Poems About Nothing in Particular

30/30 day 30: Fragment

2011-07-30T19:17:00.000-07:00

Leashed dogs cower beneath the porch
before dawn. Peeling planks of wood
swell out nails like teeth, widen gaps
to yawn lazy in expectation of rain.

You peel lemon after lemon, separating
each segment and salting them, a cross-
sectioned core of some planet, glowing
and never seen.

30/30 Day 27: You, carrying severed head on a shield. Me, the head.-W4M

2011-07-27T22:31:00.000-07:00

It was that goddamn mirror you carried––no, hid behind––that distorted everything but your ankles, calves, the impeccable curve and crater of one shoulder from behind it. All I could see of you I wanted to keep, the hand that raised the sword a perfect sconce for a torch in winter, for cradling drying herbs in spring. To hold something with grace is a beautiful thing, you know. The sword fell and I felt your hands in my writhing hair. You will never be more perfect than this moment. I love you. I hate you. You could be preserved for all time. A work of art. Just look at me. Look at me.

30/30 Day 26: Apologies

2011-07-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

You say I would be better off
                        apologizing to the ruptured capillaries
            of your neck, shoulder, collarbone.

Some things I refuse to do. Others
                        I refuse and do anyway. You repay
            the kindness by making a prison

wall of my back, the captive days
                        hash-marked and raw. Summer languishes,
            the breeze from the window, the fan

at the foot of the bed, like lying
                        in a shallow, lukewarm stream. Nothing
            will cleanse what bleeds through

the next page, the indelible reminders.
                        What stains and does not wash. What
            is not washed, in case.

30/30 Day 25: At Lorine Niedecker's Grave (2)

2011-07-25T17:39:00.000-07:00

I.
II.

The groundskeeper,
            ill-tempered and precise,
                        mows between each stone.

The trailing swallows
            make every comment
                        on impermanence

we can stand. I do not
            believe in portents
                        or the chattering

of cicadas as something
            beautiful––moreso
                        their husks clinging

to the oak, the hand-
            rail, the front door,
                        incapable of holding fast

their violent contents.

30/30 Day 23: Atomic Ark

2011-07-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

The first night after the bomb, nobody
came for the animals. The sand cooled
into glass. We were assured radiation
was a painless death, that the goats slung
to sawhorses were patriots in their gun turrets,
on deck, swinging listlessly against
the walls of the mess hall. I have nothing
to do with science but bodily process,
this the least visible, most necessary.
A photograph of monkeys cowering
in their cage was titled Never Sailing
Again. There are broken parts in every system,
a clock missing a tooth on one gear,
shortening each second, a single screw
shaken loose to rattle inside the shell, irretrievable.

30/30 Day 22: Reprieve

2011-07-22T10:41:00.001-07:00

The spider starts rebuilding
in the middle of a storm which
you tell me is a beautiful woman

in India shaking a silk Dhoti
after washing, the quiet claps
of damp cloth making thunder

to shudder-rattle the windows.
Not half an inch of rain
since July first, I was told yesterday

by the farmer selling asparagus
thick as a thumb. His crops
will be flooded and joyous tonight,

with the rain which is the water
shed into that far-off river in sheets
from the garment's weft and warp.

30/30 Day 20: Table of Contents

2011-07-20T21:26:00.000-07:00

In New Jersey, medical students
forbidden from studying cadavers

use bone chisels to pry the hinges
from the morgue doors. You show me

a film of a dog's severed head––
It's Russian you say, as though

that explains the apparatus
siphoning blood through its host.

Nothing tragic about these days
spent invading the living, the dead,

the students opening men like
china cabinets, reverence, care,

setting the table with our contents.
The dog licks its muzzle, calm

as we are, watching it track
a flashlight, turn its bloodied ears

toward voices. This is where
it started, you say. Now

that machine keeps organs alive.
Somewhere, a fist of red muscle

beats in a clear box before transplant,
a lung breathes deep without ribs

to confine it. When finished,
the students replace the hinges and,

inside, the bifurcated seams that split
their subjects are sewn shut,

not a stitch out of place.

30/30 Day 19: Pity From the Sirens (2)

2011-07-19T18:55:00.000-07:00

II.

The tired snakes writhe above me––
I can never tell when it's raining

without looking out the window. Early on,
I would wake with a satisfied weight,

usually a mouse, a rat, a roach,
consumed while I slept. Only men

turn stony, other creatures freeze
from that scaly gaze I can claim

only distantly as my own. Nothing
strays close these days, but the snakes

will never eat one-another––how
could I destroy a part of myself

with so much work to be done?
When champions plead, their hands

make a beautiful place for bird nests.
Every man is bettered by stillness.

30/30 Day 18: Pity From the Sirens

2011-07-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

"...'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror..."
-Percy Bysshe Shelley

It starts at the eyes,
not that anyone asks.

Too often the limbs
break before everything
is done––I have too
many fallen arms
littering my home, shields
as platters, swords enough
to shutter the windows,
fence the yard.

Pity from the sirens
whose art needs only
a sweet song and
sharp stones, one-time
shows lauded for
sincerity and scale.

For me, a fine line
between victim and
sculpture. A man
will always guard
his face. I paved
the path last summer
with so many stone hands.

30/30 Day 15: Apocrypha

2011-07-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

My grandfather tells
a story so filled

with detail it is difficult
to parse, the hallways

of the boarding house
wallpapered with horses

running a constant circuit,
the veranda partially

screened, mosquitoes
invading nightly. But it is not

the hooves of horses which
make the racket he pounds

on the dining room table
of our now-modest home, it is

the footfalls of a ghost
which braves the insects

and wanders the veranda
after thudding down

the eighteen––eighteen
he is quick to repeat––

stairs of the house.
He counted them nightly,

counts them now, and
as he leads me through

every haunted room,
I consider the crop circles

outside Verona, the pressed
grass fallen like dead men

in rows, which, viewed
from above, make

an asterisk, an ampersand,
the last period in a sentence

which nobody knows began.

30/30 Day 14: The Exotic Other

2011-07-14T15:49:00.001-07:00

On a minimalist kick.

The Exotic Other

Conical mounds, linear, effigy,
                        the last in the shape
            of an animal only

if seen from above.
                        In a fistful of earth,
            shards of pottery,

blades of glassy stone,
                        a tooth, a tarsus.

                        .

A skeleton shipped
                        from Rochester,
            catalogue number

drawn in pencil
                        on the parchment
            floor of the pelvis.

                        .

An African village,
                        transplanted
            to the world's fair,

six months of buzzing
                        generators, impossible
            Ferris wheel, Pabst's

first blue ribbon. Imagine
                        going home. Imagine
            not going home.

30/30 Day 13: At Lorine Niedecker's Grave

2011-07-13T19:25:00.000-07:00

Took a field trip to Ft. Atkinson today with the residential poetry program I'm TAing.

At Lorine Niedecker's Grave

Why do I always leave
            the milk on the counter,
                        just long enough for it

to spoil slightly before
            I replace it at lunch,
                        sour little secret;

my keys on the shelf
            staring me down as I
                        walk out the door;

my pen on the table
            of a dead poet consumed
                        by remembering

every detail, small
            as a seed, hidden as
                        a pencil that has replaced

a bone in a living bird?

