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.
Every Wind
Every wind loses itself,
no matter where
it starts. I want
a little piece of you.
No.
I want your atmosphere
bundled in a small rice paper packet
and labeled with strings of new rain
and stepping stones.
I want
the grace of silence
blowing in through the cracked
window, disturbing only
the shadows.
Everywhere I go, bits of me linger,
searching for you.
Grief ages one thread at a time,
lurking like an odor
among the lost
things,
or your breath,
still out there,
drifting.
* * *
Music: “Gymnopedie No. 1” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
“Every Wind” first appeared in The Lake in July 2016, and is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for order via Amazon.com and Finishing Line Press.
Scarecrow Takes a Holiday
Having neither organs nor neural impulses,
I no longer ask why or how I hear and smell,
taste and see, feel. This morning I woke
to magpie song and onion breeze, in
a body not mine, yet mine, at peace
on Jeju Island, far from my crows, yet
still among friends singing the same
language. I know this: home lives
within, and no matter where we travel,
it rides with us. Like the man who
spoke to me, bald, bearded, a pale
foreigner in this land, comfortable
here, at home. He listened for my reply,
but unfortunately I’d not been given
a mouth, and my words dropped to the
ground and were rolled away by
beetles before he noticed them.
Perhaps I should have written a note,
but he wished to gamble and how
could I refuse? I am hollow, but not
empty, whole, yet not complete,
away but here. He took a coin
from his pocket, flipped it. I saw…
A response to Daniel Paul Marshall’s “Scarecrow Travels (after Robert Okaji)”
This first appeared in May 2017.
Glass with Memory
When I remember you
glass comes to mind,
but nothing so transparent
as an unclothed thought
or warmth trickling in
through the pipes or
under the haze of
the second night’s sheet,
no two alike except
in appearance, but under
the lamp’s unconscious glare
I find warmth spreading
across the hard surface,
telling me all is
not lost, that smoothness
persists beyond our reflection.
“Glass with Memory” made its first appearance on the blog in February 2017.
My poems “Scarecrow’s Wealth” and “Cells” are live at The Big Windows Review. Thank you to editor Thomas Zimmerman for supporting my work, and to Charles Payne for sponsoring/inspiring the scarecrow poem.
Meditation in White (Lilies)
Clouds pass my high window quickly, abandoning the blue.
Indefinite mass, indeterminate, impersonal
as only intimates may know.
Though you lay there, nothing remained in the bed.
Which is the blank page’s gift, the monotone
or a suggestion of mist and stripped bones.
The nurse marked the passage with pen on paper.
Renewal, departure. A rising.
I accept the ash of suffering
as I accept our destination, the morning
and its offerings, with you in synthesis,
complete and empty, shaded in contrast,
wilting, as another opens. Laughter eases the way.
***
This was first published in Shadowtrain, and made its first appearance here in March 2016.
Unwinding
As in a day’s long
thread
or with cold drink
in hand,
glass sweating,
ice
shrinking, a little
sweet,
some salt, her
smile saying
relax, put up
your feet,
I’ll take care
of this,
don’t worry,
tomorrow’s
a full moon
away.
“Unwinding” first appeared here in January 2017.
My poems “Do Not Retain Me In An Urn,” “Pinot Noir” and “Hotel of my Future” are live at Salamander Ink Magazine, a Nigerian publication. Thank you, founder/editor Salam Wosu for taking these pieces.
.
May I Be Familiar
Do we find you in what you’ve left or where you’ve gone.
In words you could not form, or forgot long ago.
Missing the pastels, the shades, all nuance.
With moistened hands, I pat rice into a ball and wrap it in seaweed.
By my reckoning, the word who no longer implicates.
Ritual accumulates significance in memory.
Forgotten fruit on the sill. A whisper nailed to the wall.
Honor and pride line your earthen home.
Though you never did, I pickle ginger. Make takuan.
The transparent house reflects no gaze and contains no one.
Gathering your absence, I coil it around my body.
* * *
“May I Be Familiar” is included in my mini-digital chapbook, Interval’s Night, published in 2016 by Platypus Press as #10 of their 2412 series.
My poem “The Inside Twitch” is live at Exilé Sans Frontières, a new international publication. Thank you to editors Daniel Nemo and Pryscilla Hebel for taking this piece.
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O at the Edges 