My poem “Reticent as Ever I Follow the Map” is featured at OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters. Thank you, Jeff Streeby, for taking this piece.
Poem Up at OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters
17
Tag Archives: relationships
Jackboy’s Lament
Jackboy’s Lament
We define ourselves in movement,
in the uncertain light and forms
shuddering by: fences, the nameless
wave, odors, dark water.
Look at the hills, their lines stretched taut like
smiles, or voices torn from the earth.
Or the creek below us – how its mouth never closes
yet nothing emerges but a shadow
on the wind. Two questions arise,
leaving only the abandoned to consider.
In our solitude, only my self is missing.
“Jackboy’s Lament” made its first appearance here in October 2015. I started the poem about a dozen years ago, after a drive through the Texas hill country with Jackboy the cattledog, who was quite the philosopher and humorist. This is what emerged after several conversations and much reflection over his circumstances (abused, abandoned, rescued). Jack didn’t talk much, but he thought. Oh, how he thought.
Bowls, Emptied
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.
“Bowls, Emptied” first appeared on the blog in January 2016, and was subsequently published in Galway Review in December 2016.
Self-Portrait with Bruise
Self-Portrait with Bruise
Some damages announce, others conceal.
How else may we continue
despite our best
inattentions? And which treasure
do we truly hold
closer, the blood orange
or the blade
that parts its segments? At
thirty I would have chosen
one. At forty, the other. Now,
options spread like branches among the cedars.
Ruptured vessels reveal our lapses.
***
“Self-Portrait with Bruise” first appeared in Shadowtrain in August 2015.
Memory and Closets
Memory and Closets
1
She came with the house.
A skull, spinal column, ribcage, tibia,
scapula – the list goes on, not quite to 206,
even including an extra lumbar vertebra.
Edna (long story) attended Halloween parties
and convivial gatherings, dressed in finery.
Silk suited her best, with linen falling just
behind. And hats! That green fedora,
like a parrot perched on a smiling egg,
never spoke, but stirred the conversation.
2
Old boots, worn left heel explaining the damaged meniscus.
Portable record player. Scratched vinyl.
Shopping bag of VHS tapes. Two empty scotch bottles.
The 30-year old suit that hasn’t been worn in 28 years.
Yellowed newspaper clippings of diet recipes.
The lost carton of wrapping paper.
A cheap guitar case, sans guitar.
3
If memory could speak, what would it not say?
Who else has rubbed this dust across his skin?
Only death is irrevocable.
In this darkness I find you.
Fearing withdrawal, we grow closer.
Things, and more things.
Everything we need travels with us.
Always.
* * *
This was originally drafted during the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30-30 challenge, and subsequently published in The Quiet Letter in April 2017. It’s original title, sponsored by Darryl Williams, was “Cleaning Out Closets in Anticipation of Moving Closer to Children.”
You can find The Quiet Letter’s 2018 interview with me here.
Cantilever
Cantilever
1
Night skitters over the mounds,
avoiding the blue flowers
She bears the horizon’s gold.
2
No one stands alone.
Our sky is of earth, dark
soil packed with the living.
3
I do not seek mercy.
The cliff frog chirps its song
and the fog closes in.
4
Suspended, hope
wraps around her,
one foot on the ground.
Driving without Radio
Driving without Radio
One minute you’re sipping coffee at the stoplight,
and the next you find yourself six miles
down the road, wondering how you got there,
just two exits before the French bakery
and your favorite weekday breakfast taco stand.
Or while pondering the life of mud,
you almost stomp the brakes when a 40-year old
memory oozes in — two weeks before Thanksgiving,
the windshield icing over (inside), while most definitely
not watching the drive-in movie in Junction City, Kansas,
her warm sighs on your neck and ear, and the art
of opening cheap wine with a hairbrush. How many
construction barrels must one dodge to conjure these
delights, unsought and long misfiled? You turn right
on 29th Street and just for a moment think you’ve seen
an old friend, looking as he did before he died,
but better, and happier, and of course it’s just a trash bag
caught in a plum tree, waving hello, waving goodbye.
“Driving without Radio” was published at Split Rock Review in November 2016. Many thanks to editor Crystal Gibbins for providing a home for this one.
Poem Up at Claw & Blossom
Status
My poem, “You Say Cicada, Which Shrivels My Ears,” will appear in the inaugural issue of Claw & Blossom, which is scheduled for publication today. Claw & Blossom focuses on poems in which the natural world has a distinct and critical presence. 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.
Bottom, Falling
Bottom, Falling
Through that window you see another bird
rising, unlabeled, unwanted, yet noticed.
A limb’s last leaf. The boy’s breath.
Like the morning after your father died,
when temperature didn’t register
and heat shallowed through the morning’s
end. Still you shivered. Glass. Wind.
Night’s body. How to calibrate nothing’s
grace? Take notes. Trace its echo. Try.
“Bottom Falling” was published in Into the Void in October 2016, and is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second.
What the Body Gives, Gravity Takes (Cento)
What the Body Gives, Gravity Takes (Cento)
As if what we wanted
were not the thing
that falls,
as what was given
to answer ourselves with – air
moving, a stone
on a stone,
something balanced momentarily.
Or wheels turning,
spinning, spinning.
The waters would suffer
at being waves,
but nothing of their dream
takes place,
nothing that is complete
breathes. But the world
is peopled with objects.
You grow smaller,
smaller, and always
heavier.
You can think of nothing else.
Credits:
Jane Hirshfield, Gustaf Sobin, George Oppen, Joy Harjo, Alberto de Lacerda, Jacques Dupin, Francis Ponge, Denise Levertov, Jacques Roubaud.
* * *
“What the Body Gives, Gravity Takes” appeared in Issue Four of Long Exposure, in October 2016.
O at the Edges 