersed.
Which begs another question
not relying on tricks.
“Who traces names on the sheets?” you ask.
I roll up my sleeves and say “Words
conceal what the glass cannot.”
Source becomes deed, becomes habit.
In your hand a stone, a dove, the unbroken ring.
* * *
“Magic” is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, and was first published in Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art.
Ode to Bacon (with recording)
This is a celebratory post. Yesterday I cooked bacon, and it smelled like, well BACON! And it tasted like bacon, too. One of the side effects of COVID-19 is parosmia (a distorted sense of smell/taste), and both Stephanie and I have suffered from it since July. We’ve been unable to tolerate such staples as onion, peppers (bell and chile), garlic, dark chocolate, sparkling wine, peanut butter, grilled/charred and cured meats of all kinds, celery, arugula, and assorted other beloved foods. But yesterday’s breakfast of migas tacos with bacon clearly indicates that we are improving. Finally!
Ode to Bacon
How you lend
yourself
to others,
enhancing even
the sweetest fig
in your embrace
over coals,
or consider
your rendered
self, how it
deepens flavor
with piggish
essence, coating
or absorbed,
blended or
sopped. O belly
of delight, o wonder
of tongues,
how could I not
love you
and your infinite
charms, even
when you resist
my efforts and
shoot sizzling bits
of yourself
onto my naked
hands? I pay
this toll
gladly,
today and
next year
and all those
days to follow,
till the last piece
is swallowed
and our sun
goes dark.
Hyperbole
becomes you,
smoked beauty,
salted love,
and I shall never
put you down
or leave you
behind
on a plate
to be discarded
or forgotten,
unloved.
“Ode to Bacon” first appeared here in July 2017, thanks to T.S. Wright’s challenge.
Sunday, June
Sunday, June
Trying to give, I fail too often.
But this day we prepare for you
food that your beloved often cooked,
made with the ingredients of 19,000
nights and promises of more to come.
These potatoes. That beef, the fruit.
Simple, and yet so difficult to reproduce.
Even the recipe is incomplete. “Some
mayonnaise,” it says, then “mustard,”
but not whether dry or prepared, and
the amount is unclear. Yet the results
transport you to stronger days, to
the clear-eyed self and limitless
possibilities, meals on the table
at five o’clock, the satisfaction of work
well done, knowing that you have soared
above your father’s imprecations
but never beyond love’s touch, her
sleepy murmurs, morning coffee,
burnished histories and late cigarettes,
the tulips on the soil you’ll soon share.
“Sunday, June” first appeared in the print journal Nourish in March 2018.
Poems Up at Tistelblomma
My poems “Never Enough,” “Lace Cactus” and “Love Note” are live at Tistelblomma, a new publication out of Sweden. Many thanks to editor Jenny Enochsson for taking these pieces.
Baking Bread
Baking Bread
I would knead you in the afternoon,
in the warmth of a still room,
starting high at the shoulders,
one finger sliding down your spine,
my lips following, tracing the path
of a hummingbird’s flight. Oh, my love,
circumstance and distance, floods and
wildfires, will never truly douse our light.
I wait as the dough rises, and think
in the languages of yeast and water
and flour and salt, how my hands
will feel at your waist, how our day
falls into night, our love firming,
ever expanding through the rising heat.
“Baking Bread” first appeared in Ristau: A Journal of Being in January 2019. Many thanks to editor Bob Penick for taking this piece.
Love Song for the Dandelion
Love Song for the Dandelion
When you scatter
I gasp
aware that the windborne
carry truths
too powerful to breathe
too perfect
to bear
What is your name
I ask
knowing the answer
all along
* * *
“Love Song for the Dandelion” first appeared in Rue Scribe in September 2018. Many thanks to Eric Luthi and the editors at Rue Scribe for accepting this piece and several others.
Poem Up at The Elevation Review
My poem “In That Pause” is live at The Elevation Review. Thank you, Thomas Kneeland, for taking this piece.
Letter to a Ghost
Letter to a Ghost
Had I not dreamed your death, I would have praised this day.
Your name rests in a wooden box on a desk
in a room far away and twice as old as we were then.
My penance in this phase: to continue.
I gather words close and refrain from admissions.
The clock on the wall seldom chimes,
like one whose vows circumvent convenience, or
a shade allowing the barest sliver of light
through the window. That tock preceding
a long silence. Snow blanketing the mounded earth.
Your scent never lingers past sleep, where you remain.
At last I no longer covet those sheets you’ve shared.
Your name rests in a box. I gather words and refrain.
“Letter to a Ghost” last appeared herein 2017.
In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End
In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End
To fairly allocate irrigation resources, the Persians measured time with water,
sinking a bowl in a larger vessel and tallying the count with pebbles.
And what is time but counting, determining the number of units within a set?
The sum of beats between silences and their diminishing echoes?
Its symbol in the West grew from fig and ivy leaves, while early medical
illustrations depicted pine cone-shaped organs.
In most reptilians, the aorta receives only oxygenated blood.
Qanats pump by gravity. The hagfish’s second resides in its tail.
Recognize the empty as full. Squeezed shut, we open.
Contraction and flow, ejection, inflow, relaxation.
Emotion as electrical impulse. Murmuring valves. The color red.
The fifth chamber remains silent and undetected.
The primitive fish’s chambers are arranged sequentially, but in an S-shape.
Ancients believed arteries transported air through the body.
The Buddhist figure, too, originated in leaves, symbolizing not love
but enlightenment. The ache of failure confounds us.
“In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End” was first posted here in May 2016.
O at the Edges 