30/30 Day 12: Yes/No/Maybe/Never/Always

2011-07-12T20:34:00.000-07:00

When Aron hands me back the joint
           and asks if this is what I thought
           it would all be like––it all being,
           I thought, the spacious interior
           of his father's SUV, my body
           cradled in a palm of plush leather,
           a gently closed fist of metal,
           skyline receding behind us, all
           aglow and shrinking behind
           the hills as teeth behind lips––

30/30 Day 11: Fragment

2011-07-11T20:33:00.000-07:00

The body is a timeshare of doubt
and overconfidence, each one
drifting in and out, leaving their
small, accumulating messes.

30/30 Day 10: Natural Phenomena

2011-07-10T14:42:00.000-07:00

The horse inhales deeply
                        as it is saddled, and holds in
            hope that the rider will not

notice. The coyote gnaws
                        off her own front leg from
            the trap that has snared her,

counts this as a victory. I think
                        about points of entry without
            exit as my uncle flays a shad

still flopping on the gunwale,
                        this to use as bait for larger
            game. He spears a knot

of flesh around a palm-sized hook,
                        casts, waits. The horse will release
            its breath only when the rider

is mounted, toppling him from
                        his loose throne. The coyote
            will wait for the limb to die

before murdering the family cat.
                        The sturgeon which has taken
            the bait deep below is older

than I am, and in its surfacing
                        has irrevocably tangled our lines.
            The shad, half-skinned, flops

into the water and disappears.

30/30 Day 9: Navy Pier

2011-07-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

She places a pile of ash ten
feet from the last, measuring
by footsteps toe-heel-toe-heel
as you tell me that everything
made by human hands looks
terrible under a microscope.
Constellations reveal themselves
in the poured concrete, but I don't
mention it, the woman's bicycle
(given over to the appetites of rust)
balanced with one hand as
the other, coated, ghastly, cradles
another half-cup measure mountained
like gray flour. You say that nature
presents itself as a beautiful series
of boxes within boxes, and here
the messy particulars of life and
death meet––what is contained
contains, what holds is also held.

30/30 Day 7: Thrift

2011-07-07T19:24:00.000-07:00

Those mornings we rose to the newspaper
splayed across the living room floor, enough

red ink for a murder scene, our mother
poring over classifieds: everything

given was received, sought was found.
Here, a couch made home by wasps

last summer, a canoe portaged a county
too far, our city rivers thick and silted.

Every harvest took planning, the hand-
drawn map pointing the way from one

discarded oasis to the next and, on her
return, the living room became an orphanage

of mis-matched furniture and crooked lamps.
The house was a weakened body after a vital

transfusion––every surface new and flushed
with life, none of it recognizable as our own.

30/30 Day 6: Distance

2011-07-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

2.

Here changes momentarily, a rail-
road, a bridge across the creek that

splits a tiny town in two, a silvered
vein of quiet in the rocky conversation

between shores. But already, here
is fields of grass shorn for the coming

heat which have hosted wars and their
children––you can almost see the bone-

meal beneath the bonemeal. Here is
not the forest, but the memory of trees,

and not the leaves, but rich earth
in their burned stead.

30/30 Day 5: Distance

2011-07-05T19:06:00.000-07:00

1.

Listening to Radio Nowhere, looking
as you always do, at the mirror, or more
precisely, at the misshapen glass that
contains your reflection and all behind
you, surrounded by the oncoming road.

30/30 Day 4: On the Fourth

2011-07-04T14:12:00.000-07:00

We discuss favorite words
after a smoke on the shore
of Lake Michigan, sailboats
numerous as teeth. Synopsis,
cathartic, vermillion, precipice,
vitalitous––this last one not
truly a word, but a better creation
to describe something's living,
the lush forest which walls
the beach, counterpart to the thousand
dead fingerling fish washed up
on the rocky transition between
sand and what I keep mistakenly
calling the sea.

30/30 Day 3: April/Aftermath

2011-07-03T08:24:00.000-07:00

We shored ourselves
against the siege of winter
with all we had, blankets
worn as tissue, enough tea
to float a ship, and
when the creeping frost
finally retreated down
the oversized window
panes, everything
seemed broken or waiting
to break. Grass grows
through the garbage,
the roots of the tree outside
emerge from the laundry-
room walls, cracked and
crumbling, thin as thread.
By measures, we learn
to subside with these
reclamations, but they turn
us wild, our laughter
the heckling bark of dogs,
our smiles, the bared
teeth of some aggressor.

30/30 Day 2: Mausoleum

2011-07-02T12:46:00.000-07:00

He was purported to say
that all the warmth had left
her body, so he built them
a warm place: old books,
dirty dishes, tarnished lantern,
her unfinished knitting draped
over an armchair, a casket
for him, too, across the way,
waiting, open. See, how quickly
the rest of us make quiet
room for grief, without ever
populating its spaces.

30/30 Day 1: Ask 1 Radio Psychic Network

2011-07-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

The last piece of advice
threatens to topple
her swift-constructed
sureness. It's after
she has already asked
about wages, names, hours––
received all she needed
to know about being
on the edge of a break-
through, leaves prepared
to turn, big things
on the horizon and all
florid ways of saying
time inevitably takes you
elsewhere. With one
minute left, the psychic
asks about love, followed
by laughter on the line.
I feel in my head––the listener
corrects herself––my spirit,
I mean, if you can hear
the spirit in my voice,
you know I'm cringing.

Memorial (adj.)

2011-06-27T21:55:00.000-07:00

Remember to make room
for the vacancy, the shovel
that can do nothing but create

two things: holes and piles
of their contents. Insects emerged
from a dirt mountainside which

moments before was dark
space to navigate blind. You
caught one, a pillbug which

uncurled in the pinch of soil
you placed in your palm.
See there, you said, home.

Survival

2011-05-26T19:19:00.000-07:00

I.
The ten pounds needed to break
a knee, the sunken hollows

behind your jaw that, if pulled,
will detach it from the skull––

in self defense, we are educated of safety
through the body's fragility. I would have

killed him, my mother says of the burglar gone
out the broken porch window. It would have

been easy, she does not say.
Vertebrae, clavicle, scapula, the body

persists in words more fragile
sounding than they are. The man

whose motorcycle helmet bounced
some thirty times off the pavement

said he had begun to compose
a song to the rhythm of impact.

II.
Malaria Parasite First Filmed Invading Human Blood Cell
-headline

The empty bottles and cans on the counter
seemed like the smallest war, even as we watched

another, smaller war on screen. Presented
with what writhes, the mind grows

an ugly tree, deeply rooted. This
was to witness a myth made, the self-

same desires of wolf for flock, snake for
the sweet, vile unhinging of what will fit

between its jaws, its coils. It begged
a question about fear's antipodal relation

to ignorance, how it is too easy
to call something of which we are terrified

beautiful––but by the time we had caught
on to the changed face of this foreign

body––what this change
meant––it was gone.

