Some Dogs are Larger Than Others
How he stares
at you,
relentless
in his desire,
offering
belly to scratch
and head to pet
just when you most
need them,
even if
you don’t know it,
then curling
against you, saying
in the language
of warmth and fur,
this, just this.
* * *
“Some Dogs are Larger Than Others” first appeared here in January 2017.
Portrait in Ash
In summer, sweet crushed ice, and crickets pulsing through the night.
Brake lights, and always the blurred memory of nicotine.
I recall running through the glow, laughing, fingers splayed forward,
and the ensuing sharp admonishment.
Steel, flint and spark. Blackened linings and diminishment.
How many washings must one endure to accept an indelible soiling?
In retrospect, your body still resists.
Lovely smoke uncoiling towards the moon, residue of impurities
and substance. Desire, freed and returning.
You dwell underground. I gaze at the cloud-marred sky.
* * *
“Portrait in Ash” appears in Interval’s Night, a mini-digital chapbook, available for free download from Platypus Press.
Bowls, Emptied
I picture them always separate, unfilled, never nested among the others.
In descending order: yellow, green, red. The missing blue.
Concave, hollow, hemispherical, freed of conscience.
Other images – the skies, denser with age.
You stirring with a wooden spoon, cigarette smoldering nearby.
Or the itinerant smell of new sod and wet soil.
My knee aches whenever I traverse stairs or turn quickly.
Which holds more grief, these vessels or memory’s lapse?
Inverted, their capacity remains constant as the heavens, dark or light.
The paling dome, a memory of freshly pulled onion.
Squatting, you would patiently pluck weeds.
I bite my tongue and kneel to place the flowers.
Near this stone, where the crickets chirr and dew worms burrow.
By this mound and these blades of near-silent grass.
Where I accept this moment’s offering. And you do not.
Nocturne with a Line after Kees
I close my eyes and see nothing but rain.
And after, take pity
for what turns beyond sight: the wretched
flower, a hiss from the road. Last night the wind
stole sleep from my body,
leaving me alone, wordless, listening
for her next breath. An alchemist,
I transmute the memories of old wounds laid open.
*****
This first appeared in Ijagun Poetry Journal, in December 2013.
Where the Word Begins
I end, or so it seems.
Small comfort
in the light of that lamp
reflecting from the window,
a low, interior moon
subject to whim and
circumstance.
And how do we retract
those unsaid lines,
heartfelt and meant,
but never expressed?
The hoot owl voices my response.
“Where the Word Begins” was first published in December 2018 at Amethyst Review. Thank you, Sarah Law, for accepting this poem.
The Stone Remains Silent Even When Disturbed
In whose tongue
do you dream?
I fall closer to death
than birth, yet
the moon’s sliver
still parts the bare
branches and an unfilled
trench divides the
ground. Bit by bit,
we separate – you
remain in the earth,
recumbent, as I gather
years in stride.
Even the rain
leaves us alone.
This first appeared in December 2015.
Nine Variations of a Cloud
1
Looking up, I renounce pity and the sadness of wind.
2
Only lust pulls and shapes more, diminishing your integrity.
3
It slips through whenever I try to grab it.
4
Every phrase is a window glowing at night, surrendered to its frame.
5
Water in another form is still water.
6
In whose ruins must you survive?
7
Another shape, another moment desperately spent.
8
And still you thrive in diminishment.
9
Bearing nothing, it conceals.
* * *
“Nine Variations of a Cloud” first appeared in Kindle Magazine in December 2015, and was also included in Gossamer: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry.
Cyclops
Boundless loss, hemmed at the edges.
Another mended hole, wasted mornings.
Unwound, I towel off, extract loose hair.
Look for messages in the clouds, see
only deceit. I am sick with
joy. I no longer sing. My goats
shun me. Where is the love,
the missing fact. An albino
squirrel skitters up the oak.
I think of blood, of bone fragments.
The pleasures of rendering.
“Cyclops” first appeared in September 2019 at Recenter Press, a publisher “dedicated to sharing work that is grounded in both the spiritual and the material.” Many thanks to the editors for taking these pieces.
While Walking My Dog’s Ghost
I spot a baby rabbit
lying still in a clump of grass
no wider than my hand.
It quivers, but I pretend
not to have seen, for fear
that the dog, ghost or not,
will frighten and chase it
into the brush, beyond
its mother’s range,
perhaps to become lost
and thirsty, malnourished,
filthy, desperate, much
like the dog when we
found each other that hot,
dry evening so long ago.
This first appeared here in September 2016.
Year’s End
If I lose myself in breathing,
will the air forgive my forgetfulness?
This oak, too, will stand long after
the last train exits the tunnel.
I worry that my friend may never
clamber past his lowest ambition.
Different and unabated, our words
now stumble over themselves.
Every night forms a morning somewhere:
each year, combined in our shared darkness.
* * *
“Year’s End” is included in my micro-chapbook Only This, available via free download from Origami Poems Project. Many thanks to editor Jan Keough for taking the mini-chap and offering this opportunity to so many.
O at the Edges 