My poem “When to Say Goodbye,” which was originally written during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30-30 Challenge, is up at Oxidant Engine.
My Poem “When to Say Goodbye” is Up at Oxidant Engine.
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Tag Archives: poetry
Having Survived Myself I Lean Away
Having Survived Myself I Lean Away
You know that
but not
why
the mockingbird mocks,
or how one note
marries others,
forming blissful
chords. And the skies
flaring each night
betraying your willful
ignorance,
while you paint
the words for love
in seven languages
you can’t
speak.
Where are you now,
whose bodies
have you denied,
wrapped in linen,
bagged or boxed,
arriving unseen?
Sagging, I observe your
counted victories, the
smirk claiming
exceptionalism
and destiny or
nobility of purpose,
as even your own shadow
recoils.
This first appeared here in October 2015.
Painting
Painting
But completion
arrives in the most
limited sense,
outlines enriched and
filled with lush
darkness, the red of
an accumulated passion
for texture, for subtlety in
shade, the tactile being
one facet shared with
odor and the black hand
on the wall, the
staircase spiraling
upward, resultant desire,
body of lust, this wall, our
doing, the gathered home.
“Painting” first appeared here in December 2015.
Recording of “Scarecrow Considers the Afterlife”
You might read the poem at Eclectica, where it was published with two companion pieces.
Destined by Gravity to Fail, We Try
Destined by Gravity to Fail, We Try
Having fallen from the roof not once, but twice,
I verify that it is not the fall but the sudden stop that hurts.
The objectivist sense of the little: the and a, my house in this world.
Galileo postulated that gravity accelerates all falling bodies at the same rate.
While their etymologies differ, failure and fall share commonalities,
though terminal velocity is not one.
The distance between the glimpsed and the demonstrated.
Enthralled in the moment, Icarus drowned.
Rumor has it his plunge was due not to melting wax but to an improper mix
of rectrices and remiges: parental failure.
Thrust and lift. Drag. Resistance.
Acknowledgment of form in reality, in things.
When the produced drag force equals the plummeting object’s weight, the
object will cease to accelerate and will move at a constant speed.
To calculate impact force accurately, include the stopping distance in height.
Followed by long periods of silence.
This first appeared on the blog in December 2015.
Recording of My Poem, “Icarus”
Icarus
Currents of breath, the slight curve and lift
within a single motion, once
poised then released as if to say
the wind is mine, or wait,
I am alone –
the story we most fear, not height nor gravity’s
fist, but to exist apart, shadow and
mouth, rain and smile, feather
and sun, all denials reciprocal,
each tied fast and renewed.
“Icarus” first appeared here in April 2016, and subsequently was published in The Basil O’Flaherty in November 2016.
Mushrooms I Have Known
Mushrooms I Have Known
Reticent and tired, withdrawn,
dejected, I return.
Emerging overnight from nothing,
then withering back to zero.
Does light incite you?
The shade?
I walk by and say hello.
You do not speak.
3 Poems Up at Quiet Letter
I’m delighted to announce that three of my poems are live at Quiet Letter. The three (“Cutting Down the Anniversary Pine,” “Strollermelon,” and “Memory and Closets“), were written during the 30/30 challenges I undertook during the past two Augusts to raise funds for Tupelo Press, a non-profit literary publisher.
Recording of “In Praise of Rain”
In Praise of Rain
Which is not to say lightning or hail.
Sometimes I forget to open the umbrella
until my glasses remind me: Wake up, you’re
wet! If scarcity breeds
value, what is a thunderhead worth
in July? A light shower in August?
Even spreadsheets can’t tell us.
***
“In Praise of Rain” has appeared here several times, but this is the recording’s debut.
Tarantula
Tarantula
The patience of stone, whose surface belies calm.
Neither warm nor cold, but unfeeling.
It digresses and turns inward, a vessel reversed
in course, in body, in function, the
outward notion separate but inclusive,
darkness expanding, the moist
earth crumbling yet holding its form:
acceptance of fate become
another’s mouth,
the means to closure and affirmation
driven not by lust nor fear
but through involuntary will.
Neither warm nor cold, but unfeeling.
The patience of stone.
“Tarantula” first appeared here in February 2015.
O at the Edges 