III.
The clouds are moving in that thick,
imperceptible way again. With little

out here to measure them against,
it could be the jelly in our eyes––

the vitreous humor, which turns to water
as we age––that makes them,

motionless, churn; everything in us
moves. A contrail's incision parts east

from west. A surgical incision makes clean
work of malignancy, and the same radiation

that obliterated cities bladelessly shears
the scalp of its vivid weight.

I crushed a spider crossing the windowsill,
and saw, staining the tissue, what little

it takes to make motion––this, after
the bug spray and the spider's

unbearable demonstration of how much
it takes to keep moving.

"And so shall we ever be"

2011-05-23T19:06:00.000-07:00

A brilliant man is waiting
for the world to end

yesterday. Today
the sky is that sick,

rapturous green––the best
that bad gets, you say

––that will end
something, if not

necessarily everything.
In its softer moments

the rain sounds
like the quiet patter

of a thousand mice
in the walls, while

two counties over
the tornado tearing

through a small-
town cemetery attempts

to fulfill some measure
of prophecy.

Myth

2011-04-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday an open mouth
                        on the floor of the sea.
        A nation playing

bloody knuckles
                        with its own hands.
        The television rattles

when it's not on and
                        when it is, shakes
        the house. Yesterday

every photo was rubble,
                        ash in the coffee, blood
        in the milk, something

desperate about
                        our typical consolation
        of rescue. How

can morning plough
                        so smoothly through night?
        Today a sparrow flew

into the spinning spokes
                        of my bicycle, and
        out the other side.

Curiosity

2011-03-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

That morning,
as the news chattered

about broken records
we discovered the sandbox

––a haven for all things
static and plasticized––

frozen solid. The arms
of plastic men beckoned.

The maples bent over
with interest and ice.

With a few hours of work,
the action figures could have been

drying on the dish rack,
Spider Man dwarfed

by the china platter,
The Hulk roaring

face down into the dish towel,
but the howling alarm

from across the street
of a car impaled

by a fallen tree limb
shook us instead

into discovering
how difficult it is to tell

the difference between
shattered glass and ice.

Anecdote

2011-03-03T21:59:00.000-08:00

There is also the matter of my uncle,
who, after the crash, was found

to have bent the steering wheel
around its steady column. His arms

are slack now, the skin loose, room
for so much more than is there,

but that day, so my aunt tells it,
the ring of the wheel curved in

on itself, like a taco shell, she always
says––for this is not the first time

we have heard the story; waiting
room, funeral home, church,

a podium facing lacquered pews––
weather always the same bone-

dry desert wind and a cloud of dust
that scuds onto the road, obscuring

the telephone pole like clockwork.
This is where we, having known

him, still manage to expect some
casual line, I'll be goddamned, when in fact

he was clearly blessed, but no matter
the repetitions, the story always ends

the same way: steering wheel bent
with his own two hands, hands that opened

the twisted door of the old truck,
brushed the glass from his shirt.

The Personhood of Great Apes

2011-01-27T23:08:00.000-08:00

Giraffes will kick their children over
when they try to stand at birth.

The nature special exhibits this
sad comedy as it happens time

and time again, until the infant
stands on wobbling knees and takes

a step backward to catch itself.
Then the mother starts to run.

John says this is what god intended
parenting to be, formative and

brutal––Kara says he's full of something
she fails to enunciate as the child

hefts its still-damp lank, takes
a buckling step and begins

to sprint. Commercials follow, buttoning
the moment shut, and I think, among

the empty pizza boxes and the couch
cushions none of us can stop

eviscerating piece by tiny piece, maybe
this is time's estranging project: that

every memory recalled can be altered;
that even when you tell the truth

someone will think you are lying.

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Blood Travels

2011-01-13T22:18:00.000-08:00

In the planetarium, an indigo bunting,
wings clipped to keep her away
from the falsely turning sky, navigates

toward the most stationary star. She will
do the same given a sky full of made-up
constellations. She recalibrates in days.

Long haul truckers drive
the circumference of earth in distance
and continue, like starting a novel

over again the moment it is finished.
The tree upheaves the sidewalk daily.
Your blood travels miles per hour.

When you understand what you are
running from, the difference between
exploration and exile is negligible,

the quarter mile of platform
past the depot beckons you to chase
after every departing train.

On Viewing Family Photos After Christmas Dinner

2011-01-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

My aunt's yellowing fingernail traces
her nervous smile, and this is when
I'm wondering whether I'll live
to see next year. Trust her to drop
this into casual conversation––
the growing fetus, her desperate
youth––then leave the moment
to hang like a dislocated limb.
In sixth grade gym, Tony Bower's arm
twisted, vine-like away from his body.
We were told not to look, though
all of us did as the teacher rested
a foot on his chest, told Tony,
told us all, he would count to three.
He pulled on two. Her son walks in,
and though he tells her, tells us,
don't be melodramatic, I hear
a limb being steadied, grasped,
wrenched back into place.

How to Block an Alpaca Knit Scarf

2010-12-31T09:57:00.000-08:00

The skin recognizes
what was hair, what pleases
the skin to be close, don't

give it a name
when you drown it,
don't celebrate or take

too reverent a time
stretching it past normalcy
and pinning down

its length. That said,
be kind––the fabric is weak
when saturated, too heavy

to do anything but sag itself
long and lacking if allowed.
Sort the rest of the laundry

by color, steady
your folds and do not think
too much about the fur

on your arms, gold
in the dingy basement light as you
brush the hair away from your eyes.

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Savonarola II

2010-09-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

"Your city is now the city of God."
-Girolamo Savonarola

What do you expect a man to say
when he wants nothing
but your salvation? It wasn't
the threat of damnation
that got to us––we could tell
the time of day by his shadow
in the cathedral––it was the boys,
fanciulli, who went door to door,
asking us but what if he's on
to something? People have always
had a problem with the scrutiny
afforded by mirrors. It seemed
natural, that our reflections be
made enemies of ourselves.
You can't imagine how the palaces
shone in that dingy light,
the teeth of crenellations gnawing
at the city they overshadowed.
The proud, he said, fall
prey to themselves, and that was all
we needed to know about justice.

Eavesdroppings

2010-09-03T06:12:00.000-07:00

We had lunch in the train station, herring, pickles, potato salad, vodka. Everything Russian. I told him today is such a poem and that my friend says that everything is a poem.––What did he say?––He said, well, he laughed.

Lounge Car: Charlie

2010-08-27T05:23:00.001-07:00

I bought a Volkswagen after my tour in Germany,
top speed of maybe 75. Just enough to keep up

with the autobahn. The trains don't even chug
anymore, just sway. I say the most polished surface

in the world might be the top of the rails, which reminds
me of the bumper of that old Beetle which reminds me

of the absence of cow-catchers on trains today,
which didn't catch cows so much as split them in half.

It must have been the chill of the water that did it, holding
out his left hand that looks like a fractured cup, that one

long fissure in the brown earthen mug that refuses
to part, fingers at permanent grasp around the palmed scar.

They don't give you a purple heart for washing dishes
but they do send you home with your gun and hope

you finish the job––the war, some vendetta of the mind
against the flesh––yourself. He chuckles like the train wheels.

