Some Dogs are Larger Than Others
How he stares
at you,
relentless
in his desire,
offering
belly to scratch
and head to pet
just when you most
need them,
even if
you don’t know it,
then curling
against you, saying
in the language
of warmth and fur,
this, just this.
* * *
“Some Dogs are Larger Than Others” first appeared here in January 2017.
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?
The Stone Remains Silent Even When Disturbed
In whose tongue
do you dream?
I fall closer to death
than birth, yet
the moon’s sliver
still parts the bare
branches and an unfilled
trench divides the
ground. Bit by bit,
we separate – you
remain in the earth,
recumbent, as I gather
years in stride.
Even the rain
leaves us alone.
This first appeared in December 2015.
Cyclops
Boundless loss, hemmed at the edges.
Another mended hole, wasted mornings.
Unwound, I towel off, extract loose hair.
Look for messages in the clouds, see
only deceit. I am sick with
joy. I no longer sing. My goats
shun me. Where is the love,
the missing fact. An albino
squirrel skitters up the oak.
I think of blood, of bone fragments.
The pleasures of rendering.
“Cyclops” first appeared in September 2019 at Recenter Press, a publisher “dedicated to sharing work that is grounded in both the spiritual and the material.” Many thanks to the editors for taking these pieces.
Snow Country
desolate the reach
of space a
curved line of
white empty as
the loneliness one
feels the tone
is different on
a day like
this she says
unaware that her
words fall like
snow in the
mountains soft quiet
in the roar
no one hears
* * *
Another piece from the eighties…this first appeared here in November 2015.
Rain Forest Bridge
To cross
you must first
trust the strands
to hold.
The second tentative
step precedes
the next,
each successive one
gaining strength:
here to
there, now
to then, a summoning of
entreaties
within
one’s faith.
Vapor meets cooler air,
forming droplets,
clouding the far side.
I have feared endings
and the strictures of the unseen,
but here
in this vast
swaying,
I know
one line
bisects the void.
* * *
“Rain Forest Bridge” first appeared in Four Ties Lit Review in August, 2014.
Self-Portrait as Smudge
Being this cloud on the otherwise
transparent pane, I resist removal,
smearing myself in thinner layers,
still shrouding the angry sky
or the fence post’s sagging
doubt, which is to say
my appearance may lessen
but spread, that you may rub me
out, but I’ll return, always,
beginning with that one small
and delicious obscure point.
“Self-Portrait as Smudge” first appeared in October 2019 in Backchannels. Many thanks to the editors for taking this piece.
Wind
That it shudders through
and presages an untimely end,
that it transforms the night’s
body and leaves us
breathless and wanting,
petals strewn about,
messenger and message in one,
corporeal hosts entwined,
that it moves, that it blends,
that it withdraws and returns without
remorse, without forethought, that it
increases, expands, subtracts,
renders, imposes and releases
in one quick breath, saying
I cannot feel but I touch,
I cannot feel
* * *
“Wind” first appeared in Blue Hour Magazine and is included in my first chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform.
Salad Suizen
Like the lone slice of cucumber
in the dinner salad,
I fear that I am not worthy
of such distinction.
No bottled dressing could mask my ineptitude.
I am that wedge of unripe winter tomato,
those pieces of lettuce bred for travel,
the black olive rounds fresh from the can.
So much to enjoy in mediocrity.
My wind sputters and fizzles.
Fingers struggle to cover the holes.
Failures accrue like compound interest
and still I persist.
Perhaps I might add croutons, red onion.
More space. Crumbled feta. Silence.
“Salad Suizen” first appeared in Ethel in August 2019.
Dispatches from the Pandemic: This Old Desk
This old desk whispers hints of lives lived in separate peripheries, of unseen treasures and thoughts and deeds. Whose fountain pen scrawled love notes on the inlaid leather pullout, which daughter broke a crystal finger bowl and wept for a lost pet? What books rested behind these glass doors? What curiosities? Old pocket knives, polished stones? Spent cartridges? And in these slots? Perhaps perfume bottles and note pads. Or unanswered letters and a worn deck of playing cards. A tin box of regrets, another of joy.
Haiku and Whitman
mingling behind beveled glass
Look: my mother’s ashtray
The desk and I are slowly making our acquaintance. I pledge that I will never take its untold history for granted, that I’ll respect its presence and do my utmost to fill it with purpose, with cherished objects and the satisfaction of good work. In turn it offers me solidity, an altar at which to sit and think, to rearrange words, create lists, read, conjure fantasies, breathe. I’ve only just realized that I’ve lacked such a base since abandoning my Texas shack fifteen months ago.
Another window
frames the distant crow
Home at last!
O at the Edges 