Echo Charm
Right on left, or returned
what circles back, unbroken
yet opened?
Your mouth centers me.
Diminished, I rise, listening.
Grass rubbing against grass.
The lizard’s scarlet throat, swelling.
Not refusal, but denial.
Eyes the color of blood.
You practice your words carefully,
repeating each special phrase.
Blood the color of sky.
Sky the color of eyes.
And always the warm shade.
Listening to Cicadas, I See Charlottesville (Ghazal)
Shedding one coat, you live in the red, apart
from the rest. Never together, forever apart.
In this sun-drenched field, the cracks drill deeper,
wider, dribbling soil and small lives, expanding, apart.
What falls truer than any words released from this man?
Once divided, never again to touch, always apart.
The electric shrill fluctuates pitch, in unison. Hundreds
of tymbals, shredding dusk, now together, then apart.
You narrow your eye to a slit, but still see the entire
spectrum. Wing clicks, stridulation. Whole yet apart.
Shearing syllables, I learn the language of half-truth.
What is my name? I reach for that fragment. It falls apart.
Endurance, 1946
Unaware of the day’s movements, she paints her
reply to the bracelet of light flaring above
the horizon. Tomorrow’s edict is gather,
as in retrieving a sister’s bones in black
rain, reassembling in thought
a smile that could not endure despite
its beauty. I seek a place
of nourishment and find empty bowls.
What is the symbol for peace, for planet?
How do we relinquish the incinerated voice?
Under the vault of ribs lie exiled words, more
bones, and beneath them, relentless darkness.
And whose bodies mingle in this earth?
Whose tongue withers from disuse?
The eight muscles react to separate stimuli,
four to change shape and four to alter position.
Turning, she places the brush on the sill
and opens the window to the breeze.
Exit the light, exit all prayer. Ten strokes
form breath. She does not taste the wind.
“Endurance, 1946” first appeared here in January 2015.
My poem “Heroes” is live at Blue Fifth Review. Many thanks to editor Sam Rasnake for accepting this piece.
For those of you who might care, I’m featured in an interview in Middle Gray.
Originally posted in December 2013. Circumstances have changed a bit – I have more time to write these days, but somehow manage to constantly run behind…
Curtain
Adept at withdrawal, it retreats.
How appropriate, we think,
that its body curls
with the wind’s
tug, offering
only the
slightest
resistance. Then
it returns,
bringing to mind
the habitual offender
whose discomfiture
lies in choice,
the fear
of enclosure
removed. The
forward glance.
And back again,
whispering its
edict: concede, reclaim.
Give and take. We are as one.
“Curtain” first appeared on the blog in July 2015.
Two years with no word.
The stick you planted
sprouted leaves last spring,
restoring hope. We had long
thought it dead. Two leaves
and a bud. A note
scrawled on a dollar bill,
unsigned and smuggled out
by some kindly stranger.
This is not much.
We can do little
but watch the tree grow
while you count steps
and deny the walls of a room
that light never touches.
“Return (El Salvador, 1983)” first appeared here in June 2015.
Independence Day. July 4. Perhaps amidst our celebrating we might consider what those words mean. Freedom has become more precious to me of late.
In Response to Nadia’s Misdirected Email, I State Exactly What I Am Looking For
Balance. The ability to stand on one foot, on a tightrope, and juggle AR-15s,
ethics and dollar bills, while chanting the U.S. Constitution, in tongues.
Or good health.
Unweighted dreams.
A mechanism for disagreeing without needing to annihilate the opposition.
Doorways without doors, truth without fear.
A simple tulip.
One word to describe that instant between thought and pulled trigger,
intent and wish, the elevated pulse and sense of diminished space and time.
Sanctuary. Regret. Apology. Respect.
A tonic to the bitterness, a foil to the sweet.
Fitted sheets that fold. Uncommon sense.
Love in the abstract. More bacon. Smiles.
A closet that embraces everything you place in it. Everything.
The means of unfiring guns, of reversing wounds to undamaged flesh,
and rounds to their magazines, full and never used.
Self-organizing drawers. Due process.
Mothers who know only tears of joy.
One peaceful day.
Just one.
This first appeared on the blog in July 2016. The poem was a response to an email asking a question intended for someone else: “What exactly are you looking for?”
The Fog (after H.D.)
I am dead.
You avoid me.
I open like a shell.
You expose me with your breath.
What am I, heartless one?
This was an exercise in which I used H.D.’s poem “The Pool” as the launching point. It’s fun and occasionally illuminating to try these. “The Fog” first appeared on the blog in April 2016.
O at the Edges 