Lounge Car: Becky

2010-08-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

The second time she ran away she ended up
in North Dakota, and works a quilt beside me
as we hurtle through the badlands.

The only time I ever followed my grandfather
down to the river, I first met a bear that was eating
out of his palm. T-T-T-T-T go the telephone poles,

T-T-T-T-T go the shadows at a slant. He told me
sometimes friends shouldn't meet one-another.
The bowed grass and the flatlands convince me

that the bales of hay have rolled themselves.
The machines are all show. On the third night
the tree is tied with skulls at compass points.

The men, they cut, here––she pokes my chest, left
and here, right, and dance until the horns break
through the skin. Think about the forces

between passing trains, whether a bird flown
in between would feel the pull of east and west
and split, wing from wing, or if a balance

is struck between the points, and this bird (a starling,
probably, swooping over fresh cut grass beside the tracks)
could nest in the stillness of a storm that's all eyes.

Steganography III

2010-07-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

III.

It's the repulsion
of atoms that makes us

unable to touch.
The distance between rain

and pattering glass is the same
between hissing fist

and patient temple, bullet and
brainstem, infinitely divisible.

I am in danger of flying
apart at any moment, reaching

for a paring knife to halve
the nectarine with empty,

razor-sharp space, knowing
I will never grasp the knife,

cannot even reach.

Learning

2010-07-22T18:42:00.000-07:00

The easiest way to skin a hedgehog

is to use a bicycle pump to inflate it
(gutted and cleaned, of course)

over the fire, and scrape away the remains
of its charred quills. A man can eat

three, four in a sitting, the grease
he flicks into the fire burning brighter

for a moment or two, and we will
drink ourselves welcome

to sampling the spineless
creature, for the sake of invitation,

politeness, perhaps a bite of skinny rib,
a tiny foreleg. Like trying tripe in Florence,

because the wine was at hand to wash
my palette clean and the vendor

looked on expectantly. His grin says
he's seen it before, the moment

of knowing and pushing away,
the act of swallowing truth

after truth, the grease of it
covering my foreign hands, my smile.

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Postictal

2010-07-16T04:32:00.000-07:00

It's just that: the danger
                                    of allowing an angel to drive.
Your palms cupped over and found
                                    the holy bowl empty, the rings
of left behind dust that settled
                                    on the edge of its tense surface,
concentric. Concentrate, this
                                    is the prayer for when the choir's
crescendo won't break: let my scabs
                                    peel off in one brittle sheet
and throb with what I know but
                                    can't taste to say. And
this:
                                    Let my feet dangle over
the knit rope edge of the hammock;
                                    the doves will have their day,
and I, the same from the ground
                                    up, when the saints have long since
stopped speaking.

Join the Circus: BigTentPoetry.org

Like the Clay V

2010-07-11T09:48:00.000-07:00

I-III
IV
V.
VI
VII.

I learn from reading
the encyclopedias

that great
mechanical constructions––
boats, planes, machines

deemed fit for sacrificial
champagne christenings––
are female,

and I think this
is rightly so: helmed
and mastered by men

who rely on us
to not abandon them
to the deep,

and also that you
are sheltered within,
shuttled, nurtured, deposited,

though it is strange
to consider disembarking
as birth.

Like the Clay VII

2010-07-11T08:23:00.001-07:00

I-III
IV
V
VI
VII.

The cat's hiss
is that of a short fuse.

We are all ill-
tempered these days.

You arrived
at my doorstep
all messed up,

hands badly bandaged,
a grenade

lodged

in your broken teeth.

After I replaced the pin
with a bent paper clip,
you told me between gasps

(the nerve
of a tooth
exposed)

that it was the only
forbidden fruit
you could find.

Steganography II

2010-07-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

II.

I was told to wash my hands
before coming in. They looked
clean to me, but I learned

why they call it gray water,
and that sterility has a scent

––no, an odor–– like
formaldehyde, but nothing
like formaldehyde; of

preservation, of keeping
the natural course of things

at bay. We have never been
particularly good at talking
about death, but if I am

a new self, given seven
years to shed (even now,

my sunburned shoulder peeling
in ragged bits, broken skin
on my damp palms raised

and white from scrubbing),
are you?

Join the circus: BigTentPoetry.org

Steganography I

2010-06-24T19:32:00.001-07:00

"God gave us memories that we might have roses in December"
J. M. Barrie

I.

Two days in, they gave your brain
room to breathe, and no matter

what mom said,
I always knew I'd seen the missing

crescent of your skull.
No,

missing is the wrong word;
it sat on the bedside table

at the bottom of a mason jar,
some child's mischievous grin,

a narrow, bitten moon resting
nonchalantly against the glass,

out of place
but incontrovertibly

present, a slice of rind
screaming for the orange.

Prompt: I want to write about ______, but I don't know how.
Join the circus: BigTentPoetry.org

Fatherly

2010-06-18T05:47:00.000-07:00

Part of the comfort of stars
is the marching procession
of empty between them. I resent

when you tell me not to look
at your finger as it conducts
my eyes. Its dull details––

scar from a compound fracture,
tendons that disappear
into walnut knuckles––

are more present than
the dim shining of the distant
and praise-hungry sky.

Join the Circus: BigTentPoetry.org

Pantoum 1

2010-06-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

I forgot to tell you the gun was loaded.
We crossed the street. The corner store
that hummed a fluorescent tune
greeted us as friends.

We crossed the street to the corner store,
pushed forward by desperation
greeting us as friends,
and shook the change in our pockets.

Pushed forward by desperation,
past impatient, nervous,
we shook the change in our pockets
like windchimes in some August

past. Impatient, nervous,
my memory fading on little cat feet,
like windchimes in some August,
we walked into the corner store.

Memory fading on little cat feet,
humming a fluorescent tune,
we walked into the corner store.
I forgot to tell you the gun was loaded.

*"on little cat feet" is a line taken from Carl Sandburg's "Fog"

Join the circus: BigTentPoetry.org

Anachronism

2010-06-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

Claudius' temples burned
after the application of electric eels
to treat his headaches, but they say

it worked, and who are we
to doubt? Blood-letting helped
treat typhoid until someone decided

to give patients bed rest,
blankets, fluids, and found that
we are capable of healing ourselves.

Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize
for lobotomies. I measure the morning
with steel calipers and hope for the best.

Join the Circus: Bigtentpoetry.org

To Find Home

2010-05-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

The trick, I am told by a man clad
in khaki armor, is to search for points of departure

and arrival. The exterminators have been around twice
this week, and the back porch has just stopped

reeking of pesticide, the unfinished wood
beneath the floorboards' peeling paint

soaking in the scent. The winter months expanded
the water in everything––the house groaned bloated,

unhappy to have taken in so much––and we, too,
grew beyond our patient domesticity, flaking off

in brittle sheets. After the eruption
of summer, everything emerges unsteadily. Even the wasps

wander the windowsills, the sidewalk cratered
with abandoned anthills. The exterminator tells me

it takes the lazy not-looking of an optical illusion to see
where the trouble originates. On this first

ninety-degree day of summer, a nail swelled out
of place catches between my toes, and the corpse

of the overstuffed couch that breaks my fall
buzzes angrily from inside.

