evolution
searching for sincerity
in plastic, we all wish
we were someone else,
tattoo names inside
our cheekbones, hide
our farawayselves
from the loneliness
that creeps into our
laugh lines.
equipped with in-dentured
jawbones, all we taste
are the soundbites, &
pictures, too, lie;
i can filter love
right
into your eyes, you, man-
ufacture scars
with only the sharp of canines,
piercing truths
to string upon a lover’s necklace
like fingerbones from
some primeval fossil
dug up under a harvest moon.
in unadulterated sunlight,
you see, it becomes
harder
to find the poems.
mindful.
this is how spring comes,
stripes of green between
herring-boned brick, fern-fronding,
bare-armed, broken-eternitied;
mindful. (i am) convalescent,
cognizant of the dragons
that still lean in, hungry.
they bite at me, at
wrists and cheeks and eyes,
blindfully, so that my shape
is not the shape of others, ever.
after dinner, your stereo
won’t work; you ask me to sing, but
i’ve got only that song
where the girl is leaving and the boy
must drop everything to catch her.
(and that is
not us, after all.)
dragons, as everyone knows,
hate the sun. while you are gone, i sit
on the winter-warmed stoop
bare-armed, watching spring come,
scars palely fade, wondering
how this song will end.
the last rhetorical question
where do we dream,
now? i ask, remembering
monday afternoons
that could run through our fingers
like the juice from an overripe
plum. the snow this year
wasn’t as wonder-sunk as the last.
you didn’t dress me up and say
let’s make the most of this.
no, we sat with our backs
to a bar and watched the
flakes fall until they
didn’t. like a disconnect. suddenly
i feel i am stop-gap, filling-
in, badly wrapped
arm-candy. like winter-grass,
pale and limp and persistent.
like the snow that cries, fading.
so i do my dying during
daylight hours, afraid
the neighbors will hear,
call the cops, take
the cat, run. somehow i
am, still; embittered
& embroidered and melting
in what was. you are trim &
full up with prospects & when
you say let’s make the most
of this, it doesn’t sound
the same at all, at all.
sitting, two years later,
in the james center starbucks, i
am distracted by the business
which parades in suit, by
the slow, slow sound
of winter dying, its feeble thuds
keeping time with my own unarmed
chest. there is a meek half-light
outside the windowed-walls,
the sun un-warm & indecisive.
i am afforded a first-class view
of the parking garage,
the crimson-awninged atm,
the bundled cafe umbrellas.
i am waiting, brokenly:
for a car crash, for a lightning strike,
to see someone i recognize.
for you to catch hold
of my cheek and say, come,
let me take you home.
it is more limbo than
purgatory, the waiting;
there is no redemption at its end,
only the promise of a flatter
mattress and yellowed teeth.
as the poet said: there
is evening, there is morning,
and i think i loved you better
when we were
desperate. besides i
quit being a good catholic
years ago, now only
remember my rosary
when digging through
the jewelbox for a gold
chain you also didn’t give me,
also years ago.
This is kinda a re-make of a poem i did about two years ago, posted wayyy back here.
thunder-and-lightning love
they razor
across a face opaque
as sugared absinthe, her smile-
shanks, swearing nothing
could ever come between them, nothing:
the studded starlight, the straightness
of his spine;
there was a time i would’ve moved
everything; now all
that is left is to move on,
the piles of pills uncut, un-
touched on the kitchen counter, a
caress in their cold aloneness. no
half measures in this meeting; she
reads too fast, so crazy she
mustbe in-love, in-
fatuated (i find
i do not believe youmuch, anymore), un-
characteristically alive; still, she reads
too fast, like cobblestones
coming up to meet you, & there is no
sorry in cement, like our
footsteps that day we walked
the beach in the cold, like
elbows in a coffeeshop
on a streetcorner
where they sit and argue
(will they remember my voice,
when i am dead?)
over what it means to be crazy.
becomings
she breaks hearts
like she breaks
bread, gnawing &
soft, follows
the trail
of heartbeats
as it grows
more obliquely
spaced, slowing.
she is searching
for a place to rest
among the wreckings;
she is silent,
like an empty
tattoo, like a bruise
on a thigh. she is
chewing up her past,
tearing it in tiny pieces
and swallowing.
it is fibrous,
absolving, like a train
whistle, like you
in bed on saturday
mornings. she
still dreams of snow
and red dresses, of
the stuffed bear
he left when she left:
please don’t go
again.
for the singer with the cyanide eyes
Maybe this
winter
will be easier;
maybe there is hope beyond frost;
maybe our breath will jut
in steamy tomorrows
across a river that never
freezes; maybe your dreams will dream yet
tachycardic, wild and blue,
like the pulse of the ocean,
muffling the deaths that lie spread-
eagled across decades,
hissing obscenities
under the bedspread, the deaths
that smell ever-so-softly
of overripe promises,
understated like
magnolia blossoms
at the end of summer…
like secrets for a December
no man has seen.
re: the first falling star
this poem
is written under a gray sky,
looking out, poem-level,
at the power lines & december-naked
branches.
