antipode - Hello Poetry

There are nights when I dream. It’s my father, and I’m an adult. And he’s in my kitchen. So I know I’m dreaming. And with his fists knotted in his jacket, he offers a smirk. “I know what you’ve been up to.” And he does. *You’ve been saying “heh” a lot. You’ve been thinking you’re clever. You’ve been hoping silence equals shrewdness. (You’re quite taken by the theater of your own anger.) You keep getting taken by the mechanic. You’ve been giving the desperate glances of a subway ****** You’ve been pretending to be a man. You’ve been hoping someone else will put out the fire.* Now we’re holding a couple of beers by a truck, overlooking a lake. Inexplicably, we’re going hunting. “It’s ok. This is how it is.” He deliberately checks the sight. And with the certainty of a father, he tells me he knows. But I remember it’s a dream, because he doesn’t.

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Jan 4, 2011

Jan 4, 2011 at 4:43 PM UTC

A Sort of Blindness

There are nights when I dream. It’s my father, and I’m an adult. And he’s in my kitchen. So I know I’m dreaming. And with his fists knotted in his jacket, he offers a smirk. “I know what you’ve been up to.” And he does. *You’ve been saying “heh” a lot. You’ve been thinking you’re clever. You’ve been hoping silence equals shrewdness. (You’re quite taken by the theater of your own anger.) You keep getting taken by the mechanic. You’ve been giving the desperate glances of a subway ****** You’ve been pretending to be a man. You’ve been hoping someone else will put out the fire.* Now we’re holding a couple of beers by a truck, overlooking a lake. Inexplicably, we’re going hunting. “It’s ok. This is how it is.” He deliberately checks the sight. And with the certainty of a father, he tells me he knows. But I remember it’s a dream, because he doesn’t.

24

There was the day that the stroke --just a stroke-- freed her from that dreaming, lightning freeing the pine from its impossible salt air climb, cleaving it to the gravity. Do we dream of puncturing the salt air, or do we dream of the strike, the stroke the fragrant humus that waits within to passively, piously become salt, electric?

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Nov 5, 2010

Nov 5, 2010 at 11:08 PM UTC

Cathedral

There was the day that the stroke --just a stroke-- freed her from that dreaming, lightning freeing the pine from its impossible salt air climb, cleaving it to the gravity. Do we dream of puncturing the salt air, or do we dream of the strike, the stroke the fragrant humus that waits within to passively, piously become salt, electric?

12

She wanted to tell you a dream but you wouldn’t let her. “We can marry when you’re 80. Then there’ll be nothing to lose.” Geese do not marry, though and she wondered if the moon over the Nile would really be the same moon as here, tonight. 8 hours, after all, is not 80 years.

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Sep 2, 2010

Sep 2, 2010 at 12:20 AM UTC

Platonic

She wanted to tell you a dream but you wouldn’t let her. “We can marry when you’re 80. Then there’ll be nothing to lose.” Geese do not marry, though and she wondered if the moon over the Nile would really be the same moon as here, tonight. 8 hours, after all, is not 80 years.

9

It’s not so easy to admit that you’ve been here all along Like my gnawed fingertips Like my absence of dreaming You with your breath and your stars And your dead brother Who I missed by a week Is he the one who showed you how to make an exit?

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Sep 1, 2010

Sep 1, 2010 at 11:58 PM UTC

Travel light

It’s not so easy to admit that you’ve been here all along Like my gnawed fingertips Like my absence of dreaming You with your breath and your stars And your dead brother Who I missed by a week Is he the one who showed you how to make an exit?

7

Have you asked the tightrope walker where he is going? over there. he suggests. At the airport, I ask you why you must travel? to see the world. you rehearse. But when you return, you say you will tell me if I am yours. We gratefully watch the walker’s feet petals on a necklace like these words that I lace around your ears keeping me alive high above the ground Over there. Eventually, it is true.

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Sep 1, 2010

Sep 1, 2010 at 11:38 PM UTC

As if you didn't know

Have you asked the tightrope walker where he is going? over there. he suggests. At the airport, I ask you why you must travel? to see the world. you rehearse. But when you return, you say you will tell me if I am yours. We gratefully watch the walker’s feet petals on a necklace like these words that I lace around your ears keeping me alive high above the ground Over there. Eventually, it is true.

16

As if spoken to you through the back of your skull, from below snowpack, through the bell of time. A haunting has no language, though. A life leaves no heat. A kiss, no bruise. So when it walks these halls during the inverted night greet it as a guest who has come to dance. Do not be so rude as to lead.