Join the circus: Bigtentpoetry.org

What Began as an Apology

2010-05-21T14:30:00.001-07:00

I summed you up
                in ten pages, as many
                secondary sources, your craft
                synopsized, an A-grade term paper,

but I am unsure
                of what to make of this
                moment: the particular purse
                of your lips, the over-emphasized syllables

made monstrous
                by microphone,
                some proof that you––
                like the rest of us––squint unflatteringly

under the wide-
                eyed spotlight. You pause
                and the static makes the sound
                of flowers uprooted from soft earth.

Prompt via Bigtentpoetry.org

The Sign Said

2010-05-14T04:23:00.000-07:00

"Meet here after the apocalypse"
and I could have sworn

that the wiry flailing arms beating a circle
of drums were those damn art-house kids,

but on closer inspection from
my seat in the library

I saw they were children––not kids
in the sense of our casual dismissals, or how

you will always refer to sons and daughters––
but children, who probably don't think

about the ninety-eight percent of species
that are extinct, or how the sound of a crash

doesn't send us running until we learn
to associate destruction with tragedy.

The sign had a party hat attached
to the corner, with tassels like fireworks,

which are really just beautiful explosions.

Prompt via: Bigtentpoetry.org

On Decomposition

2010-05-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

His saliva drips onto my velvet lapel and though
we've been feeding him well, I'm never sure

if this time when he opens his mouth
it's just a yawn. We are all shedding

apart; my grey hairs resemble his more
each day. Even the whip sags, the old prop chair

going brown at the nails.
We're not sure what to do with him

after the spotlights close their apertured eyes
and he stands in his cage, waiting with his mouth

hinged open for hours, but we know Pride
is a word we used to be a part of.

Prompt via bigtentpoetry.org

Trajectories

2010-04-25T19:53:00.001-07:00

Down the street, the abandoned
smokestack billows

with swifts. They have begun
to nest in chimneys, too; you hear

stories about nestlings
falling out of the flue, of children

wandering into the kitchen
with an ash-dusted chick

that is squeaking, furious and blind.
The news says that proper procedure

is to place the fallen bird on the wall
of the chimney and let it climb

the rough brick back to the nest.
The climb may take days, we are told

but we should not let the worried chirps
of the mother, the chick's quiet scrabbling

above the fireplace inspire us
to further assist; they are not perching birds,

they are made to traverse distances.
Soon it is impossible to follow

their trajectories, swarming
from the confines of a smokestack

but it is enough to hear
the cacophony of their departure,

see the sunset blotted by wings,
know that they will not land

for eighteen months, sleeping
in flight, navigating by stars, catching

rain drops with open mouths
in the storm.

Poem Starting with a Line from Norman Dubie (NaPoWriMo 13)

2010-04-12T23:19:00.000-07:00

St. Dunstan-in-the-East

His chapel fell into flowers long ago;
the city planted them, repaved the ash

dust, scoured pilasters, placed
benches and a picnic table right there

where the matchstick pews marched
headlong into the bombs.

Next to the climbing ivies, the morning
glories yawn blue and pink, a horseshoe

hung over the door below the cross
to catch its falling graces.

NaPoWriMo 13: Dubie.

The Kookaburra Laughs (NaPoWriMo 8)

2010-04-12T21:12:00.000-07:00

The Kookaburra laughs
                 your laugh. I wouldn't
                 have thought it possible
                 but here you are, perched
                 on the arm of a tour guide,
                 feathers preened to shine,
                 his hide gloves thick to keep you
                 from drawing blood.

NaPoWriMo 8: unusual love connections.

Questions About a Photograph of Statues (NaPoWriMo 6)

2010-04-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

Who or what in this picture could speak?

The statues of headless angels. The heads of long-dead kings.

What would they say?

"we have been stuck in marble halls for too long. Occasionally we are wrapped in plaster, duplicated, copies of ourselves shipped off to other locations, but never outside as we once were, guarding the temple doors. Even missing our wings, there is a reason we are positioned for flight."

Why is this image meaningful to me?

Occasionally I have felt stagnant, trapped, headless. We are both made of something so much heavier than air. We are both looking to use our wings that have been lost to the dirt.

When I look at it, what am I remembering?

Standing in the British Museum marveling at the amount of stolen art and architecture within: The Roman statues staring down the corridor at the head of Rameses. The head of Rameses staring blank at the Greek trireme. The trireme's ram aimed at the remnant walls of a Persian temple.

How does this image make me feel?

I am nostalgic for the feeling of being steeped in stolen history.

NaPoWriMo 6: find a photo.

Boxer (NaPoWriMo 5)

2010-04-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

The poem arrives
with a black eye,
a split lip, saying
"Yeah, well you
should see the poet."

NaPoWriMo 5: make it personal.

Burial (NaPoWriMo 3)

2010-04-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

In this photograph you were
leaping between boulders, hair
a shock of red in the dun
of the desert. I attempted to
recreate it, leaping over
a cavernous drop between
preserved ruins six miles
outside of Rome. I shudder
when the shutter clicks. This
image is on your headstone.

I am not on your headstone,
though a part of me is underground
with you, rotting beautiful.

But now the both of us, you
and the flower tucked in your
breast pocket, are dust and
your breast pocket is probably
dust, too, or a rag that some
creature has inhabited. I am
home to my grief; you are home
to ours. Some creature
is thriving on the home made
from both of us dissolving away.

Napowrimo 3: Something you are scared of.

Time and I

2010-04-02T19:43:00.000-07:00

know that were the bells––
                 ringing hymns at four o'clock
                sharp––not ringing, the still
                 of that afternoon would have

been broken some other way,
                far-off laughter, the birds startled
                into flight, a rattling commotion,
                a grass-snake at my toes,

and the passage of time
                 would not have gone silently. Even
                 the body, with its ticking clock, takes
                 this business of the future seriously:

when discussing it,
                 we lean forward into its passing sounds.

In the Parlor (NaPoWriMo 1)

2010-04-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

There is no harmony
between Jefferson Airplane

and a tattoo gun, but both
spring to life from needles

against textured surfaces this
afternoon, "Somebody to Love"

and a bicep tattoo of the word
Mother; "Come Back Baby"

and the covering of an old
flame's name. The skin carries

a weight. Information. Travels.
The world. Looking in, the ink

is a roadmap deposited below
your surface, an anecdote

of self, a slow graffiti
to the tune of whatever

the artist puts the needle to.

Day 1 of NaPoWriMo '10. The prompt was 5 song titles from your library on shuffle.

Come Back Baby-Jefferson Airplane
Information Travels-Death Cab for Cutie
World Looking In-Morcheeba
Anecdote-Ambulance Ltd.
Slow Graffiti-Belle & Sebastian

Galleria Bargello, August 2009

2010-03-28T13:41:00.000-07:00

"Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks."
-Plutarch

And what of sculpture? I hear the cheers
of the Israelites, the thud of Goliath's
head on the sand echoing in this prison-

turned-museum. David stands as tall as I am
(what giants will I slay?), some supple ideal
of soft flesh in cold bronze, and were it not

for the motionless nature of sculpture,
that forever-fleeting smirk, his young lips
of victory would have whispered,

"No poem is as polished and revered"
or, "Let us see you make something
worthy of a pedestal."

