The Trains I Know
The trains I know
seek solitude
in darkness,
they wear
wind and cold
with pride,
are never
lonely.
Sometimes they
sing too loud,
or mourn
harshly a
star’s fall, but
they never
deny their
purpose: to
draw between
and connect,
to witness and
serve, to bear
and endure
our unsought
burdens
to the end.
* * *
“The Trains I Know” last appeared here in July 2015.
In this stunning poem on Agni Online, Joyce Peseroff muses about privilege and the gift of a single egg. Agni is one of my dream journals. I’ve yet to be published there, but back in the 80s received an encouraging hand-scrawled note from the founding editor, and more recently received one of my favorite rejections ever, stating “this is not our standard rejection.” One of these days…
My poem, “The Trees are Burning at Midnight,” is live at Fourth and Sycamore, the literary journal of the Greenville Public Library, located in Greenville, Ohio. This piece was originally drafted during the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30-30 Challenge. Many thanks to Charlotte Hamrick for sponsoring the poem and offering the title.
Emptying Haibun
Waiting, I open myself but nothing enters. Even music’s comfort avoids me, preferring calmer ports or perhaps another’s wind choices. I drop the weighted cord through the flute, pull it, and watch the cloth ease out. Some days pain drags behind me no matter what words emerge, what phrases follow. Last night brought the season’s first fireflies. This wall of books grows taller each day.
exhaling, I note
smudges in the sky —
oh, dirty window
How to Write a Poem
Learn to curse in three languages. When midday
yawns stack high and your eyelids flutter, fire up
the chain saw; there’s always something to dismember.
Make it new. Fear no bridges. Accelerate through
curves, and look twice before leaping over fires,
much less into them. Read bones, read leaves, read
the dust on shelves and commit to memory a thousand
discarded lines. Next, torch them. Take more than you
need, buy books, scratch notes in the dirt and watch
them scatter down nameless alleys at the evening’s first
gusts. Gather words and courtesies. Guard them carefully.
Play with others, observe birds, insects and neighbors,
but covet your minutes alone and handle with bare hands
only those snakes you know. Mourn the kindling you create
and toast each new moon as if it might be the last one
to tug your personal tides. When driving, sing with the radio.
Always. Turn around instead of right. Deny ambition.
Remember the freckles on your first love’s left breast.
There are no one-way streets. Appreciate the fragrance
of fresh dog shit while scraping it from the boot’s sole.
Steal, don’t borrow. Murder your darlings and don’t get
caught. Know nothing, but know it well. Speak softly
and thank the grocery store clerk for wishing you
a nice day even if she didn’t mean it. Then mow the grass,
grill vegetables, eat, laugh, wash dishes, talk, bathe,
kiss loved ones, sleep, dream, wake. Do it all again.
“How to Write a Poem,” is included in Indra’s Net: An International Anthology of Poetry in Aid of The Book Bus, and has appeared on the blog as well.
All profits from this anthology published by Bennison Books will go to The Book Bus, a charity which aims to improve child literacy rates in Africa, Asia and South America by providing children with books and the inspiration to read them.
Available at Amazon (UK) and Amazon (US)
I have three poems up at Nine Muses Poetry, a new online poetry journal out of the UK. Many thanks to editor Annest Gwilym for taking these poems.
Read this gift from Jose Padua!
Jose Padua is a dish best served cold with onions,
mushrooms and tomatoes in a light broth and
accompanied by a rich lager with subtle aftertones of lemon.
Jose Padua is Arnold Swartzenegger’s imagined tumor
in Kindergarten Cop right when his headache is
at its most painful and the students are ready to revolt.
Jose Padua is the citizen who doesn’t look like a citizen,
the American who doesn’t look like an American, the
human being who doesn’t look like a human being except
in the looming darkness between the last of the previews
and the beginning of the feature film, that precious time
when the prospect of being entertained puts us all
on what the industry calls “a level playing field.”
Jose Padua is a plastic container of air freshener
shaped like a cone that’s run out whatever makes
the almost but not quite pleasant smell that makes
a…
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In his essay “On Poetry and Uncertain Subjects” in the May 2018 issue of Poetry, Jack Underwood discusses uncertainty and “the empathetic negotiation of meaning between poets and readers.” No wonder I so often feel uneasy yet somehow comforted before, after, and while writing…
My poem “Five” is included in the summer edition of The High Window. Many thanks to editor David Cooke for taking this piece. The issue is spectacular – I’m delighted to have a poem appear in it.
Creek Haibun
The creek’s waters flow so quickly that I make little headway in my attempt to cross. A water moccasin slips by, and my left boot takes on water. This is not real, I say. We’ve had no rain and I would not be so foolish as to do this. Asleep? Perhaps, but I’ve passed the halfway point and have no choice but to move forward. I slip and nearly pitch headfirst into the dark current. Lightning stitches the sky.
dreaming, the snake
swims against floodwaters
oh, what have I lost?
O at the Edges 