“a border is never neutral”
—Jaques Derrida
on a map it is a line drawn
in color across the landscape
it’s arbitrary except for words
which no longer make sense
when placed abstractly on trees
and through creek beds
no one sees them except
the ones who kill ones
who speak their vowels
elongated or shortened
(March 11, 2021)
to form a new line
just out of reach
like desire
and all we remember
we fall away
from ourselves like rain
leaving clouds
to float on the horizon
too tired to speak
too heavy to hold the sky
we move down a road
always approaching a line
if we cross we’re freed
into a new chain
a new destruction
a new circle to close
like blood squeezed
along sclerotic veins
until the heart seizes
at what remains
a lost kiss a touch
one last word
(March 8, 2021)
by
my myopic eyes fix
toward a horizon
I cannot see
as I plod through
this viscous mud
which will be my grave
(February 26, 2021)
by
like the good china handled
with delicate hands as if
the people pictured could be
shaken from the scene and lost
they are only brought out on holidays
or as we gather to bury the dead
who were the ones who knew them all
these photographs that stepped from context
as soon as the shutter snapped
the aunts uncles cousins friends pictured
within a tangled patchwork of memory
at their own holidays their own funerals
look back at us with our familiar eyes
wanting to know who we are what we’ve become
(February 25, 2021)
by
All I know of her is, perhaps, this
three-second, eight-millimeter film clip:
discernibly old, she steps through shadows
next to a tall man, who is also in shadow.
Briefly from the sepia tress, she looks back
towards the camera— her face a blurred silence.
(February 18, 2021)
by
the cat slept all day
turned tightly into herself
a sublime wisdom
snow begins to fall
silencing the day’s hard sleet
the night grows colder
ice brightens the moon
along the bare branches’ backs
like a hot whip’s snap
by morning the snow
drapes the yard as if with light
the chimes slowly sound
a lone mockingbird chirrups
inside the house the cat waits
(February 18, 2021)
by
from what vantage point
can one see oneself
with a panoramic clarity
reserved
for history
and mountain ranges
in the spring
the answer of course lies
in one’s own myopic
vision blurred
with warm blankets
precise collars
and a dilettante’s
book shelf
(February 13, 2021)
by
surreptitiously
he squats beneath
his stone bridge
alone in the dark
like a hungry troll
who waits on a lost traveler
to stop momentarily
between her lies and his
as she peers into the mist
that waits below for her
in the ever-widening crevasse
(February 10, 2021)
by
this letter will be ignored
as so many others
or perhaps worse
misread
as if
some other
were the subject
instead of you
(February 9, 2021)
by
another story’s offered
as talisman against
the last day’s horror
i’ve listen to for years
and despite the slow
unfolding I understood
sentences ago i wait
for the last syllable to fall
grace allows misunderstanding
to slip away like ash
from ember as easily as
truth falls to lies
so yes i understood you
each and every time
(February 7, 2021)
by
each breath (115)
a butterfly turns
from the chrysalis’s shell
then flutters away like breath
(February 4, 2021)
problematic poetics (116)
each image resists
the metaphor’s
transformation
(February 4, 2021)
each tongue a border (117)
i struggle to translate
my language to words
i may speak with others
who are closest to me
and who are said
to share my tongue
(February 4, 2021)
vocabulary impediments (118)
talk normal
there boy
(February 4, 2021)
by
in the dark a red thrum quickens
the edge of remembrance like light’s
first glimmer across the sea
I trace my gnarled fingers along the slick
interior walls to justify what it is
that pushes back my intentions
like the egg in childhood’s experiment
which floats in a glass of salt water
I drift seemingly unsupported
with vague suppositions and
innuendo to tangle like seaweed
trapping my voice below the waves
and what I would if I could speak
drowns in my first breath
like a fish mouthing silent words
(February 3, 2021)
by
formed out of these walls to shape
the air to separate here from there
beneath the dark winter quilts
my skin presses to your warmth
longs to be more than my limits
more than what’s contained inside
more an opening to other spaces
other ways with different lines
to cross with a limping accent
a creole to hone words into an edge
I know only what I know
my cell wall’s textures memorized
through the season’s slow change
the light and shadow through the bars
play their fingers in the silent air
like puppets alive to the string’s pull
by
large or small a space
is only emptiness defined
a hermit crab lifts and peers
within a new shell’s prospect
examining the spiral depths
of the nothing there
(January 29, 2021)
by
the last whisper’s echo went
as if the silence was always there
behind his last breath which fell
away like ash from an ember
simply not there any more
not even a hole where he once stood
(January 27,2021)
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