Ten minutes out of the harbor and already
Someone sights the singular spray that means
We are in their presence. We line the railing
Ready to take communion.
Two young fin whales swimming shallow
Like some cosmic dance, arch breathe dive
Spray spume shine all grace
And the gladness rises in me
The baby boy comet will need a new kidney one day.
Robot cat understands found objects become body parts.
Eyes as stars watch this womb of bountiful fruit.
His birth among biospheres—containers of blue, green,
and orange leaves falling like tears. Later, waves of salad
and feathers toss the young child. He recovers and stands
The Buddha teaches
Cessation of desires as
The key to Nirvana.
Life is like a wheel
Spinning on many levels,
Toward Nirvana,
Or like an old, but
Fast moving merry-go-round.
Spinning, spinning.
Did you know? Nature
sprang fully formed from the furrowed brow
of Man at the moment he wiped
the smog from the glass and saw
mirrored the long tilt-angled slide
follow, ineluctable, the set-piece denouement
of wild ranges on his barren scalp;
read more...Doesn’t myth belong to everyone? I have two tios and they
are barely older than me and mi hermano. One is four years older,
the other six and when we lived together in my grandparents’ house
in Douglas Arizona they would take us for long walks, sometimes at
night and tell mi hermano and yo about la Llorona.
My camp counselor spoke of Charlie
as if he was sitting there
next to us at the bonfire,
the orange flames flickering across her face.
and transforming
a teenage girl,
into a gruesome jack-o-lantern.
The sun is not shining at 3am when the phone rings
and I hear the doctor cut your cord to my dreams,
offering no suture, no receiving blanket.
The sun is working somewhere
dictating time with truth or dare while you are falling;
even the moon is hiding.
Tonight, the typewriter keys slam rhythm
to ease coarse electricity under the skin.
The Sister of the Sacred Heart pleads alms
and sweats under her habit
as angels stride thickly east and west on her sidewalk.
Angels fly complex patterns
over the drunk anesthesiologist and the beautiful child.
Are you one who beats her heart
With fists of rosemarys plucked
from your battered chest now
crushed in fragrant shards by
the throbbing, moaning,
ruing refrain
Ruby’s last dress
is the color of desert flowers
after a late spring monsoon,
purple pops on barrel cactus, pink of prickly pears,
pleated across a canvas of rock-damp sand.
1. A Formal Affair
In Cambridge, English bone china.
A floral pot of black tea.
Delicate cups with saucers.
A bit of milk.
Fine linen.
Lace napkins.
I’ve watched a squirrel three days in a row,
Squirting around the empty trees as quick as
Water from a hose, jumping, climbing,
Searching for the spot that bears
His meal.
No matter what the it
it often starts small, unannounced
undetected or unappreciated
It starts to grow or change in
some way, pushed or pulled by us
or self-induced
She hid all these years
aloof, afraid of the camera
knowing it would add ten pounds
to an already unmeasurable amount of mass
No wonder she kept hidden
in support groups with
bigfoot and the lochness
Inside Notre Dame is a black hole
where worshippers find a secret passageway
to grace
After the fiery birth, sodden mementos:
A cross,
A crown of thorns
Sculpted stone and paintings
The smell of charred faith
And no, not the state, though the state
of the state is cause to fret,
no, O’Keeffe, I say, and we
are painting red poppies. We
are sliding crimson beyond the edges
of our canvases and we
The raindrops dribble down the shopfront panes
while back behind the counter the barista drips
her own creation into earthenware cups.
He’s always liked the tables here, the way
they’re cut with thick pine tops and sturdy legs
two inches thick, like they were made to last
In the bedlam
of bed-land,
happy as babies,
active as rabbits,
me sky-father
you earth-mother;
