Roof Charm
What is home if not exile to the familiar?
A serrated kiss at the closet door.
We duck our heads and cook meals undercover,
the sun’s rays deflected.
And every relentless day finds
our hands wanting.
The black shawl, unfolded.
Wax melted on the whetstone.
You say stars shiver despite their light.
You say one hand mirrors its mate’s arc.
I say warmth flows through you, the roof our sky.
“Roof Charm” made its first appearance here in June 2016.
Refusal Charm
Every rock a precept —
a fist in a garden of palms
a skull is a skull
she says
and I am no iris
overnight the green beetles
have learned flight
now they lumber
into windows
bright asteroids falling
I prefer other voices
in the lantana or dirt
mounded in grids
asking may I come out
no it is late too late
“Refusal Charm” first appeared here in October 2016.
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.
Letter to a Ghost
Had I not dreamed your death, I would have praised this day.
Your name rests in a wooden box on a desk
in a room far away and twice as old as we were then.
My penance in this phase: to continue.
I gather words close and refrain from admissions.
The clock on the wall seldom chimes,
like one whose vows circumvent convenience, or
a shade allowing the barest sliver of light
through the window. That tock preceding
a long silence. Snow blanketing the mounded earth.
Your scent never lingers past sleep, where you remain.
At last I no longer covet those sheets you’ve shared.
Your name rests in a box. I gather words and refrain.
My Halloween contribution. “Letter to a Ghost” appeared here twice in 2016.
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.
Odi et amo (zero)
How I fear what you contain.
Reaching through,
I find only more you,
but when I multiply your being,
the result limits me.
I add myself to your body and obtain
only myself. If nothing is something,
how, what, may I claim?
Your beginning and end, a line
become circle, become identity.
I enter, and entering, depart.
“Odi et amo (Zero)” appeared on the blog in December 2015, and was published in The Basil O’Flaherty in October 2016.
Arthritis
If at night I stray in thought,
dreaming of nimble fingers
and my departed dog’s walk,
will you smile
when I scratch his absent ear
and apologize for the times
I failed him? Even combined,
all the words in these unread books
could never soothe the guilt
of leisure and complacency, nor
match the joy of jumping
for the kicked ball, no matter the
outcome, despite the consequences.
“Arthritis” 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)
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.
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.
Forced By This Title to Write a Poem in Third Person About Himself, the Poet Considers the Phenomena of Standing Waves, Dreams Involving Long-Lost Cats (Even If He Has Not Had Such a Dream Himself), And the Amazing Durability of Various Forms of Weakness
Five White cat always made sure no rats gnawed my books.
— Mei Yao-ch’en
His brain is squirming like a toad.
— Jim Morrison
Standing by the water, the poet wonders if,
as in this dream, his dead dog and Five White
might seize the separate ends of a rope and blend
their tugs, matching highs and lows, growls and purrs,
with near stillness, dawn to dusk and back again,
always equal, sharing through death their love
of work and honor. He throws a small branch
and asks the dog’s ghost to fetch, but it remains
at his side, as if reluctant to leave. How to release
what you no longer hold? Shadows disappear in direct
light, but always return at its departure. The
raindrop remains intact through its long plummet.
Words, though unspoken, hang like lofted kites
awaiting a new wind, a separate rhythm,
beyond compassion. He cannot hear it
but joins his dog in singing. The cat yowls along.
This piece first appeared in deLuge in fall 2016, and was drafted during the August 2015 30-30 challenge. Thanks to Jeff Schwaner for providing the title (which I edited for publication).
O at the Edges 