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)
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)
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)
