Every Drop
Your light singes my roots
even deep underground, where
worms revel in your joy
and all the days’ secrets line up
awaiting their turn to kneel and
unwrap their daily truths in the
comfort of the chambered soil.
If I were a seed, I would wait
for your touch before sprouting,
and only then would I surge
to the surface, swallowing
your gift. Greedy but grateful,
I’d open, drink every drop.
“Every Drop” first appeared in Tiny Seed Literary Journal in June 2019.
Self-Portrait as Wave
Feeling limited, I succumb to surge,
disperse, reassemble, return
in the calming swirl. Nothing
resembles me. I relinquish this piece,
retain that, and reinforced,
reside in the whorl, swollen,
winnowed to a point and capped,
roar and rumble, shredded,
whole yet apart, a solitary
fist crashing through another
watery torso in response, in
resonance, again, again.
“Self-Portrait as Wave” was first published in the inaugural issue of Kissing Dynamite. Many thanks to editor Christine Taylor for taking this piece.
Inscrutable
The river fills her body
like handwriting on a scrap
folded into a book
and found years later.
No one reads that language.
Undiscovered,
she remains closed, cleansed,
awaiting interpretation.
* * *
“Inscrutable” was first published in Volume 3, Issue 1 of Ink in Thirds. Thank you, Grace Black, for taking this piece!
Echo Charm
Right on left, or returned
what circles back, unbroken
yet opened?
Your mouth centers me.
Diminished, I rise, listening.
Grass rubbing against grass.
The lizard’s scarlet throat, swelling.
Not refusal, but denial.
Eyes the color of blood.
You practice your words carefully,
repeating each special phrase.
Blood the color of sky.
Sky the color of eyes.
And always the warm shade.
Memoir (Cento)
Your hands touched
everything. Will you
be a fountain
or a sea?
A woman sleeps next to me
on the earth. Now
nothing else keeps my eyes
in the cloud.
Each rock is news.
* * *
A cento is composed of lines from poems by other
poets. This cento originated from pieces in:
77 Poems, Alberto de Lacerda
Because the Sea is Black, Blaga Dimitrova
Body Rags, Galway Kinnell
Song of the Simple Truth, Julia de Burgos
Love Poems, Anne Sexton
For further information and examples of the form, you might peruse the Academy of American Poets site: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetic-form-cento
Agave
It might deceive.
Or like a cruel
window, live its life
unopened,
offering a view
yet reserving the taste
for another’s
tongue, ignoring
even the wind.
The roots, as always, look down.
* * *
This first appeared in Ijagun Poetry Journal in December 2013, was featured in poems2go in April 2016, and is also included in my micro-chapbook, You Break What Falls, available for download from the Origami Poems Project: http://www.origamipoems.com/poets/236-robert-okaji
A Herd of Watermelon
My work tools include rubber boots, a hydraulic
jack and snake tongs. Prevention over cure, always.
A helicopter’s shadow crosses the yard.
I sweat in cold weather; today even the shade burns.
Ants swarm a dead bat on the gravel.
No keys for these locks, no fire for that place.
Stepping inside, the city welcomes me.
We drain coffers for this grass, and hope for rain.
This morning two deer jumped the east fence while I
updated software. The significance eludes us.
A dream of watermelons rising from their viny beds,
lumbering through the field to the creek. Rebellion!
How many have sat at this desk before me, plotting
murders and rumors or rhymes. Die, mosquito. Die!
“A Herd of Watermelon” was drafted during the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30-30 Challenge. Thank you to Plain Jane for sponsoring the poem and providing the title. Alas, my time at this very special place has ended. No longer in Texas, I seek work elsewhere. What will I find?
Irretrievable
How we grieve the simplest
truth: we are
the scatterings,
relics of
the mind’s
erosions,
less than the sum
of our bodies. I cannot see
the word
but it smokes like
the color green
burning, but not of
flame, and once
the knife enters
you must avoid
its secretion
and peel the flesh
to reveal
what hides within:
the stem’s
purchase, pith,
seeds,
the irretrievable
shape
of a word
my lips cannot
form.
***
“Irretrievable” first appeared in a slightly different form in Vayavya, in December 2013, and subsequently appeared here in April 2016..
The Fog (after H.D.)
I am dead.
You avoid me.
I open like a shell.
You expose me with your breath.
What am I, heartless one?
This was an exercise in which I used H.D.’s poem “The Pool” as the launching point. It’s fun and occasionally illuminating to try these. “The Fog” first appeared on the blog in April 2016.
Ikebana (You without You)
Between frames, between presence and negation, authority.
If your body lies in the earth, why are you here?
Limits admired and sought: the way of the flower.
I pluck leaves from the lower half to achieve balance.
Shape and line detach, yet comprise the whole.
My father, awake in his chair, mourns quietly.
A naked twig forms one point of the scalene triangle.
Starkness implies silence, resonates depth.
Heaven, earth, man, sun and moon invoke your absence.
As you trickle through the interval’s night.
* * *
Ikebana is the art of Japanese flower arrangement.
This first appeared on the blog in March 2016, and is included in my mini-digital chapbook, Interval’s Night, published by Platypus Press in December 2016, and available via free download.
O at the Edges 