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.
Three Poems Up at The Blue Nib
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Tag Archives: poem
Biography (Cento)
Biography (Cento)
I am becoming
one of the old
men, but you,
you are earth.
Where is the moment
that lingers,
the static of lost
voices and the feel
of the cleft in the bark.
Ask me anything.
Why am I
grown so cold?
Have you been here?
Thinking
is wind in a cage;
it does not say anything.
* * *
Credits:
James Wright, Cesare Pavese, Ruth Ellen Kocher, HD, Eduardo C. Corral,
Adelaide Crapsey, Denise Levertov, Blaga Dimitrova, Jacques Roubaud,
* * *
A cento is composed of lines from poems by other poets.
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
Palinode (soubasse)
Palinode (soubasse)
In the land of two-dollar mornings, those things
we barely sense take precedence: uncaressed
skin sheathed in ivy, the punctuation mark diverting
power. Insidious corn, the cries of distressed trees
(cavitation in the xylem), soubasse, the ghost note,
prickling from below. Singularity. The appointee’s
hubris. The defining weight of a zero’s center.
A zero’s center defines emptiness, meaning nothing,
or, diverted light, a vacuum. Regard plenum: an air-filled
space, or a complete gathering of a legislative body. And
how did we arrive here from there? From the body we
compose units of measure: an ell, digit, fathom, the mile’s
thousand paces. I expose film to light, concealing yet
establishing a rational point.
Concealing the point implies position without extension,
a moment shedding its cracked sheath and giving rise
to the divine: above, below, male and female, hot or
cold. Reconciliation. A plateau. The still place linking the
infinite to the open hand, limitless black. Burning, I
calculate oxidation and dispersal, tendrils, a flaxen leaf,
its proposition to endings.
This first appeared, in slightly different form, in ditch, in January 2014.
While Walking My Dog’s Ghost
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.
Two Poems Up on Bindlestiff
I was pleased to discover that the first issue of Bindlestiff is live. My poems “I’ll Turn but Clouds Appear” and “Human Distance” are included.
My Poem, “Waiting for the Windshield on the Freeway” is Featured on Algebra of Owls
My August 30 Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge poem is featured on Algebra of Owls.
The Military Industrial Complex’s CPAs Never Sleep
The Military Industrial Complex’s CPAs Never Sleep
We so seldom bury people at sea
in weighted shrouds,
preferring instead sealed
containers or ashes
mixed with concrete.
Little girls skip
down the street,
giggling, unaware of their
value on the open
market. Dollars, oil.
Weapons. All fungible.
On the forgotten shelf,
the avocado’s flesh
blackens inside
its withering armor.
How is too much
never enough?
Targets based on
possibilities, innuendo,
cost-benefit analysis:
three men and a camel,
wedding parties,
hospitals, homes.
When morning comes,
they’re still awake,
collating damage, counting
opportunities, massaging
sums, ignoring cost,
harvesting their dead fruit.
Door
Door
What would you conceal?
Or open to. Could you unfurl
your fist to daylight
and shudder loss away — one key,
one digit, one death — presuming the universe
and all its hinges available for inspection
behind yet another unlatched presence.
And this spinning disk,
how shall we step off? Every moon
sheds its coat. Listening, I turn the knob.
I Look for You with Satellite View
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.
Day Thirty, Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, August 2016
“Waiting for the Windshield on the Freeway” is among today’s offerings of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project (9 poets have agreed to write 30 poems apiece in 30 days, to raise funds for Tupelo Press, a non-profit literary publisher). I am grateful to the title’s sponsor, Leigh Ward-Smith, whose generosity and good nature never ceases to amaze me.
Waiting for the Windshield on the Freeway
Take velocity into account, figure height and distance,
add trajectory plus time, then let her rip. Billy likes solid
paving stones, while I prefer hollow cinder blocks. Karen
chooses traditional red bricks, as she lacks the upper body…
Click here to see the rest of the poem.
While this is indeed the 30th of 30 poems, I’ll post one more tomorrow, thanks to the generosity of Ken Gierke, who sponsored a 31st title: “I Look for You with Satellite View.”
THERE ARE STILL OPENINGS FOR SEPTEMBER’S 30/30 CHALLENGE! If you’ve considered participating but have questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me. There are rewards beyond producing thirty poems a day…
The sponsored poems have been a blast to write; the titles and 3-words have led me to poems I’d not otherwise have conceived. Thank you all for helping make this such an enjoyable month.
If you’ve enjoyed reading the participating poets’ daily poems and would like to donate, other opportunities remain:
For a $15 donation, I’ll send you a signed copy of one of my 30-30 poems. Your choice!
If you need something to read, Think Dink! A $30 donation will get you my 2015 chapbook If Your Matter Could Reform, Barton Smock’s Infant Cinema, Jamie Hunyor’s A New Sea, and Tim Kahl’s full length work, The String of Islands, thanks to the generosity of Dink Press founder and editor Kristopher Taylor! I hear that Kristopher Taylor is providing a little something extra with the collection. You can read about it here, thanks to Ken at RIVRVLOGR.
Or simply click here.
Thank you for supporting poetry! Only one more to go!
O at the Edges 