Jazz Study in Time: Migraine
How the body expends its pain,
receptors enunciating their message,
all of one pulse: outward then in,
ice pushing through glass,
metal’s red glow searing flesh,
and the moments between
the piercing and acceptance, the
dull and incomprehensible whirl
of lights flashing from midnight
to snowflake, returning, always there.
“Jazz Study in Time” first appeared on the blog in December 2015.
My poems “Neither Grace Nor Body,” “Beyond Accidental,” and “Less Than Absence” are live at One Art. I am grateful to editor Mark Danowsky for taking this trio.
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” was published in Poppy Road Review in February 2019 and is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for order via Amazon.com and Finishing Line Press.
Tree
where you go
the wind follows
as if no
choice remains but
that of sun
and oak an
attraction such that
limbs curve to
light a certainty
which cautions us
to intrude lest
we lose all
sight and sense
of beauty you
are this tree
Written in the 80s, “Tree” first appeared here in December 2014.
Ghazal of the Bullwhip
Who hears braided tongues lashing the glare still?
The language of pain writhing through white air, still.
Or herding cattle you pop and crack above the horizon,
pastoral and flowing. But sharp, a sonic nightmare, still.
You ask how love blossoms through decades and more.
That look, a caress, the perfect words – all quite rare, still.
Oh to be a larks head knot, strengthening when used.
Delicious hitch, unmoved water, tight square, still.
I fall, you fall. We fall together in pleated silence.
The inevitable loop of the captive’s bright snare, still.
No gods today, but voices trickling through my skull:
Bob, Bob, they say. Not again. Even you should care. Still!
* * *
In response to a comment, Daniel Schnee dared/challenged me to write a poem about a bullwhip. To make it interesting I decided to combine his theme with my latest enthusiasm, the ghazal form.
This first appeared on the blog in September 2017.
Chilled Soba
I am not
philosophical
today,
but hunger
concerns me.
Oh, not
real hunger
but a desire
to consume.
Afternoon
chews morning.
Evening
swallows afternoon.
Morning digests
night. And I,
slurping chilled
soba with
pickled ginger
and scallion,
wonder which verb
my days will choose.
“Chilled Soba,” first appeared in Kikwetu: A Journal of East African Literature in November 2018. I am grateful to the editors for accepting my poem.
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.
The Theory and Practice of Rebellion
Such small lives we’ve led,
diffident, quiet, until
provoked.
Remove our words,
we become steel
and sharp stone,
fletched softwood
splitting the air,
string reverberating,
singing resist,
resist.
Fear not
who we are now.
Consider tomorrow.
“The Theory and Practice of Rebellion,” first appeared in Outcast Poetry, and was reprinted on Vox Populi. Many thanks to editor Sean Lynch for originally taking this piece, and for Michael Simms for reprinting this and other pieces. I am truly grateful for his support.
Nights at the Magdalene Laundry
Waiting, as if it could
be foreseen, as if influence and love
and truth could ease into the conversation,
she pours water into the night’s
mouth. A little longer, says the voice,
and the wind bends the grass,
reaching, without apprehension, a conclusion.
Which is not to claim verity, nor the patience of stone
crumbling along the ledge.
She leaves when nothing remains.
“Nights at the Magdalene Laundry” first appeared here in January 2016, and was subsequently published in The Basil O’Flaherty, in November 2016.
My poem “True Name” is up at boats against the current. I am grateful to editor-in-chief McKenna Themm for taking this piece.
O at the Edges 