This appeared in Volume 29, Issue 1, released in October 2016. I first encountered riverSedge in 1983, and vowed that one day my poetry would be published in this journal. It took a while…
Poem in riverSedge
56
Tag Archives: memory
Countdown: #1, Letter to a Ghost
My last five posts of 2016 are reruns of the five most viewed poems on this site during the year. This one, by far the most popular, also made its first appearance here in June, and received a large bump in views due to a Halloween link on Discover. Many thanks to editor Cheri Lucas Rowlands for her support.
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.
Countdown: #5, In the Place of Cold Doors
My last five posts of 2016 are reruns of the five most viewed poems on this site during the year. Number five made its appearance here in June.
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.
3 Poems in deLuge Journal
I have three poems appearing in deLuge Journal: “Another Bird Rising,” “The Neurotic Dreams September in April,” and “Forced By This Title to Write a Poem in Third Person About Himself, the Poet Considers the Phenomena of Standing Waves, Dreams Involving Long-Lost Cats (Even If He Has Not Had Such a Dream Himself), And the Amazing Durability of Various Forms of Weakness.”
Many thanks to editors Karla Van Vliet and Sue Scavo for including my work in this lovely publication.
Acceptance Charm
Acceptance Charm
She’ll take the river’s trace
over curl and leaf
and the street’s
dead end,
riveting eyes
even as they blink.
The narcotic’s benediction.
Renewal. Sleep.
That bed remains unmade,
stripped of purpose: no
caress a thigh would
recognize
dark fingers writing in air
My Poem (and recording) “Driving without Radio” is up at Split Rock Review
My poem “Driving without Radio” is up at Split Rock Review. And there’s a recording of it, as well. Many thanks to editor Crystal Gibbins for providing a home for this one.
Something Lost, Something Trivial
Something Lost, Something Trivial
Another word, another bewildered
moment in transition: the phrase
barely emerges from your mouth
before crumbling back into a half-opened
drawer in the loneliest room of a house
that died seventeen years ago.
I nod as if in understanding, and stoop
to pick up a crushed drinking straw,
the kind with the accordion elbow
that facilitates adjustment.
From a rooftop across the street,
a mockingbird warbles his
early morning medley of unrelated
songs, and you say left oblique,
followed by matches, then
collapse on a bench,
winded. I sit next to you
and we both enjoy the warmth
and birdsong, though I know
this only through the uplifted
corner of your mouth, which
these days is how you indicate
either deep pleasure or
fear. I have to leave soon,
I say, and you grab my wrist
and stare into my eyes.
Broom, you reply. And more
emphatically, Broom!
Though I cannot follow you
directly, knowing both path
and destination, I pick my way
carefully through the years
stacked high like cardboard
banker’s boxes stuffed with
papers and receipts no one
will ever see. I know, I say.
I love you, too. Broom.
* * *
“Something Lost, Something Trivial” was published in January 2016 in the first issue of MockingHeart Review. Many thanks to editor Clare L. Martin, for her many kindnesses.
In This I Find You Again
In This I Find You Again
If there is truth to be found
let someone find it. The yellow
rose rests in its jar. Day and
night it looks out through the glass
at the world of altered
lines, sensing, perhaps, beauty
through its failure to prevent
fading. Each morning I wake
and think of you. The hibiscus
on our patio readies itself to blossom,
but pauses as if to prolong
the moment, waiting for a reason
to end its denial. Then it unfolds.
You are all I care to find.
* * *
This first appeared in June 2015.
Ashes
Ashes
To sweeten the dish, add salt. To bear the pain,
render the insoluble. She envied
the past its incursions, yet the past yields to all,
avoidance to acceptance, trees to smoke.
My mother brought to this country a token of her death to come.
Now it sits on my shelf bearing implements of music.
In her last days I played Sakura on the mandolin,
trusting that she might find comfort
in the blossoms fluttering through the failing notes,
a return to mornings
of tea and rice, of
warmth and paper walls and deep laughter.
Today the rain spells forgive
and every idea becomes form, every shadow a symptom,
each gesture a word, a naming in silence.
Scatter me in air I’ve never breathed.
* * *
“Ashes,” first appeared in Extract(s) in 2013, was reprinted on The Reverie Poetry Journal, and is included in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform.
I Have Misplaced Entire Languages
I Have Misplaced Entire Languages
Neither this tongue nor that still dwells in my house.
The hole of remembrance constricts, leaving behind only debris.
As a child I mixed three languages in family discourse.
Now only one is comprehensible, and I abuse it daily.
The woman in the blue dress stands alone on the pier, weeping.
A pidgin is a simplified language developed between groups with no
common tongue. Sounds form easily, but meanings struggle.
My father is shipped to Korea without warning.
Some words insert epenthetic consonants to separate vowels. Years
later we arrive in Italy and my mother starts receding.
A fourth language emerges.
This morning I asked, “Ame?” “Yes,” she said, “but just drizzling.”
Some families share no common language and must forge without.
We have used pain, pane and pan without reference to etymology.
Having abandoned the familiar, she chose another, never accepting the loss.
These forms we can’t articulate, these memories we have not traced.
* * *
This was originally published in April 2014 as part of Boston Review‘s National Poetry Month Celebration, and also appeared on this blog in July 2015.
O at the Edges 