Self-Portrait with Bruise
Some damages announce, others conceal.
How else may we continue
despite our best
inattentions? And which treasure
do we truly hold
closer, the blood orange
or the blade
that parts its segments? At
thirty I would have chosen
one. At forty, the other. Now,
options spread like branches among the cedars.
Ruptured vessels reveal our lapses.
***
“Self-Portrait with Bruise” first appeared in Shadowtrain in August 2015.
Driving without Radio
One minute you’re sipping coffee at the stoplight,
and the next you find yourself six miles
down the road, wondering how you got there,
just two exits before the French bakery
and your favorite weekday breakfast taco stand.
Or while pondering the life of mud,
you almost stomp the brakes when a 40-year old
memory oozes in — two weeks before Thanksgiving,
the windshield icing over (inside), while most definitely
not watching the drive-in movie in Junction City, Kansas,
her warm sighs on your neck and ear, and the art
of opening cheap wine with a hairbrush. How many
construction barrels must one dodge to conjure these
delights, unsought and long misfiled? You turn right
on 29th Street and just for a moment think you’ve seen
an old friend, looking as he did before he died,
but better, and happier, and of course it’s just a trash bag
caught in a plum tree, waving hello, waving goodbye.
“Driving without Radio” was published at Split Rock Review in November 2016. Many thanks to editor Crystal Gibbins for providing a home for this one.
Forgotten
Is it simply forgotten
or not remembered?
My father coughs
through his days,
asking for answers
only his brother knows.
Some books are better
read from the end,
he says. I don’t know
what to do.
He tries to spell his name
but the letters elude him,
teetering between symbol
and thought and choice.
The chair tips over
when I lean too far back,
replacing memories
with hardwood
and a new bruise
coloring my thoughts.
This word, that one.
A face, the date.
Last Tuesday’s crumb.
The floor accepts us all.
* * *
“Forgotten” first appeared in ISACOUSTIC* in January 2018.
Somewhere: 28 Rue St. Jacques
Or eating spam fried rice in the courtyard
after kindergarten, and playing cowboys
with Thierry, the kid next-door. We shared toys,
but not comics. Written language was hard
to decipher, unlike the spoken. I
never captured the nuances, and lost
the rest over the years. Today the cost
eludes me, like moths fluttering by. Try
to recall that particular morning light,
how it glanced off the French snow, and the
way our mother smiled at breakfast, no trace
of sadness, yet, the lines marking our heights
rising along the wall, limbs of a tree
we’d never climb, out there, somewhere, in space.
* * *
This was originally drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge. I was never satisfied with it, and didn’t see any reason to revise. But those memories are worth sharing!
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.
“Letter to Wright” is included in my collection of twelve poems found in Volume 2 of Oxidant | Engine’s BoxSet Series. I’m proud to have my work appearing alongside that of such luminaries as José Angel Araguz, Dorothy Chan, John Sibley Williams and others.
At $12, the BoxSet is a steal, featuring ten poets, each with 10-15 pages of poetry. Where else can you purchase ten discrete collections at that price?
* * *
Letter to Wright from Between Gusts
Dear Tami: The wind here speaks an undiscovered language:
diffident, it lurks in the background, stuttering, fingering
everything, shifting directions, mocking us, barely noticeable
until it gets pissed off and BLOWS! Then, shit happens. Pickle
jars appear in purses. Love notes remain unwritten. Shingles
flap across the lawn and idiots are elected to office (nothing new,
I know). When I was a kid I marveled at those fortunates who
lived under the same roof for years, for decades, entire lives, while
my family rolled around the globe, collecting vaccination scars
like postcards or nesting dolls. How interesting, I thought then,
to know and be known, to avoid the perpetual newcomer’s
path. Having shared this house with my wife and various dogs,
birds, rodents, insects and arachnids for thirty-three years, I now
know this – home is not a stationary edifice. No cornerstone
defines it any better than fog rubbing the juniper’s tired back,
or courting mayflies announcing warmth’s arrival in their brief
pre-death interludes. Desire is a feckless mistress; after obtaining
the prize, we miss the abandoned and wonder what might have
been. When you arrive at your new town remember this: no one
is stranger to you than yourself. I speak from experience, having
absorbed differences at one end only to watch them emerge
hand-in-hand at the other, like newborn twins or nearly forgotten
reminders of an uncle’s kindness in a year of typhoons and sharp
replies and rebuilt lives. Home is a smile, a lover’s sleepy touch
at 3 a.m., or the secret knock between childhood friends reunited
after decades. It lives in soft tissue, not steel, and breathes water
and air, flame and soil and everything between. But it can’t exist
without your mind and body lugging it around. I would like to
tell you what the wind is saying, but it’s singing different tunes
these days, and my translation skills begin and end in that still
place between gusts, floating in the twilit air like so many empty
pockets. These are the only words I have. Not much to hang a hat
on, and I apologize for my shortcomings and inability to expound
with clarity. I speak in poetry, but mean well. May your moons
be bright and your winds wild yet gentle, even if you can’t fathom
their meaning. I’ll keep trying if you will. All the best, Bob.
“Letter to Wright from Between Gusts” was published at The Lake in August 2017. Many thanks to editor John Murphy for accepting this piece, and to T.S. Wright for inspiring it.
Driving to Work, I Pass Myself
Some days the drive takes twenty minutes,
on others, thirty or more. Seems I might pass
myself on the right morning if time flexed its
biceps or looped me into a dimensional shift
thick with donuts and tires and lost minutes.
How odd it would be to wave and say “see ya,”
knowing that tendered frustration grows in
distance, until it takes over the entire mirror.
Looking back, I see my frown diminishing
to a lone point in that shrinking van at the
hill’s crest. Will we meet in the parking
garage? Should I wait? You know the rules.
This first appeared on the blog in March 2018.
The Body Gives
Sometimes the body gives too much.
A tendon frays, the heart mumbles
and no one sees the damaged parts.
Ignoring pain, we continue climbing ladders,
sandpaper breath rasping the morning light.
Little bits of us crumble all the time,
yet we stumble on, pretending.
Then the body kills us with its enthusiasm.
Cells duplicate wildly, plaque explodes.
This enmity within? Defensive maneuvers.
Working alone, I wonder where I might end.
On the floor. In a field. Atop the bed.
Under the surface of a rippling pond
or drifting with smoke
through a snow-clad afternoon
at eight thousand feet. Among
the grocery’s tomatoes and squash
approaching the end of a long list.
At the bar, glass in hand, or in a truck
at a four-way stop, the radio blaring.
Time enough for speculation, they say.
But I wonder: when I jump,
does the earth always rise to greet me?
* * * *
“The Body Gives” first appeared in The New Reader Magazine, in March 2018.
“My Mother’s Ghost Sits Next to Me at the Hotel Bar” was first published in The Lake in December 2018.
In the Place of Cold Doors
We have a word for everything,
or seven for nothing. Soon
you’ll enter and I’ll talk
on the other side,
watch for signs in every
dropped crumb,
every nailhead and
embedded phrase remembered
in another’s voice. The light
will dim and I’ll look for rain and
go on speaking. My words will wander
unnoticed. You hear only yesterday.
“In the Place of Cold Doors” first appeared in Gossamer: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry, published by Kindle Magazine in Kolkata, India. I was thrilled to have several poems included in the anthology.
O at the Edges 