For those of you who might care, I’m featured in an interview in Middle Gray.
Originally posted in December 2013. Circumstances have changed a bit – I have more time to write these days, but somehow manage to constantly run behind…
Everything is nothing, but afterwards.
I rise and the moon disturbs the darkness,
revealing symbols, a few stolen words
on the bureau. Tomorrow I’ll express
my gratitude by disappearing be-
fore I’m found, which is to say goodbye
before hello, a paradigm for the
prepossessed. Compton tells us to imply
what’s missing, like Van Gogh or Bill Monroe,
but why listen to the dead before they’ve
stopped speaking? Unfortunately we throw
out the bad with the good, only to save
the worst. I return to bed, and the floor
spins. Nothing is everything, but before.
This first appeared in The Blue Hour Magazine in December 2014, and is also included in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform. The line “Everything is nothing, but afterwards” comes from Antonio Porchia’s Voices, translated by W.S. Merwin. Porchia wrote one book in his lifetime, but what a book it was! Often described as a collection of aphorisms, Voices is so much more – each time I open the book, I find new meaning in old lines.
And All Around, the Withered
I total the numbers printed
on passing boxcars,
multiply by seven, then add two,
subtracting every third odd number,
only to find, in the end, myself
tethered to this empty platform,
spelling hapless with integers,
acknowledging Zahlen and
the infinite. Sometimes gravel, too,
calls to me and I observe space
in the path’s patterns, constellation
stacked upon constellation,
multi-dimensional galaxies
expanding in one swooping arc,
heroic eagles and exploding stars
complicit in their deeds and forever
locked in sequence, yet when I explain
my vision, the words emerge
as convex polyhedrons or inverted,
drooled gasps, and people turn aside.
That boy’s two bricks shy a full load, they
say. The lights are on but nobody’s home.
“And All Around, the Withered” was published in Steel Toe Review in January 2017.
Boxcar
Whose voice lingers
among the gathered stones,
raised then lowered as if
to ensnare followers?
This is not the issue.
Nor should we speak of paper
shuddering in the wind
and the dense glare of shovels
in the night underfoot.
Pray that the road continues
beyond the next curve
or increment of time.
Trust in motion,
the reticence of trees.
“Boxcars” first appeared here in November 2015. It had been moldering in a folder for three decades when I uncovered it. I have no idea what originally sparked it.
Self-Portrait with Blue
Darker shades contain black or grey. I claim
the median and the shortened spectrum, near dawn’s terminus.
In many languages, one word describes both blue and green.
Homer had no word for it.
The color of moonlight and bruises, of melancholy and unmet
expectation, it cools and calms, and slows the heart.
Woad. Indigo. Azurite. Lapis lazuli. Dyes. Minerals. Words. Alchemy.
On this clear day I stretch my body on the pond’s surface and submerge.
Not quite of earth, blue protects the dead against evil in the afterlife,
and offers the living solace through flatted notes and blurred 7ths.
Blue eyes contain no blue pigment.
In China, it is associated with torment. In Turkey, with mourning.
Between despair and clarity, reflection and detachment,
admit the leaves and sky, the ocean, the earth.
Water captures the red, but reflects and scatters blue.
Look to me and absorb, and absorbing, perceive.
This originally appeared in the Silver Birch Press Self-Portrait Series, and is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press chapbook collection, IDES, published in October 2015.
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.
Curtain
Adept at withdrawal, it retreats.
How appropriate, we think,
that its body curls
with the wind’s
tug, offering
only the
slightest
resistance. Then
it returns,
bringing to mind
the habitual offender
whose discomfiture
lies in choice,
the fear
of enclosure
removed. The
forward glance.
And back again,
whispering its
edict: concede, reclaim.
Give and take. We are as one.
“Curtain” first appeared on the blog in July 2015.