it has never smelled heather
in winter; it prickles
with gooseflesh but won’t
let you turn on the heat.
this poem
says: you must make
your own fire. it owes me
nothing. like you, it dreams
in cats.
this poem has no hands.
it sleeps naked. it likes
summer nights and
long walks under the stars.
this poem
is winter on paper,
a message in a bottle
washed upon a cold
Atlantic beach.
its breath steams,
champs, hisses &
waits for us, all, melting,
in the dark.
this is what goes on the last page
we fall, as the year
into december, so
wetly longed-for.
the rush
that calls our quiet
is the absence
of sirens.
the rails we walked
for so long
now blink
into forever,
a smoke-curl
on january’s horizon.
your left hook
is useless
against the coming
cold.
that kind
of hardness
can only melt
or burn.
reflecting as we turn from the water
there was such hope
in this morning.
there were springs
and summers all
jumbled up in our eyes.
there were poems
scrawled in neon, winding
between our fingers:
binding, not bound. now
they slog through wet
descent, flailing, &
here we are at the back
of the notebook, a single
leaf remaining
before october ends.
cold settles in
like a low fog,
like tequila hung-
over, like
responsibility.
the river keeps rising,
and i will miss it.
there was such hope
in this morning.
& i am waiting still.
under construction
like a new notebook or a good clean wind,
summer songs can’t make a dream
exist if it doesn’t want, and
happy poems should not be
items on to-do lists.
he winked at me in fall sunlight
from under his fedora.
[insert standard plot-twist-slash-
voicechange
here]
even happy poems should
have a little mystery.
or a kiss.
i am, after all, not
an iceberg. but i have been
too long among novelists
& nighttime heartache, and
this isn’t a true story.
is it?
definitely a kiss.
on a streetcorner.
[someone dies here]
just
here.
the things we burn
you say we are descended
from giants,
but i
am more impressed
by the tenacity
of acorns,
how they worm
their way into the wet
fall ground. inside
their porcupined-cap heads
they are oaks already, & we
mere children
playing in the dirt, watching
sparks curl round the thread-
bare dark. their every breath
threatens to catch the night on fire,
and my eyelashes are singed
with soot-stained doubting.
these are the things we burn;
with smoke in my hair,
will you love me still?
suddenly
we’re reaving yesterdays like
leaf-fall & peanutshells, piling
them in great heaps to smoke
and shudder; tonight
i listen to the same sad song
you sung me on those days
you sang for no one, and
the creak of the polished floors
under my uneven footsteps
echoes through all the seasons
between that day and this:
fall, winter, spring,
summer, fall
winter, summer, fall, winter…
the sound of broken
promises is similar
to nothing so much as that
of broken glass, & suddenly
nothing
is so bitter
as chocolate.
suddenly,
there is all this talk
of elephants.
doubt
is a dragon
who eats love poems,
chews up their beginnings
and chars my pages
with the white li(n)es
and black letters of regret.
fall has not even
truly fallen, yet we stall out
like gas-starved engines:
sparks that stutter, flame,
consume. will winter find
us hitch-hiking home,
the snow melt sogging
through wet leaves, limp
socks? what can rev up for-
ever, catch us now on fire?
who will teach me, again,
to purr?
reckoning season
summer passes. all its hot-
cropped doubts and match-
struck storms leave
a vacuum where we used to sit
on high-backed stools
and sip on laughter. this is
why i fall in love
though it makes me sad, why
we kiss on street corners
and write poems
about poems. autumn
comes welcome and in-
between, filling the sky
with empty spaces
to tell a story
of matched rails
and sunlight-through-leaves.
today is a good day
for the beginning
of end-
ings, wet-burnt
and rising as they carry us
off in laughter and smoke,
leave us fearless, bare-
footed in rain.
on tuesday at fourteenth and v
a poet might just save your life he
nodded, knowing, the truths spit
out from wine-red lips onto the floor
like that bottle of rioja the waiter
spilt that night we sat
in the corner and heard the priest
argue for equality
of ordination; you said
it was the candlelight
on my breast that caused
the contention; i said it was just
capitalism. it was still
raining; we walked
through sad poems
to get home, umbrellaless& reciting
rosaries of glass tomorrows.
we drowned only
in standing water once.
everything looks deeper with broken rainbow eyes
warm-hard, these moments are like stone
as the leaves fall, browning. i
could fall with them, almost.
there is a loneliness
to this air, its wind. a pushing-away.
hover close, she seems
to say, warm-soft in the wet
light of her eyes. she could fall too,
almost, her wings so translucent
they don’t quite exist.
so i hover, resting.
it is a long way down
even for those who can fly.
i hover, staying. i know: pick
the sun-light out of stone and pulse
and air, and watch, and stay. there
is a loneliness to this sky
in its blue dry light
as the leaves brown and fall,
even for those who can fly.
it is too early
for sad winter metaphors.
september holds
a hard enough leaving
in her crumpled fist:
dry and caustic and
eager to flame. like
tracing flowers in bleach,
like soaking cattails in gasoline.
