Somewhere, not here
A field lies open,
Unframed, without
Mind, as if lost,
Waiting on ritual.
In Increments,
I have changed.
Each day dawns
Into itself;
There is no other.
Hear, and here
As well, I
Still seek
Her across
These echoes:
She followed
A fragile winter
Ice across a lake.
I am cold; the wood
Grown dark.
(October 30, 2018)
“She is a forgery.”
–Anne Carson
since
she fears
she will be
discovered
as
so much
less
then she appears,
she revises
her lines,
practices
improvisations;
until,
she vanishes.
(October 23, 2018)
Not from any petulant resentment,
Nor a lack of matriarchal love, but
It does not bother me much now
That mom died a decade ago.
Worry distracted her and kept
Her distant. She wanted me
To be something she wanted
To be, without regard for me.
Her love, no doubt, was sincere,
But was obligated, and entangled
With obligations in return with
A thousand hair-thin lines to untie.
Like rags, I wring my hands, like her;
And wish, like her, I was someone else.
(October 8, 2018)
Ritualistically
like fingers slide
along rosary beads,
I worry the minutes,
feel the grain
of the past,
then shift between
decades and days
as if idly shuffling
a tarot pack. I heft
each moment’s density
tasting the cold hours’
iron passage
like blood clots
which slowly drop
from bones
strung across
a killing floor.
(October 3, 2018)
I cannot focus too long
anymore on text
on the flow of sentences
from page to page
or often from word
to word except for
the sounds they make
like small rocks clack
agains a well’s wall
before the ruffled splash
absorbs what small
meaning was left
among the tightly
criss-crossing ripples
(September 29, 2018)
Always
all ways;
yet still,
I am lost.
(September 20, 2018)
I step out the door,
Another muggy fall day:
Mules trudge through the field.
Mud slowly sucks at my step;
I shall fall and become earth.
(September 20, 2018)
