i tried something awful
to impress
at the edge
of a koi pond
& slipped.
an olive film
couldn’t know
i loved her. in years i found
if i hit my palm against my jaw hard & fast
under running water it created
a band of fuzzy light
& done again
the ringing was renewal.
“Apple-Cold,” “Not Understanding,” and “If”
It is that first cold
that brings the apples,
the apple-cold,
the cold that moves the white moon
further, further up the tree,
the cold where the still, clear sky
lifts and stretches out
as if waking and making itself ready
for when the apples
and the moon
and the warm sun are gone,
“Notes on Starvation”
I always thought this poem would be about an ex,
or the child I still wish for sometimes.
Then I realized it was about you
and my bones stopped.
When I told you I had learned not to trust the village,
you cried with me. Held my tears in soft hands
and mixed honey into my tea.
Honey that outlasted us.
“Primetime Jabberwock, Harry Didn’t Clown Around,” “Septuagenarian’s Stroller Soundtrack,” and “Clownpourri”
Let’s not get mathy Cathy or walk
away Resnais but Colonel Tibbets’
Enola Gay thunderous mushroom
fireburst above Hiroshima mon amour
41 days before I’m born instantly
zapped 79,831, perhaps somewhat
more than a third of that once
gorgeous city’s population —
it was filmed for our viewing
pleasure by a companion B-29
ironically named Necessary Evil
“Be Mine,” “Premium Assortment,” and “The Past and Her Muse: a Blazon”
I linger over plump, plush, push-up-bra valentines,
those with glitter and bling, iridescent textured papers,
laser-cut-love in plastic, wood, flammable, frameable
rice paper, limited-edition fabrications to rival-any third
world butterfly. Cards as big as a menu in a decadent
Antoine’s or Galatoire’s of 1960s New Orleans. Will
this memento salve an indiscretion
“Severe Weather Warning,” “Alive,” and “Mundane”
Droughts are just as dangerous as floods
I’m not an artist I just like holes in my
body
And daydreaming of ink in my veins
Circling in charcoal patterns my father once drew
With strong hands. We shared the old studio.
I’m not emotional I just like the electric color of red eyes
And showering in the dark with someone else’s
Voice echoing my thoughts in the background
“Elegy to the Queen of Hearts,” “3 Otis Street,” and “For My Brother”
Mechanically, you circled
out of the garage, the same
one you parked in Monday through
Friday for the past 25
years. When you reached the exit,
you couldn’t remember which
way to turn to make it to
the same house you lived in for
19 years. That’s when the doctors
discovered the tumor.
“Rhetorical Questions,” “When I look at the world,” and “A lone Cry”
You answered my rhetorical questions.
A search for certainty that
Thieved my rhetoric
Replaced it with yes and no’s
You turned my world binary
Made my epiphany quotidian:
A tropical disease that
Denies the feverish
Rush of frenzied surprise.
“Études à l’étranger,” “a study of Hungarian locative cases,” and “or else/where”
Cannot dream but if possibility were
possible, you’ll find that men exist
elsewhere, too,
but that’s in the preterite.
Impossible to do anything
except for what is happening now.
“Would that be enough,” “Ancestry.com,” and “In pursuit of her dream”
When she was a young girl she was beguiled by the trappings,
the manners, the elocution of a mighty vocabulary.
She would listen for the rich tones
delivered by tongues that were born and raised
in upper crust high rise apartments ruling over lake Michigan.
Knew how to follow the money, how to modulate words,
the subtleties between rough wool and smooth as silk cashmere
“For Poseidon,” “A Marriage,” and “Sons”
That night in the temple, when he hurt her,
the asps found her ravaged, her hair tangled;
they buried their tails into her scalp
as tree roots sew into earth and soil.
They kept her safe from his sea, enthralled her,
and pointed with their tongues to her escape.
They guided her through meadow and forest
to a quiet cave high atop a cliff.
“Crickets,” “The Man in the Coffee Shop,” and “Edgewise”
freed from for a moment my sonic mechanics
and I started to hear a free fiddling buzz it was
that wild clicking din of innumerable tiny tigers
-eye bug-leg violins: crickets!
cruising from the roofs of blades
play vesper serenades for June boys,
vim Julies, whose bodies’ limbs are pinwheeling
vibrato by their sides in halls of tall wheat grasses…
“Long Ago, Friday Night in Texas,” “A Train at Night,” and “Joy”
Light explodes from darkening skies.
Not Sun,
Yet, light unleashing elemental forces.
The fragrance of recently mown grass
As would be remembered by a thoroughbred
Not so long ago a colt
Building muscle and endurance
Running like the wind through the grass just because
You were meant to run like the wind when you are a colt.
“Breathing Life into My Daughter”, “Teaching my daughter how to swim” and “About the Woman Recovering from a Broken Heart”
I feel forty-six pieces of her
forming inside of me:
Her fingers dig into the underside of my belly
button, and her feet kick ferociously
for freedom.
In this moment, I want to yell for her
to stop searching for a way to escape this haven.
“Selkie”, “Dad,” and “The Lives of Others”
They say that he hid my skin, but what they
do not know is that I threw it into the sea
at high tide, such that it will not drift back
even if I change my mind. I was always the
stubborn one, they said. I must learn to bend,
“Sorry Epiphany”, “In the Paddy” and “Fear Souffle”
I’d like to say that the day I quit God
was like a knuckle-sandwich,
a lightening bolt, or a surprise
seizure that tore through my brain. I’d like
to say that the earth shook, shattered,
and birds screamed their shrill cries. I’d like
to say that hurricanes raised hell,
ice caps melted and died.
“sounding 21”, “si-ghting 4” and “What”
tired of waiting he writes
while there’s timeand the white space
to trace the light’s line
from place to place
from all the corners of his mindfind
the dust of all that’s gathered there
“Farewell”, “Dionysus” and “Duffy Ain’t Here”
Kids, when I cut out of this life,
don’t turn on the tears and grieve;
kids, when I die I don’t want
any golden speeches saying kind things
about me or some windbag sniveling about
death’s sting, God’s grace and
the triumphant rise to heaven.