At the aptly named Jackson Theater
when you were twelve
you saw John Wayne’s visually ambitious
gloriously fictitious
version of The Alamo
— yet another story already told to you through TV
— and so of course yet another lie.

In my early, disruptive thirties,
I wondered through
An aimless, broken land,
With a slew of past sins as my guide.

Along my travels,
I found a temple made of marble stone
Standing in the middle of nowhere.

Sleepless cities hate shutting down, but also,
Distancing protocols dismantle congregations in dozy towns.
Trauma afflicts the already jobless.
New York nights avoid turning dark & idle,
Yet theatres close-down & spotlights shut-off,
Covid has proven that seductive consumptions are not worth the cough.

Flying home from Seattle,
A man behind me mentions
The 2011 Christchurch earthquake.
I turn to see if it is you. A crazy thought.
Why would you be here?
Fifteen years since I heard your voice.
Still, I recall its timbre.
When you talked it sounded as if
You had a mouthful of stones.

I walk back from intensive care,
automatically shuffle for solitaire
and report the numbers to siblings
as I try to deal:
pressure urine cc’s and temp,
peeling off the first three cards
and nothing changing.

I’ve read that visual memories
are easier to recall than words,
so when I can’t remember the name
of the tree by the garden hedge
white blossoms in springtime,
I think of our dog, Finn, basking
beneath it, long ears stroking the earth,
know it is a dogwood tree.

Waking at 6:00 am, she would sit all day on a wooden stool,
listening to country music on a radio.
Coffee gave her the neuralgia along her nose, so she gave it up years ago,
drank hot water from McDonald’s Styrofoam cups.

Only bone and sinew, papery, thin skin,
her gnarled hands could crush
plants or animals or a small child.

it split my lip // I will always be a little bit in love with you… too
just a little bit // more and we would witness the shadows of
some sort of situation alienated // a surplus fairytale of a couple of normative years

I didn’t like animals
until I started naming them.
The intimate knowledge
of a word,
a string of syllables,
made everything safe.

Chicago I fell in love with you at first sight in May 1975.
I wore that green dress and you wore the Lake.
You were the Big Man in the Midwest.
I was 15, you were 138.
I gave you the best years of my life when I thought you had given them to me.

in a deliberate silence, there are no words really,
except those you might expect,
describing what you’re hearing to yourself.

to me they’re describing the winter white noise:

radiators, cars idling outside,

Is it at the wake of dawn,
On the front porch of a chipped Victorian,
Naïve eyes wandering above the oaks’ thinning
Hairline in the East; is it in the shadow
Of a lamp, reflecting on stars’ sacred tease,
Window shades offering the seasons?

“Stupid is as stupid does,” said Forest Gump. So true.
Like the time nine-year-old me, batting eighth,
squared around to bunt and took a Larry Broerman
fastball in the groin that dropped me to the ground,
where the coaches and umps huddled around
and unbuttoned my pants so I could breathe.

Invisible in the everyday view of my myopic mind,
The breezes blow palm fronds into
Paintbrush-stiff attention on the edges of I-95.

So rarely now do I look up
And see the lemon twist of sunlight in the trees
That I’m shocked my eyes still recognize color.

I want you to know I honor each of you, how your shadows fully cross our streets

just after dawn, how you never bend to ridicule, or to rain, how you never lower

your standards, or your arms.

This boy that I loved, my first love, named parts of me Names full of admiration Names that never addressed me Foreign names of white women

Aurora I don’t like those names

migrants call, no formality of naming, their ox or mule pulled wagons “schooners” little more than buckboards with front plank bench hand-pulled brake no suspension wood wheels wood spokes rusting iron rims sun shield metal-ribbed white canvas hoods ceaseless wind shakes

I remember being thirteen And the snow falling so completely On the windshield.

It was as if I were alone. So sudden and delicate. A single open window in which the cold light expands.

Crickets signal the need for sacrifice, a thanks for good harvest, appeasement for the war gods of winter. The frost is overdue. Near the end of October, the mosquitoes hum and bite as I still sit on the front porch.

The world is a savage place. Have you read the news today? Surveyed rural highways, An elegy to wildlife speared by cars like arrows from the crossbow? Felt life fade from the one clutched in your arms? Seen a man sink to his knees as you whisper “She’s gone”?

I loved you since I was a small child. We all did. You went to my aunt first. Then me. Initially there was a little jealousy. My aunt lavishly gave out other heirlooms to compensate. My grandfather created a special built-in place ~ a cut out in the dining room wall. You fit there perfectly.

The old canoe rests on the sand
at lake’s edge, its stern still
in the water. How many

strokes of the paddle wore away
the varnish on the gunwales?
Many. So many. And years

of sunlight and rain. Years
of snow and wind.

You sing songs to the pug in your fake Cantonese
and seem surprised when he doesn’t understand. You make coffee
a party: dark-roasted beans, gleaming French presses, and hand-thrown
mugs plucked from thrift-store shelves.

1. Here I am
His creased dress-pants hang on bony anatomy:
pelvic brim, iliac crest. Long foreleg ankles without socks.
I don’t know why a Nuer, reputed to walk for days without rest,
measuring the horizon with metronomic femurs and tibia
reminds me of my adolescent father, but he does.