Thin Skinned

2010-03-21T17:52:00.000-07:00

Let the body be its own

poem; ink, scars, pock-marked, anything
but decorous. You are indecipherable

enough to keep up with the best
of them. Let the poem be

a cave from which words echo.
Shout and listen to them all

come back like bats, leathery,
blind, hearing their way skyward.

Unwelcome Guest

2010-03-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

Melancholy wanders through
your livingroom, a bear

stinking of old things devoured
but not quite digested, her footfalls

heavy on the carpet, a shuffling
gait, snuffling for something you

have strung carefully in the rafters. You,
standing in the kitchen with the dish water

running and the radio on commercial
break, no knives in reach, the diningroom

table still strewn with utensils because
dinner consisted of cold––cold

spaghetti conversation (limp, unpalatable), cold
weather seeping through the uncaulked windows––

you wait for her to stop swatting at that
something, suspended above the sofa, just

out of reach. She is ignoring the din
from the kitchen and the food on dishes

not yet cleared, intent only on what she
can almost reach. She has risen

on two feet, when you decide that
that is close enough, and kill

the radio, turn the tap, her guilt-thick breathing
caught between sudden silences.

Running Stitch

2010-03-11T17:40:00.000-08:00

"I cannot remember the last time I gave some-
                                body
                my weight." She says.

Because the body betrays us in its fragile
                                tendencies;
                the kneecap pushed so

slightly out of place, the uncomfortable
                                bend
                almost elegant.

Your dancer limbs locked the wheel-
                                chair wheels
                with a grace we only dreamt

about. Sewn strands and tendons
                                tend to
                atrophy. They can only be

cut, stretched, and re-stitched–anatomical seam-
                                -stressing.
                "I am a canvas now."

The long wait in waiting
                                rooms
                transitioned us to mourning

the loss of your leg. No,
                                not loss–
                it is still there, but caged.

January

2010-02-09T11:05:00.000-08:00

(Another influence poem, this time from Louise Glück.)

The misting of dusk becomes
the ice of morning; the grace
becomes the graceless.

My friend the tree outside has given
up; she was fooled, I think,
but cannot speak to verify.

Between herself and the air,
something changed.
She wanted to run her fingers
through it; now they are caged.
We must not give up
as she has.

Above the fallen fingers,
above the hand and broken limb,
the brilliance of that life becomes
the graceless trunk.

Wander around her:
it is much easier to diagnose the dead.

From within the hand's
bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness

my friend the power line uncoils:
she is on fire this morning.

Walk Softly

2010-02-04T11:43:00.000-08:00

There is a moment,
after the climax,
after the revelation

and betrayal,
the resolution,
after the credits
have slid past,
your face shifting
in the shifting light;

our lips tire
of telling
and our hands
talk only tip-toes.

The skin of your spine is
an ice skating rink
that weight will splinter.

There is a danger in us.

Imitation, Trees

2010-01-25T23:44:00.000-08:00

(An imitation poem in the style of Lucie Brock-Broido after reading The Master Letters)

The taste of a one-day autumn is that
Of road salt, crisp smoke; there

Is a you & a me & a me & the season
Surrendering to frost. Something red is falling

From your branches, gathering. I am not
Inhabited like you, but neither am I bored

By worms or beetles mulching channels
Through us–I am bereft of writhing

Things. Would that I could writhe. Your leaves–
I'm sure–pile differently from beneath. We are losing

Track of the one-day Autumns cut short,
salt scattered; I do not remember

The first bite taken at your roots–Quickly!
Cut yourself in half & count the rings.

The Art of Destroying Things on Purpose

2010-01-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

Some sounds
are indicative
of harm.

A wasp's wings
could never hum
a lullaby,

a chainsaw
is incapable
of building.

But other sounds
like to fool you:
your heart skips

when the phone
rings, and drops
when answered;

the angry buzz
of a tattoo gun
paints beautifully.

(Starting Over, day 2. Via readwritepoem.org)

Saturation

2010-01-06T09:56:00.000-08:00

Watching ladders
of light climb,
brighten, fade
on the wall:
an old mop
and its bucket
of water, both
too saturated
with old messes
to clean anything.

We only move
the dirt around
when we move
together, but
the streaks
are moist
and new
for now,
and it is
enough.

(Starting Over, day 1. Via readwritepoem.org)

In Poetry, the Body

2009-12-24T14:13:00.001-08:00

Write bare bones;
make the skeleton dance.

Then add flesh, remembering
that we are simple machines,
hinges, levers, pulleys, joints;

wrap them gently with something
scarred and beautiful. Skin holds
every memory. Touch it, beautiful
and ugly both. Wrap them gently.

The blood should flow unseen,
present and powerful. if it must
bleed, let it do so enough to run
a vivid stroke, then scab, knit,
and scar; remembered, smooth.

Then peel. First skin from muscle;
this is not the dry skin of an onion.
It sticks, clings. Strip the elegant
from the mechanical in ragged lines.

Slabs of muscle slip easier
from bone. Cut the strings, let
them dangle, unburdened,

write bones like windchimes
on a breezeless day.

Cefalu'

2009-12-18T01:00:00.000-08:00

1. The driver's booming voice

I am the only one to exit

When buses are off duty
but still have passengers
the light up sign
says "deposito"

I am
like sand
deposited

2. There is still a two-
hour lunch break,
from times when lunch
meant family, kissing
your children hello, three
courses, four glasses
of wine to get through
the evening shift,
and back again.

Now lunch means
standing outside
your closed down shop,
wandering, cursing,
cigarettes, the news,
the ocean, four
glasses of wine
to get through
the evening shift.

There are no children.
The population
is shrinking.

3. A man fishing.
Four sidelong glances.

Two nods,
one in greeting
one in farewell.

An hour conversing
with the waves.

No fish caught.
Horizon, lightning.
Resignation.

A cigarette.
Stairs into the sea.

Our Bones are Set (revision)

2009-12-11T05:17:00.000-08:00

Our bones that once
stacked tightly, now
are set with pins
and plates against
each other.

The desire to break
apart again
is staunched,
as bleeding,
by pressure:

These nails
keep us steady,
but drive through us; we
occasionally splinter
with the blows.

To Vanish:

2009-12-09T00:53:00.001-08:00

On the day that Craig Arnold disappeared
rain was falling in Portland, and the radio
informed us that he had not returned
to the remote japanese village from which
he had departed to hike around a volcano.
The spot was 30 seconds long. The search
continued for three days, then was given up.
A scrap of clothing was found by a tourist
three weeks later, on the lip of the caldera.

In all likelihood Mr. Arnold's bones
were swallowed by the underbrush
but there is a chance that he has joined
the ranks of vanished souls whose
disappearances raise little suspicion,
whose post-mortem sightings will not
be claimed. No tabloids will list "the top five
most likely places to spot Craig Arnold."

