Poetry

Oh, Anna Marie,
the Ohio grass was green
the trees were
green has died
in your winter
lightning strikes fork on
your temple tremors these
Shawshank cornerstones fall to dirt
shakes and groans in thirsting throats

It is a funny thing to turn thirty-four
It takes me no more than ten minutes
Of staring at yellowing maple leaves To restore the thought that even my maple trees will die
And then, it hits me:
I want a death with all of the proper documentation
It is true, even if it may not be the case in certain parts of
Pakistan and India

The cold horse river spills Indian eyes
Angel feathers burn in gold smoke
Soul civilizations were robbed of serene mirrors
Creek hearts fall over the dream cliff
Telepathic windows catch dead bird words
The good-bye tunnel links lost voices to the underworld

Hey, Mr. D. I see you. Do you see me?
You call my number twice a day.
Sometimes more. I cause you
no trouble. I do as you say.
Hey, Mr. D. Do you see me?
I know the sounds of your step.
Your black sneakers are my
favorite. Even though your
pants are too short.

My skull is thin as twice an ostrich egg,
a finite orb. But buried dark and thick
a universe of tiny stars sits cheek
by jowl beside grey matter, like blinking
fireflies in the branches of a pine tree
after dusk. This is no special magic.

a picture taken every day,
deposits
for my heart
through my eyes
one day you’d leave
and i’d have you
right there,
in my pocket,
in my hands,
always

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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,

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.

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.

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

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.

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…

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.

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,

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

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.

My father buys plums and asks me not to ruin them this time.
When he leaves the room, I press my thumbs
into them until the skin gives out, until the whole kitchen is muscle and juice,
dark-purple in desperation.
I can’t remember the word for touch in Spanish, can barely remember it
in my own tongue.

For three days I was a stranger in your city,
Pressing my palms to a train window
Watching for the blue glint of the bay.
I thought I might find you in the water’s thin skin,
In the creamy foam, speckled and bearded with wrack.