day-dreaming in stolen words
children chase the shadows
of butterflies round a fountain
of stone; pink
blooms of crepe myrtle drift in
the august breeze to land
teasingly on skin, clothes, hair.
she finds it strange
how every man who has ever said
he loves her has also said
you deserve better;
hikes up her skirt to let
the late afternoon sun
kiss knees, thighs;
wonders. the moon
will be small and orange
tonight, a plaything
for summer’s dying gods.
who will kiss
her noon-shadow,
chase the butterfly wings down
the arch of her back, crown
her summer-glow
like a prom queen in pink crepe,
carry her home when
august has ended?
drifting
it is august in earnest.
yesterday was almost
autumn, yet here we are again,
dripping. the sticky blueness
of these last few holdout days
clings to the streets like gauze.
by a series of unfortunate
coincidents, i
am thinking of laboratories,
of thinning lines of blood, of my
mother’s dead white hands.
the walls of her hospital room
were that same sticky un-sterile blue,
like an oil painting of some South sea.
it is not the same blue of puddled
dress they found me
in before they called the paramedics
at summer’s end the year of her death;
no, it is deeper and better
for drowning. most seasons i
don’t believe in faith,
but i thank god on august days
for ambles along the river,
for his rich earthy browns.
meditations on the death of summer
fog curling
off the water makes me feel
like falling
off the world; some-
times it’s damn hard
to feel at home here,
the drips of our lonelinesses
bubbling up from a depth which,
in august, is of consequence
to no-one. the sky is as oppressive
as oblivion, a smoky mono-
chromed sheet where
the saddest lines are typed
in a cloudy times new roman
and tossed in God’s wastepaper
basket. we dream
of dragons and decembers,
snowfallen starlight, autumn’s
bittersweet gold like sun
on dappled saturday
mornings, like the flamed tendrils
of my strawberry hair
in the dark field of absence
behind your closed caramel eyes.
poem ex nihilo
we burn
as the sun sets.
i am watching smoke curl,
feeding sticks into the flames
one by one by one, searching
the shapes of autumn’s shadow
for a metaphor fragile
enough to carry trust
in its silky, river-
fed palms;
for the words to drip
down your open-mouthed
throat like a benediction
and swallow naked, like a sword;
for the way silent twilight
fills the negative space
and becomes a poem
ex nihilo.
chemistry lessons
photo by N.Klapetzky, edited by the author
there is salt, and there is salt.
what’s the difference,
my father asked me at dinner
the other day, between
sea salt and plain ol’
en-ay-see-el? and i said
sea salt is less strict, dad,
more complicated;
but i don’t know if that’s right;
don’t know its bio-
chemical makeup, how late
it lets its daughters
out at night. chemicals aren’t
all latch-key and angle, you know.
for instance, there are some in the brain
more sensitive to love
than to cocaine. i’ve heard this;
that, chemically, love is the most terrible
addiction. crazy women need brave lovers,
the poet said; this i know also
to be true; i’ve seen crazy.
but i don’t know their chemistry, either:
not love or crazy. my professor
used to wear unmatched socks;
he taught the dissociation of salts.
his eyes were the color of sea glass.
he told my father once i
was the most impressive he’d ever had.
i could have loved him, then,
but i was addicted to my own heart-
beat. that rhythm is less biochemical
than electrical: a crazy drummer in my head
banging out signals to my chest.
i hope he is brave.
too much salt can fuck
it all up, cause heart-
ache. like breathing in sea glass.
how long can you hold your
breath underwater? my cousin
and i used to swim in the lake
by my grandparents’ house,
catch turtles on cane poles
with bits of old bread.
the biggest one we dragged up
onto the shore, and my father
sliced her neck while
her jaws were clamped
onto the back handle of an old broom.
that was before i knew chemistry.
or love. or that guilt could be as addictive
as cocaine. i’m not sure if this
is true, but i have seen crazy.
turtles, the poet said, turtles
all the way down.
They say great poets are thieves. I must be on my way to greatness, then. The lines I took shamelessly came from the inestimable Claudia Schoenfeld, here, and the Bard of Liminga himself, Ray Sharp, to whose poem “of the salt and the light,” this was written as a response.
words taken from the last line of a samurai creed
Ryoan-ji, the Temple of the Peaceful Dragon, is known for its Zen gardens. Kinkaku-ji, The Golden Pavilion,
was burned in 1950 by a Buddhist priest who had been seduced by its beauty; a replica stands today. Ginkaku-ji,
the Silver Pavilion, stands at the end of Tetsugaku no Michi, the Philosopher’s Path.
in the swirl of shinto-smoke
that reminds me of nothing
so much as my dead mother,
the absence of myself
is a sword undulled by blood or lust
and too bright for eyes
that have not known tears;
like coins thrust for luck
or safe passage; like
dappled morning on Ryoan-ji pond
where cranes stalk salvation
beside the unanswered prayers
of lost fingertips;
like broken glass
on asphalt in a hot Kyoto night;
Kinkaku burning in the sun;
Ginkaku-ji at journey’s end.