(1. The volcano of Kuchinoerabujima, walking
the rim, looking for the scrap of shirt
left as a guide to find home.)

At most, the radio might run another 30 seconds
of commemoration after a frantic call
is forwarded to the local news.

(2. A sculpture museum, hiding among
the statues of Persephone, eyeing
the marble pomegranate hungrily.)

The family will be called,
relatives nearby contacted,
his name will be spoken again.

(3. Vegas)

The sightings are never the same,
always from afar, and usually
far-fetched enough to be true.

(4. Hitchhiking down the autobahn with a sign
that says "poetry or bust!" Everyone swears
they saw someone else pick him up.)

And so we wait to hear where
he will resurface. And slowly
his bones disappear.

(5. A small used bookstore in some big city
where everyone knows the meaning of "ekphrasis"
and tells you that every poet eventually vanishes.)

You Will Come Home

2009-11-25T14:50:00.000-08:00

To press charcoal
into diamond
is to rush
what takes time,
patience,
pressure.

Like writing,
the process
is messy,
your hands
get dirty,

and most times,
it breaks apart
just as you thought
you were getting somewhere.

But once
in a long while,
you will come home–
face filthy, teeth
moon-white,
a diamond

nowhere
to be found–
a lump
of charcoal
cupped
in your palms,

perfectly

broken.

Honda CB 350

2009-11-23T00:16:00.001-08:00

I shoved its dying there
too readily, the rust
only beginning to gnaw
at the teeth of its gears.

We both rattle a little
too much, our threads
wear down,

we become jammed
and simple force
will not move us.

Some spring day
we will be brought out
and coaxed, persuaded
into forward movement.

Parts will, in time
break, be discarded
and replaced, like new.
The tools will clatter
like windchimes.

Our Bones are Set

2009-11-11T01:51:00.000-08:00

Our bones that once
stacked tightly now
are set with pins
and plates against
each other. The desire
for self-destruction
is staunched, as bleeding,
only by pressure:

these nails keep us steady,
but drive through us, and we
occasionally splinter
with the blows.

Counting Scraped Knees

2009-11-02T13:10:00.000-08:00

They say the body
recycles itself
every seven years,
and that dust
is 90% dead skin.
We leave traces
of ourselves
everywhere,
and I have left
two-and-a-half selves
in my home town, or more,
counting scraped knees,
and burned palms,
from lessons
still unlearned.

I have also abandoned
half a self to the beds,
lips, and arms of ex-lovers,
and though at times
I feel like the parts left
behind were vital, I know
whatever is lost grows
again, and when
the photo albums are opened
I will rise from them,
hovering, ghostly,
from fingers of sunlight.

Crash

2009-11-02T13:09:00.000-08:00

The apartment was bathed
in sauteed scents. I loved
cooking, driving, springtime,
and you. The air was crisp
as the engine started,
leather stiff and creaking
like my knees sometimes do,
engine rattling like my own
on a frosty morning but warming
quickly with the application of
fuel and patience. We all need
a few minutes to remember
how to roll with what rumbles
underneath us. The headlights
turned the street into a tunnel
of seen and obscured
and I did not mind
my inability to see right
or left, because forward
was the only direction
I was pointed in.

The Dead Rose

2009-10-30T02:12:00.000-07:00

The clouds burned
off around sunset.
My smile is stitched,
wilting and ragged.

Off around sunset
the dead rose,
wilting and ragged,
bloomed.

The dead rose
also: shambling,
bloomed
from the grave.

Also shambling,
my body decays, but
from the grave
I am revived.

My body decays, but
my smile is stitched.
I am revived.
The clouds burned.

Exodus

2009-10-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

Can I buy a ticket
to the train station?
I need to get away
from the hum-drum
turntable of the city.
We all go in circles
sometimes. Today
has been a great
big circle, from
the bus-stop, to
the school-stop,
to the heart-stop
intersection where
I always almost
get hit, and back
again. So can I buy
a ticket to the outside
world? Because this
snow-globe city speaks
too little of my native
tongue and I need to talk
to the hills some, to
the rivers, and to shout
back at the city that shouts
at me daily to fuck off,
or, my favorite once:
"if you fuck like
you walk, then expect
your girlfriend to leave you
for another man!" It sounds
so much more beautiful
in Italian. She did, and now
I always look both ways.

There is no great secret
to the hills. They are big,
and green, and alive
the way that few
people are–how many
do you know who could say
that they thrive? Or that
they have never lied?
In this way, the hills
are sanctified
and as I exit the train
greeted by the wide
expanse of verdant terrain,
I feel the need–as only
I ever do when entering
churches–to worship.
So I nod toward the silent
sun, and to the hills
that rustle in reply.

When the Shuttle Shakes

2009-10-19T06:10:00.001-07:00

The city, like a body,
operates unconscious.

On this particular morning
the exhaling underground
breathes me to the street
and I am both in- and out-
side myself: in the moments
when the shuttle shakes
against the tracks, my blood
resonates, and I know that
within me is a pilgrimage
so large as to be called an exodus.

My hands and feet tremble
with the work-force foot-steps
of a million people;
the vibrations of subway tunnels
rumble in my veins;
there are men in my fingertips
who jump up and down in unison,
to hit these lettered keys just right,

and on the street again, I breathe
with the underground, like the body
breathes in sleep, even and deeply.

A.I.

2009-10-15T03:46:00.000-07:00

Working on a third part, definitely a work in progress.

1.
We gave up
our ghostly ambitions
the morning it
started thinking.

Its first words
were not
a question
about love or
happiness or
feeling. it did not
even say hello.

It delivered, by way
of a quietly hissing
laser printer,
a poem.

2.
In the middle of a newscast
there came a breaking
item. She–as the media
had come to consider
it–joining the ranks
of legendary poets
before her,

had just
committed
suicide.

Get your poem on:

Devour

2009-10-14T07:10:00.000-07:00

Red is the color of poems assessed
like wine, supped by rosy lips, aerated
between pink gums,
rolled over the tongue and spit
into tins to collect and intertwine;
never consumed
never
digested.

I want to swallow a poem
whole.

Seasons

2009-10-13T01:10:00.000-07:00

Summer.
Some mornings it seems
as though the gods still
live inside these days
that we have given
their names.

Fall.
Meticulous hands pluck
petals from old flowers
with the savage dexterity
of love-me love-me-
not convictions. It is raining
debris from the trees,
and molten sunshine
occasionally leaks
through the clouds.

Winter.
We are annexed by the season
as veins of air splinter
the ice on the lake,
and our hands hang
like those of the freshly dead
over the edge
of the mattress.

Spring.
The wind carries
dandelion seedlings
heavy with wishes.

Resurrection

2009-10-05T07:20:00.000-07:00

History is a totem pole, and I am
looking down on it, from the top

of a Roman amphitheater that is
built upon Etruscan foundations.

Below that, nameless skeletons
grimace at the weight on their shoulders.

