Celestial Navigation
Even dung beetles
know the stars,
how they shape
destination.
Motion ceases with arrival.
This body attracting
that. The heart
losing itself
to the moon’s
pull, another wave
falling.
Does light descend
or rise?
Subtle yet observant.
Like truth, like
destiny shivering
through the coldest hour,
saying Welcome, welcome!
“Celestial Navigation” was first published in Nine Muses Poetry in July 2019.
My last five posts of 2019 are reruns of five of the most viewed posts on this site during the year.
My Mother’s Ghost Sits Next to Me at the Hotel Bar
Blue-tinted and red-mouthed, you light a cigarette
that glows green between your lips and smells of
menthol and old coffins, burnt fruit and days carved
into lonely minutes. I mumble hello, and because
you never speak, order a tulip of double IPA, which the
bartender sets in front of me. Longing to ask someone
in authority to explain the protocol in such matters,
I slide it over, but of course you don’t acknowledge
the act. The bartender shrugs and I munch on spiced
corn nuts. I wish I could speak Japanese, I say, or cook
with chopsticks the way you did. We all keep secrets, but
why didn’t you share your ability to juggle balls behind
your back sometime before I was thirty? And I still
can’t duplicate that pork chili, though my yaki soba
approaches yours. You stub out the cigarette and immediately
light another. Those things killed you, I say, but what the hell.
As always, you look in any direction but mine, your face
an empty corsage. What is the half-life of promise, I ask. Why
do my words swallow themselves? Who is the grandfather
of loneliness? Your outline flickers and fades until only a trace
of smoke remains. I think of tea leaves and a Texas noon,
of rice balls and the vacuum between what is and what
could have been, of compromise and stubbornness and love,
then look up at the muted tv, grab your beer, and drink.
* * *
“My Mother’s Ghost Sits Next to Me at the Hotel Bar” was first published in The Lake in December 2018.
My last five posts of 2019 are reruns of five of the most viewed posts on this site during the year.
Love Song for the Dandelion
When you scatter
I gasp
aware that the windborne
carry truths
too powerful to breathe
too perfect
to bear
What is your name
I ask
knowing the answer
all along
* * *
“Love Song for the Dandelion” first appeared in Rue Scribe in September 2018. Many thanks to Eric Luthi and the editors at Rue Scribe for accepting this piece and several others.
You Say Cicada, Which Shrivels My Ears
I say cicada, the difference lurking in the middle,
like the shortest dancer in an off-Broadway musical,
or a note hidden between two reams of legal paper
in the supply room of a well-appointed dentist’s
office, where you find yourself, by accident, searching
for the exit. But think how our sap-sucking friend must
feel, a foot underground, during its final instar phase,
reversing course, leaving behind the darkness
and moist roots, burrowing up through the soil
toward light and the shrug into maturity. And after
that, squeezing through a crack in what had been
itself, emerging, soft and vulnerable, slouching to the
inevitable call. I think of ecdysis, how we, too, shed
ourselves, leaving behind remnants, old skin and
armor, and rising, on occasion, wiser, softer, more
complete. But sometimes we try to reenter those
discarded shells. My acquaintance searches through
the past for bits of himself, purchases toys – marbles,
pocket knives – stitching together a semblance of the
old comfort. He keeps, in one jar, three teeth from his
childhood, in another the exuviae of a half-dozen
scorpions. How delightful it would be, he says, to
abandon your hardened self and become someone
new. He looks to the ground. I nod, and whisper.
“You Say Cicada, Which Shrivels My Ears,” appeared in the inaugural issue of Claw & Blossom, in July 2019. The poem was originally written during the August 2016 30-30 challenge. I’m grateful to Sunshine Jansen, who sponsored the poem and provided three words to be included in the piece: instar, ecdysis, and sap-sucking. Thank you, as well, to editor C.B. Auder for accepting the poem.
Scarecrow Considers the Afterlife
Gathering threads, I join them with a central
knot, producing a sunburst flower or constellation
of ley lines spreading forth and connecting their
tenuous truths – megalith to fjord, solstice to
dodmen and feng shui, suppositions entwined
and spat out. And who’s to say which alignment
stands taller than the next, which rut, which energy,
defines our direction? When I cease to be, will I
remain or dissipate, return in another form or
explode and scatter throughout the universe, the
residue of me sizzling along the starways for eternity
or perhaps just the next twenty minutes. It is clear
that I possess no heart, no internal organs. My spine
is lattice, my skin, fabricated from jute. Eviscerate
me and straw will tumble out. I do not bleed. Yet
the crows consult me in secret and conduct their
daily mercies, and I think and dance and dream
and wonder and hope. Oh, what I hope.
* * *
This was first published at Eclectica in July 2016, with two companion pieces.
The Most Intimate
How that blue turns gray over green
at a slight tilt of the chin,
and even upside down
anchors the tree.
Some constellations escape language,
stars looming without nouns and adverbs,
the utterances of the planets
caught in the gravity
of their own situations.
Laugh, but the trashcan is full. The lawn is brown.
There are no gods.
Unadorned statements abound.
Even this sky may shift again,
the most intimate twist
turned full.
* * *
“The Most Intimate” first appeared at Poetry Breakfast in May 2019. Thank you, Ann Kestner, for taking this piece.
My poem “Dreaming That My Legs Won’t Move, I Think of Debts” is up at Mason Street Review’s Community Room Page. I’m grateful to the Newark Public Library and the editors of Mason Street for taking this piece.
Who Will Know
If I drip like snow from the roof who will know?
When I throw stones at dead men who will know?
The mother’s ghost rests in a razor-filled moat.
He purses his lips, laughs, says who will know?
You are the night sky above the red-cloud horizon.
When I fade like twilight, tell me who will know.
Which vein traces love, which proffers denial
as our blood starts flowing, and who will know?
Unanswered prayers line his frozen pockets.
When he unclenches his tiny hands, who will know?
This man’s tongue repels truth no matter the hour.
If we hear only what he allows, then who will know?
* * *
“Who Will Know” made its first appearance in May 2019 at The Local Train Magazine, a publication out of Bangladesh.
In This Shack a Cold Wind Blows
In this shack a cold wind blows,
shuffling papers and ideas before settling
on the floor. Leaves rustling. Tea,
cooling. You recall the peace of near
death, fear circling the drain,
giving in to breath, labored but certain,
one exiting another and again,
then laughing at the improbability: you
are nothing. You were nothing.
Nothing will come of you. You say
yesterday, and think tomorrow. Today.
* * *
“In This Shack a Cold Wind Blows” was first published in April 2019 by The Elixir Magazine out of Yemen.
My poem “Which Name Cautions the Tongue” is live in Issue 3 of Little Dog Poetry. I am grateful to editors Samantha Finley & Lauren Taylor for taking this piece.
O at the Edges 