by
He bends to a shape
he can manage. One
he can fit into
a pocket and ignore
the blood clots
and broken bones
that brought him here.
He knows his mistakes;
yet, decides to stay–
one place being the same
as another he finds
after so many years
pushing along his edges
like a bird in an egg.
(December 14, 2019)
by
When we scattered mother,
the ash swirled about me
like a cape. I breathed her
in, then spit out what
I could into the winter grass.
Metaphor’s bitter aftertaste
lingered between my teeth
for years. Now, left with
a handful of ash to toss
to the wind, I resist this
final gesture, and begin
again. Life’s easy without
thought, or a nearby pattern
to hold one together, despite
death’s constant push to contain
the living who remain.
(December 12, 2019)
All around him, the forest burns,
uncontrolled, beautiful.
The warmth reassures him
with its certainty.
His fingers burn; the flesh
chars as on a spit.
He turns, searching;
but she is gone, if ever
she were truly there.
He stands alone,
arms outstretched.
Flames leap through the trees;
smoke swallows the sky.
(December 10, 2019)
by
I am here
I am here abuzz on coffee
I am impatient with the speaker who is reading her power points to us
I am a reader, as is everyone in this room
this is an English teacher conference after all
the power point is structured like an academic research article
I only know this because once
I was, or wanted to be, an academic
I am a teacher
I understand research and its power
I want my students to feel this power
The presenter has stopped reading her power point
a student of the presenter has stood to witness
he was successful, he feels transformed
so he is transformed
another student stands to witness
she too was successful-
and transformed-
Bless Us Jesus-
which no one said, but they could have
or did say without being religious
or calling on Jesus
this presentation is a sales job
not just for the class on research
but for the presenter’s new book on research—
your students can feel this way too
BUY my BOOK
I’ve had too much coffee
and leave to find a restroom
(December 6, 2019)
The cracks proved the power
of words. Such spells cast
across the fissures formed
fears of a painful death.
Who would be willing to test
this hypothesis on one so dear?
Her survival, by correlation,
confirmed the childish chant.
She lived. Not writhing on
the floor, vertebrae shattered,
just oblivious to your heroic
leaping, like a hopscotch knight,
from slab to concrete slab
to save your one true love.
(December 5, 2019)
What we wish
to hear, what
we wish them
to be: scolds,
advisors, absolvers
of guilt, devour
us like desire.
Yet, table thumps
and tarot cards
talk only
with our tongues.
The dead cannot
speak except
through ghosts
we evoke
in memory
late at night
when we cannot
sleep again.
(December 4, 2019)
I do not know
what it is
I do,
nor if what I do
is possible:
a girl, in creative writing,
says she knows
nothing
about love. Yet,
she writes
a love poem;
so lovely,
so simple,
so honest,
that I believe
in possibility’s
incremental
transcendence
in that moment.
(December 2, 2019)
I am from a poem
I have yet to speak;
words puzzled together
which will absolve me
of a last explanation,
one last precise detail
to bend my lived framework.
.
Useless without function,
my life is a broken gun
displayed beneath glass.
My past wears me
like skin stretched tight
across an empty drum.
(November 30, 2019)
The ghosts have returned home
slipping between the day
to day conversations
holding our silences
in locked yellow boxes
without a trace of air
.
I would say I’m happy
to most circumstances
with my small discontents
not sad enough to search
for bits of joy scattered
across a field like grain
weeks after the harvest
was gleaned by dark sparrows.
(November 30, 2019)
In downtown Baltimore
Years after he died
Lou Reed sings from the sound system
Of this corporate hotel lobby.
This is funnier
Than it should be.
I am almost sixty years old,
Attending an English teacher convention.
Back in Austin, hours later,
I casually toss herbs into the mortar,
And without thought, begin to grind:
“I don’t want to know…
All the streets you’ve crossed
Not so long ago”
(November 24, 2019)
Like remnant threads
lifted from the floor,
I collect shreds of shadows
from my heart. Then later,
when the room’s dark,
and the nights grow long,
I pack them tightly in a jar
and place them on a shelf.
Some nights, I’ll rise from
sleep into the dark, and sneak
a slice of one from a jar;
And in an ecstatic occlusion
to shroud what I’ve become,
I dance bodly beneath the moon.
(November 22, 2019)
by
My commute is long;
my mind wanders
lost along the way:
miles pass,
and the exit
is almost here.
(November 19, 2019)
Our words hold close,
unhinge, this dream–
a singular
translucent dawn.
Narrative fragments
float around a room,
flotsam and jetsam
without back story,
without connection
to a set array
defining truth, lies
into difference.
An organic flux
tendrils arabesques
along fractal lines
until we shatter.
(November 11, 2019)
by
I read with difficulty,
poets I once admired,
not seeing anymore
the simplicity I once saw.
I worry stones smooth
between my fingers,
as if patterns emerge
through a force of will.
There must be something
more than what is here.
Certainties tremble, then
fall like ash into dust.
I’ve come to know less
than I have ever known.
(November 8, 2019)
