Memorial (adj.)

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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.


Join the circus: BigTentPoetry.org

Blood Travels

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

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

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.


Join the circus: BigTentPoetry.org