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Sep 1, 2010

Sep 1, 2010 at 11:25 PM UTC

What Passes

As if spoken to you through the back of your skull, from below snowpack, through the bell of time. A haunting has no language, though. A life leaves no heat. A kiss, no bruise. So when it walks these halls during the inverted night greet it as a guest who has come to dance. Do not be so rude as to lead.

13

We may not deserve it but we were given sight and blood and soft organs that we know to protect We may not grasp it but we were given faith and song and the urge to dance because we tremble We could not measure it but we were given miles for our feet and a horizon orienting us headlong So on this night of hemlocks alive with cicada moons engulfed in hot orange hands seeking each other and bite marks and hip bones breath stubble and time escaping in astronomical units Who are we to ask its meaning with the very words we could never fully know?

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Jul 20, 2010

Jul 20, 2010 at 8:51 PM UTC

And then no more

We may not deserve it but we were given sight and blood and soft organs that we know to protect We may not grasp it but we were given faith and song and the urge to dance because we tremble We could not measure it but we were given miles for our feet and a horizon orienting us headlong So on this night of hemlocks alive with cicada moons engulfed in hot orange hands seeking each other and bite marks and hip bones breath stubble and time escaping in astronomical units Who are we to ask its meaning with the very words we could never fully know?

21

echoes in our spinal cords drip bile sulphur electricity a brooding, remembering snake your voice recalls kisses, chin on neck, yours, later the back of your knee the crush of skin on carpet a betrayal of fingers, yours or not warm spite a violence delicately buried under so many ancestors, drowned in tea the squawk of puberty ancient fists, in scabbards these echoes are all mine but the way nets hold water, is the way we hold ours, serpentine believing we are the soundmakers, the moaning cello when we have no hands and no tongues and so many hollows

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Jul 19, 2010

Jul 19, 2010 at 9:30 PM UTC

keeping time

echoes in our spinal cords drip bile sulphur electricity a brooding, remembering snake your voice recalls kisses, chin on neck, yours, later the back of your knee the crush of skin on carpet a betrayal of fingers, yours or not warm spite a violence delicately buried under so many ancestors, drowned in tea the squawk of puberty ancient fists, in scabbards these echoes are all mine but the way nets hold water, is the way we hold ours, serpentine believing we are the soundmakers, the moaning cello when we have no hands and no tongues and so many hollows

20

The fuselage must gleam in a pink Pacific sunset at 29000 feet inside, I am brought puffed cellophane pouches of tamarind by attendant ladies and men and a sanitary case wraps my pillow. Bangkok’s taxis are driven by a man with bones for a neck on cracked roads that vanish into blind ways. Later a child – spying left – pulls me through a curtained door into an ante-room to sell me cling-wrapped copies of Japanese slasher movies. “Cheap!” Flies circle a mound of meat spiked to a vending cart -- “special for you.” A sea of mopeds rumble up the road and chase me between parked cars Tattered hunks of plastic bag blow past off the beach. At night gut rot infects the air, and I walk in brown puddled streets. The tar sky smothers above the neon and the barkers and the *** for $10. This last part was in the guidebook. A woman sits, cloaked in a shawl, selling women’s apparel, all arranged on pale and chalky mannequins, angled at attention. They wear the rouge of the truth-telling jester. Their mouths are gaping, smiling, lurid, laughing, howling. Eyes wide, piercing and empty, excited. They look like me. And I look away. The woman’s throat moves. Or does she chuckle? “For you.”

0

Jul 18, 2010

Jul 18, 2010 at 11:14 PM UTC

Leavings

The fuselage must gleam in a pink Pacific sunset at 29000 feet inside, I am brought puffed cellophane pouches of tamarind by attendant ladies and men and a sanitary case wraps my pillow. Bangkok’s taxis are driven by a man with bones for a neck on cracked roads that vanish into blind ways. Later a child – spying left – pulls me through a curtained door into an ante-room to sell me cling-wrapped copies of Japanese slasher movies. “Cheap!” Flies circle a mound of meat spiked to a vending cart -- “special for you.” A sea of mopeds rumble up the road and chase me between parked cars Tattered hunks of plastic bag blow past off the beach. At night gut rot infects the air, and I walk in brown puddled streets. The tar sky smothers above the neon and the barkers and the *** for $10. This last part was in the guidebook. A woman sits, cloaked in a shawl, selling women’s apparel, all arranged on pale and chalky mannequins, angled at attention. They wear the rouge of the truth-telling jester. Their mouths are gaping, smiling, lurid, laughing, howling. Eyes wide, piercing and empty, excited. They look like me. And I look away. The woman’s throat moves. Or does she chuckle? “For you.”

20