Tag Archives: writing

The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn

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The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn

We have always absorbed heaven,
even through these days of malformed
grain and truth pulled dark and low:
variety confirms purpose. This ear

captures no sound. These inflorescences
produce starch. Those
release pollen. You will die one day.

Inaction reflects uncertain intent.
One must weigh frost,
and with their shallow
roots, susceptibility to drought, poor

soils and high wind. Your lips
kiss steel more readily than flesh, yet
I pray that you amend your thoughts
and accept my proffered hand,

that the individual fruits of the cob
may one day fuse into a single mass,
bringing weight to sunlight,

and a greater grain to your table. But
the door stands unopened, a voice
censuring the innocent. I contemplate
converted light, consider

crows, subduction and rags flapping
in the darkness, silent
tongues wavering unseen above the

unhoed dirt, within each kernel’s
purpose, deep into a hollow core,
raging, unmet and shriveled,
hands opened, resolute yet proud.

The title is from a traditional song, as performed by Alison Krauss and Union Station. The poem is my take on it. “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn” was included in GFT Presents: One in Four, a semiannual, print literary journal published by GFT Press.

When to Say Goodbye

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dried

When to Say Goodbye

 If all goes well it will never happen.
The dry grass in the shade whispers

while the vines crunch underfoot,
releasing a bitter odor. A year ago

I led my dog to his death, the third
in five years. How such counting

precedes affection, dwindles ever
so slowly, one star winking out after

another, till only the morning gray
hangs above us, solemn, indefinite.

Voiceless. If I could cock my head
to howl, who would understand? Not

one dog or three, neither mother nor
mentor, not my friend’s sister nor her

father and his nephews, the two boys
belted safely in the back seat. No.

I walk downhill and closer to the creek,
where the vines are still green.

In the shade of a large cedar, a turtle
slips into the water and eases away.

“When to Say Goodbye,” drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30-30 challenge, was published by Oxidant | Engine in May 2017, and subsequently nominated for a Best of the Net 2017 award.

Flame

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Flame 

Drifting, she passes through the frame.

Reshapes borders, edges.

The way smoke scribes a letter in the sky with
gases and particulates. Intractable. Impermanent.

But not like a risen corpse
yet to accept its body’s stilling, or
the flooded creek’s waters taking
a house and the family within. Some things

are explainable. This morning you drained
the sink, and thunder set off a neighbor’s alarm.

From every moment, a second emerges.

Picture a man lighting a candle where a home once stood.

“Flame” is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for order now via Amazon.com and Finishing Line Press.

Diverting Silence

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Diverting Silence

Wren canyons down the morning’s edge, proclaiming dawn.
Unpapered, unfettered, fearless, he abides.

I say “he,” but sexual dimorphism is not apparent in the species.
Accepting signals, we process and choose, freighting gender aside.

Listening requires contextual interpretation, as does belief.
Shrilling to the porch screen, he spears a moth, veers outward.

An acquaintance claims birds are soulless, existing only to serve God.
As temple bells exist solely to announce, and rain, to water lawns.

Faith’s immensity looms in the absence of proof.
Spherical and hollow, suzu bells contain pellets.

The search for truth without error does not preclude fact.
Even tongueless bells ring.

“Diverting Silence” was published in Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art in February 2017.

Runaway Bus

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tickets

Here’s a recording of my poem “Runaway Bus,” which was featured on Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine in January and is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for order now via Amazon.com and Finishing Line Press.

 

Runaway Bus

Wishing for pristine airways
and unfeathered dreams, I lie
on my right side, and wait.

Again, the bellows flex and pump.

The relentless tickle, exploding,
another round of gasps and mucus retained,
one droplet among others,
spread across the night.

Comfort’s runaway bus never slows,
and I watch it pull away, shrinking in time.

Wait, wait, I say. I bought a ticket.

What We Say When We Say Nothing

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glass

 

What We Say When We Say Nothing

The rain has died and everything follows:
black, white – the law’s supposition. Their bodies

glisten only in memory. One says look at me from the steel
table as the scale registers the heart’s

weight. Another cries uncertainty in the most certain
of circumstances — laid open, emptied then closed,

the simple mechanics of ritual and form. Throughout my
dreams a line of dark figures shimmer in the cold

corridor, end-to-end, supine and unmoving, assigning
loss. I have fifty-six years and more questions than

answers. The drought testifies to a wrong. A woman
visits her son, a father weeps. Our silence, complicit.

My poem, “What We Say When We Say Nothing,” was published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry  in January 2017. Many thanks to editor Anthony Frame for taking this piece and aligning it with some great poems.

Gruyere

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Gruyere

Thinking of speech and the gruyere sliver
balancing on that blade, which nouns push it over,
which hold it in place. How simplicity defies the complex.
Like the hard-crusted bread of flour, water, salt and yeast.
The elemental surge. A little steam. An incantation
born of emptiness: he speaks but says nothing
as the cheese teeters on the edge, suffering
the plight of the incomprehensible. Funny
that adding more reduces the whole, and less
flavors it. A few words, a spice. A syllable.
Milk and rennet. Verbs. A confident tongue.

My Poem “If You Drop Leaves” Is Up at Bad Pony

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“If You Drop Leaves” has been published at Bad Pony. Many thanks to editor Emily Corwin for taking this piece.

Palinode (sol, ischemia, night)

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Palinode (sol, ischemia, night)
palinode-sol-ischemia-night
This first appeared in Calamus in January 2017.

From Left to Right I Ponder Politics and Poetry

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From Left to Right I Ponder Politics and Poetry

In the evening I pour wine to celebrate
another day’s survival. My motions:
up to down, left to right. Glass

from cabinet, wine to mouth.
And then I return to the page.
The character for stone, ishi,

portrays a slope with a stone
at its base, and I take comfort
in knowing that as my knee aches

at the thought of climbing, ishi exists
in descent only. A volcano belches,
producing hi, fire, rising above the

cone, while earth, tsuchi, lies firm
beneath the shoots pushing up,
outward, and ame, rain,

consists of clouds and dotted
lines and the sky above. But if
wind is made of insects and

plums, do I assemble new meaning
without fact or wisdom, form
or assumed inflection, left to

down, up to right? Consider water,
its currents, its logic and needs.
Consider truth. This is how I think.

* * *

“From Left to Right I Ponder Politics and Poetry” appeared in Bonnie McClellan’s International Poetry Month celebration in February 2017.