“If You Drop Leaves” has been published at Bad Pony. Many thanks to editor Emily Corwin for taking this piece.
My Poem “If You Drop Leaves” Is Up at Bad Pony
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Tag Archives: poetry
UPS Dropped Off This Box Last Evening
Author copies of my chapbook From Every Moment a Second have arrived! These came directly from the printer, and according to Finishing Line Press the rest of the print run should soon be in their hands, and will be packed and shipped to buyers asap. So if you’ve ordered one, it really is on the way. Finally. Thank you for your patience!
Palinode (sol, ischemia, night)
Palinode (sol, ischemia, night)
This first appeared in Calamus in January 2017.
From Left to Right I Ponder Politics and Poetry
From Left to Right I Ponder Politics and Poetry
In the evening I pour wine to celebrate
another day’s survival. My motions:
up to down, left to right. Glass
from cabinet, wine to mouth.
And then I return to the page.
The character for stone, ishi,
portrays a slope with a stone
at its base, and I take comfort
in knowing that as my knee aches
at the thought of climbing, ishi exists
in descent only. A volcano belches,
producing hi, fire, rising above the
cone, while earth, tsuchi, lies firm
beneath the shoots pushing up,
outward, and ame, rain,
consists of clouds and dotted
lines and the sky above. But if
wind is made of insects and
plums, do I assemble new meaning
without fact or wisdom, form
or assumed inflection, left to
down, up to right? Consider water,
its currents, its logic and needs.
Consider truth. This is how I think.
* * *
“From Left to Right I Ponder Politics and Poetry” appeared in Bonnie McClellan’s International Poetry Month celebration in February 2017.
Sault Ste. Marie
Sault Ste. Marie
Too often you see yourself and wonder
which bodies ancestors navigated
to gather such glorious scars and wrinkles
in one place, both noticeable and unseen,
little waves in a great lake of flesh.
The mirror is not unkind, you think,
with proper lighting — in candlelight
or late evening’s peppery glow,
after a few drinks. Then you recall
crossing the equator three decades
past, how the deck’s non-skid surface
scratched your knees as you scrubbed
the twists and currents that’d buffeted
you to that imagined line on the globe,
and later, the following points and clock
faces withering down the long queue
of jobs, the spilled beer and incomplete life
sentences. Even now, Superior washes
through its locks, filling, denying, allowing
one’s depths into another’s space with equal
regard, promoting passage, flooding past with
future, present with then, balancing tomorrow, now.
“Sault Ste. Marie” won LCk Publishing’s Spring Poetry Contest in April 2017.
Gulf
Gulf
for M.V.
Which looms wider, its sky or water? The birds, here, too,
reconvene in greater streaks. This morning I stomped around
Paisano, examining the grasses and soil, the rocks and various
configurations of clouds, and listened to experts discuss
prescribed burns and how the land’s contours can determine
sequence and efficacy. The mockingbird whose territory
we occupy has disappeared. Perhaps he’s just moved on.
I heard a red-bellied woodpecker yesterday, but never saw it,
and of course the rattlers at the ranch are still underfoot, just
less apparent this time of year. I looked closely, as always,
but never spied one. What else did I miss? The rich people
on the bluffs bulldoze habitat, poison creeks and erect their
Italianate villas, caring not a whit for the breeding warblers
or the landscape, although they might pony up a few bucks
for an environmental charity if sucked-up to properly. Given
a choice between the two, I’d pick the snakes every time;
they don’t smile or offer spiked drinks and stories of their
conquests, and usually warn before striking. Even a minor
deity might take offense and crack open a new fault in the
earth between this place and theirs, widening it by inches
with each presumption, every falsehood, whether shaded
in unrelated facts or illogic, until that shifting space could
be spanned solely by a bridge planked with truth and good
manners, and, yes, by mutual consent. Looking back, I
find many examples of these bridges collapsing in utero,
but we keep trying. Your story of the gulf coast storm
reminded me of weeks spent on calm water, and seeing,
no matter where I turned, blue meeting blue, from horizon
to horizon, the sky never broken by bird or cloud, born
anew each day, always looking between, never down.
“Gulf” was published in West Texas Literary Review in March 2017.
Cutting Down the Anniversary Pine
Cutting Down the Anniversary Pine
Things expand. Plans change. Clouds disperse,
people move. I remember swimming
through a dream’s warm water, and rising
for air only to find that I no longer lived
within that need, in that space demanding
the physiological transport of oxygen,
where the laws of physics reigned supreme,
and geometry, with a little luck, posited
all the right questions. And then the clock
blared and morning slammed me back.
Trees grow, as do needs and lives and even
cottages. We took down the dead Jack pine
that year, and drank skip-and-go-nakeds
by the pitcherful, while mosquitoes swarmed
me and ignored everyone else. It’s important,
but I still can’t recall the white pine, nor
where you planted it forty-three years ago.
Symbol or not, its treeness intrudes.
So we suffer these things with age, and if
what we cut down carries meaning beyond
cellulose and shade, bark and pine scent,
we’ll bear that mourning, too. So fuel your
saw, brother, and sharpen the chain. Today
becomes yesterday. Tomorrow never waits.
* * *
“Cutting Down the Anniversary Pine” was drafted during the Tupelo Press 30-30 Challenge in August 2015, and was published by Quiet Letter in April 2017.
What Happens Next
What Happens Next
Another night with the frost,
she says, and you’ll know
the half-life of cold.
Which is not to say enjoy,
or pity, or pretend.
It is the sheath of God’s
gaze, an unsuspected lump.
The harvested curse.
You grasp what happens next.
Roof Charm
Roof Charm
What is home if not exile to the familiar?
A serrated kiss at the closet door.
We duck our heads and cook meals undercover,
the sun’s rays deflected.
And every relentless day finds
our hands wanting.
The black shawl, unfolded.
Wax melted on the whetstone.
You say stars shiver despite their light.
You say one hand mirrors its mate’s arc.
I say warmth flows through you, the roof our sky.
“Roof Charm” made its first appearance here in June 2016.
Wet Grass, Weeds
Wet Grass, Weeds
A lone raven
circling the neighbor’s oak,
an oddity in this neighborhood,
lending mystery to the afternoon,
a gateway through dandelion
fluff and the blue seeping through clouds.
A car rumbles by,
stereo hammering the air,
warnings everywhere for the wary.
“Wet Grass, Weeds” first appeared here in May 2016.
O at the Edges 