Reading “Search Patrols,” I marvel that so much feeling, so many layers, can exist in so few lines. If you have time, listen to the podcast, which includes discussion of the poem as well as Kaminsky’s dramatic reading.
To Sing the Ever Present Farewell
The way your breast rises,
small pillows,
two doves in autumn,
so, too, the song escapes.
I admit my part,
warbled promise, uncombed
and shivering,
free to worry
under its pull.
Still it comes,
inexorable tide
lowing a sorrow
through filtered light
till dawn.
Even the Sotol Believes
If we must discuss logographic systems, let us begin with fish.
And how might one mistake an entrance for a perch?
A movable rod for a desert spoon?
Today’s lesson excludes a poorly rendered door.
Hinges are merely mechanical joints, the origin of which means to hang. Concentrate there.
D is the tenth most frequently used letter in English.
Depicted on rock wall paintings, the sotol has provided food, sandals,
blankets, ropes, tools and spirits for millennia.
Slow cook the roots for three nights, crush, then ferment for seventy-two hours in
champagne yeast. Distill, then age in French oak.
We shall neither open nor close, nor mention those things that do.
Like bivalves. Bottles. Eyes. Shops. Caskets. Books. Mouths. Circuits.
Its flower stalk rises up to fifteen feet. Its leaves are long, thin and barbed.
Surrounded by orange ochre flames and black smoke, the sotol spirit appears.
Dalet will not enter our vocabulary today.
Originally published in Otoliths 41 (October 2013), and most recently posted here in May 2017.
* * *
My poem “Letter to Schwaner from the Toad-Swallowed Moon” was first published at The Hamilton Stone Review in October 2017. Much gratitude to editor Roger Mitchell for taking this piece.
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.
Senate (Tritina)
Not imposition, but welcome. The way
cooperation welcomes coercion, turning the
tenor of the intended phrase, opening
the statement to interpretation, opening
a point without dissension, in the way
of politics, agreeing which fact will shape the
morning, which truth will determine the
next word and the subsequent, as if opening
the issue, claiming to have found the way,
one way, the only, but never actually opening.
* * *
A tritina might best be described as the lazy poet’s sestina, consisting of ten rather than 39 lines, with the end words of the first stanza repeating in a specific pattern in the subsequent two stanzas. The last line includes all three end words.
The patterns:
abc
cab
bca
The last line uses the end words in sequence following the pattern of the first stanza.
This first appeared on the blog in March 2017.
Portrait in Ash
In summer, sweet crushed ice, and crickets pulsing through the night.
Brake lights, and always the blurred memory of nicotine.
I recall running through the glow, laughing, fingers splayed forward,
and the ensuing sharp admonishment.
Steel, flint and spark. Blackened linings and diminishment.
How many washings must one endure to accept an indelible soiling?
In retrospect, your body still resists.
Lovely smoke uncoiling towards the moon, residue of impurities
and substance. Desire, freed and returning.
You dwell underground. I gaze at the cloud-marred sky.
* * *
“Portrait in Ash” appears in Interval’s Night, a mini-digital chapbook, available for free download from Platypus Press.
This poem in The Ellis Review breaks my heart and lifts my day all at the same time.
“There are many reasons, known and unknown, as to why I write; I don’t like to think these reasons change necessarily, but rather, amass over time—no, maybe, these reasons refine over time. These days, I am writing a lot of elegies, so if I had to answer in the present, I write because it brings me closer to the dead, and being close to what is no longer animate, in whatever state or form, makes the pain that comes with loss just a little more bearable. Even death welcomes conversation.” — Khaty Xiong
My poem, ‘Scarecrow Votes,” is up at Vox Populi, alongside Jenne Andrews’ call for revolution. Trump’s horrific separation of families policy must end! Thank you to Michael Simms for responding and publishing the poem so quickly.
Unwinding
As in a day’s long
thread
or with cold drink
in hand,
glass sweating,
ice
shrinking, a little
sweet,
some salt, her
smile saying
relax, put up
your feet,
I’ll take care
of this,
don’t worry,
tomorrow’s
a full moon
away.
“Unwinding” first appeared here in January 2017.
O at the Edges 