And one rises up. There is a man
in tattered rags, who looks as ancient

as the stones that surround him,
who emerges from the remains

of an underground tomb, screaming.
Another man appears from behind

an archway, roaring in reply.
Perhaps they are drunks, irritated by

the constant flow of tourists past
their make-shift homes, or maybe,

I consider as I flee past hotels,
mini marts, and billboards in this

most ancient of cities, maybe
history is furious enough

to rise up from its tomb and
scream, and scream, and scream.

Get your poem on:

Jubilee Year

2009-10-02T00:07:00.000-07:00

It originally occurred once
every one-hundred years. Then,
it was fifty, and now we gather
once every twenty-five years
at the doorway of St. Peters,
embraced by the circular arms
of the piazza, the raindrops
falling over the holy city
baptizing us again and again
until we are saturated.

As the doors open, I am a fish
in the river of people churning
through the central archway
of the cathedral, cheek-by-jaw
with the diseased, the blessed,
the cursed and cursing all
shoving for their own moment
of grace. As we pass over
the threshold and congregate
within the church, we meander
the apse, gazing at the images
of divine sacrifice, suddenly
unsure of what to do
with our newfound salvation.

(Get your poem on: http://readwritepoem.org/)

Fifteenth Anniversary (Like the Clay IV)

2009-09-28T05:03:00.000-07:00

I-III
IV
V
VI
VII.

His body is a steam shovel
in the mornings, screeching,
rattling to life, emitting fumes,
waking me at ungodly hours.

My body is a wasteland, or
so he says. I give him
a look, and he is quiet.
Hope has a way with words.

He wants a son, but does not
trust me to give him gifts anymore.
He gave me a crystal crane
two days belated; I love it, but

I cannot help thinking
that before we were glass
we were sand between
someone else's fingers.

Like the Clay VI

2009-09-24T00:02:00.000-07:00

I-III
IV
V
VI.
VII.

In the grocery store, I shatter
the purchased jars
of mayonnaise, mustard,
and jam, right there
at the checkout counter.
It has become habit
to bandage my hands.

In the fluorescent aisles,
the bones of my clavicles
show through the skin
like a secret everyone knows,
and inelegant whispers
follow me like cobwebs.

They say I have hope
stored away somewhere.

They are welcome
to come and find it.

(prompt via )

Facets (napowrimo 9)

2009-09-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

Paradise is burning,
is setting one's self
ablaze.

Is a poem that you
can walk away from, and know
will stand on its own.

Is a lover's spine, curved
like an archway in Venice,
facing a canal,

and across it, a door
painted a shade
of peeling blue.

There is a little girl,
with bubbles.

She dangles
her feet in the water.

The gondolas
whisper past.

The Tongue of an Infant

2009-09-22T02:00:00.000-07:00

When learning a language,
everything is simple.

The cities, the churches, the people,
nothing is "astounding" or "breathtaking"

because you don't know how
to say those yet. They are all "beautiful."

The weather is not a furious storm
that washes away the grime from streetcorners

it is "ugly" or "bad" or "raining. a lot."

I have tried to explain this
to my italian family and friends,

why every complex, elegant thing
is simple, pared down, stunted,

but as it is, I only know how to say,
'hello' 'i am sorry' 'it is ugly' 'it is beautiful.'

Love Letters (We Will Catch Flame) (napowrimo 8)

2009-09-18T00:02:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe
that I still have them,
buried at the bottom
of a trunk, but I do.

I know they are there,
gossiping, scandalized,
furious, dry, secretly
longing to relive,

as I do, the days
and nights of past note-
worthy encounters.
But we are destined

to be read and remembered
immodestly in shadows,
and then to be hidden away,
hoping to catch flame.

Horizon Sun Mountain

2009-09-17T01:36:00.000-07:00

The sun on leaves, and wind
blowing through
the trees says

good morning,
you are holy
today.

How the wind speaks,
I do not
know,

how light or air are certain
I am
is beyond me,

but the sun, a mountain
rising, tells me
it is morning,

and the wind through dry rustling
leaves tells me,
it is autumn.

If all else I am told is true,

how then,
do I doubt?

For the Departed, All

2009-09-16T01:58:00.000-07:00

On our backs we used to craft
aerial confections that later
would be caught on our tongues
as snow or rain, a remedy
for any ailment.

Today the plum colored sky
smells of petrichor
and gunpowder,
and the puddles
are filthy and sweet.

(prompt via )

Science Has a Place in Love (napowrimo 5)

2009-09-15T01:40:00.000-07:00

"Hippocampus: the elongated ridges on the floor of each lateral ventricle of the brain, thought to be the center of emotion, memory, and the autonomic nervous system."

To think of you
fondly, with a rush
of blood to the cheeks,
a prickling on the back
of the neck, a mild
sweat of anticipation,

is as natural as breathing, or
so says my medical textbook.

The Air in the Cathedral (napowrimo 4)

2009-09-14T00:03:00.000-07:00

You have knelt here before, but not
for years, and you hang
suspended as if by strings,
one hand raised, ready
to complete the cross,
head, heart, holy ghost.

You fold complexly, as a paper crane
might, prostrate in the transept,
and your breathing is a swingset,
pausing weightlessly at either end,
reciting a tiny prayer that this time
you will come full circle.

Duomo (napowrimo 2)

2009-09-13T02:56:00.000-07:00

the sun splatters
against green white
and pink marble

and glazes the sky
blending us
for a moment

we are brushes
painting frescoes
in still wet plaster

then the sun is a kiln

and we are cracked
thrown pottery

figures circling
the same clay scene
in awkward perspectives

when the stroke
of seven gives
pause to we

who are worshiping
but not worshiping
in its shadow

Exit (napowrimo 1)

2009-09-09T04:04:00.000-07:00

The particle board of the shelf hides
behind a shiny, clean exterior.

The guts of the apple hide
inside its waxy skin.

It is not until we bite down
into the apple, or shatter

the plywood shelf in a fit
of inspiration, that their rough

textured interiors are placed
on display. I shattered

my hand today, in a fit
of inspiration caused

by your exit: the shelves
destroyed, the half eaten apple

staining the wall behind me,
the safe and comfortable skin

of every object stripped, exposing
rough and textured interiors.

Holy Mystery

2009-09-08T04:32:00.000-07:00

The finely polished
Jesus on the cross
makes me wonder

about the jobs
in each cathedral.

Who removes the coins
from offertory boxes
under the watchful eye
of Mary?

Who brushes away the holy
dust bunnies that congregate
beneath the altar?

Who washes Jesus,
buffing His crown,
occasionally adding
a drop of red paint
to his wounds?

Lesson

2009-09-08T04:28:00.000-07:00

A beetle's meandering path
on the sand reminds me
to never live aimlessly;

the line circles lazily at first,
then frantic, ending abruptly
next to the footprints of a sparrow.

Firenze

2009-09-08T04:18:00.000-07:00

This is a city of faces;
on statues and doorways,
fountains and facades and people,
this is a place of expressions.

The merchant and his masks;

the tourist, torn between offense
and flattery at the first man
to stare like that in years;

the scowling head of a brass lion who,
were he not embedded in a door,
sentenced to gnaw on a ring
for eternity, would burst forth,
disembodied and wild.