I thought I’d repost this as it was given short shrift during the frenzy of the 30/30 Challenge in August.
Many thanks to editors Andrea, Jeff and Ryn for including my poem “On the Burden of Flowering” in the current issue of Panoply, another of my favorite poetry journals. I’m thrilled that they were able to take this piece.
Mole (Pipian)
Always the search beneath texture,
layers captured in subsidence,
the drift to interpretation: a mixture, meaning
sauce, and its journey from seed to mouth,
the careful blend of herb and fire,
dismembered chiles,
the crushed and scorched fruit
rendered to preserve for consumption
the most tender qualities
and their enhancement towards art.
This is of course not about the mammal with the subterranean lifestyle, but rather a version of the Mexican sauce, pronounced “mo-lay,” which includes, as a main ingredient, pumpkin seeds. It takes a while to put together, but is well worth the effort.
“Mole (Pipian)” made its first appearance here in February 2015.
My poems “Scarecrow Dances,” “Tuning the Beast,” and “Synapses and Other Conjunctions” have been published at The Blue Nib. The latter two were written during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge.
While Walking My Dog’s Ghost
I spot a baby rabbit
lying still in a clump of grass
no wider than my hand.
It quivers, but I pretend
not to have seen, for fear
that the dog, ghost or not,
will frighten and chase it
into the brush, beyond
its mother’s range,
perhaps to become lost
and thirsty, malnourished,
filthy, desperate, much
like the dog when we
found each other that hot,
dry evening so long ago.
I Look for You with Satellite View
But binoculars are my oldest friend.
Watching you flash between leaf and branch, stone
and sky, I remember, as the black groans
in, obliterating light at the end
of the day’s voice, that everyone descends,
our debts counted, stacked and restacked, the loans
unpaid and endless, like breath or the moans
of autumn’s bed spiraling back. Light sends
you elsewhere – the silver-tipped moon leaf, a
wisp of fog tracing your leg’s passage in
the sand. That empty bottle. You could be
there, above ground, or scattered where I lay,
an orbiting eye forever open,
looking, searching always, trying to see.
This is the 31st poem written for the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge. Many thanks to Ken Gierke for sponsoring and providing the title.
His Softness
What name would survive
had you not stepped into the water
that day? Memory assigned
a separate word, another given,
and the face I’d placed with you
appeared in front of me
fifteen years later, in another
setting, miles away
and still breathing. How
may I honor you
if not by name? I recall
the gray ocean and how
umbrellas struggled in
the wind, and reading
in the weekly newspaper
a month after
that you had never emerged.
Now your name still lies there,
somewhere, under the surface,
unattached yet moving with
the current, and I,
no matter how I strain,
can’t grab it. Time after time,
it slips away. Just slips away.
.* * *
Many thanks to Sarah Rivera, who sponsored this poem and provided the title during last August’s Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge. “His Softness” was published in January 2016 in the inaugural edition of Mockingheart Review. I am participating in this August’s 30/30 Challenge, and appreciate any support you’re able to provide – good thoughts, encouragement and donations to Tupelo Press are all welcome.
Kites
Will viewpoint shift with my spine’s slow
compression, or will this
window admit only true images
in the shortened days to come?
I pencil phrases on bone-shaped kites
and release them to the afternoon.
Call them prayers, name them moans.
Each string is a regret freed, a separate
skeleton, let go. My two selves shudder
in the attempt. I await the perfect breeze.
Hummingbird (3)
Arriving from nowhere,
its mouth opens
but what escapes
comes not from within
and is never complete.
Words, too, falter
in this space,
struggling to remain
aloft, challenged yet free,
an exchange
between air and wing,
of sound and thought,
occurring as it must
without design
or desire, simply
there, then gone,
a presence one notices
in its absence.
* * *
“Hummingbird (3) made its first appearance on the blog in December 2014.
Mockingbird
Withdrawn, it unfolds
to another
voice, like that
of a child lost in the wind.
Or, lonely, it rises from its place
and sings, only
to return and start again.
The pleasure we accept derives from
the knowledge that we are not alone.
Each morning we walk out and sit
by the stones, hoping to observe some
new patterns in his life. What we
see is an answer. What we hear is no song.
* * *
“Mockingbird” made its first appearance here in January 2015. It was written
in the 1980s, probably around 1987-1989.
Hummingbird
The thought makes
trembling so
incomplete, a consequence
of knowledge attained. I look out
and see leaves flitting in the dusk,
the air closing around them
like the mouth of an old well
swallowing light. Such
hunger we find difficult
to comprehend. The wind shivers
through our lives and repeats itself,
though differently each time.
Every departure is a return.
“Hummingbird” made it’s first appearance on the blog in December 2014. I wrote it in the 1980s, probably between 1987-1989.
O at the Edges 