Here in the fledgling of dawn, when the sky
has yet to decide what color to wear,
that old electric motor of the ceiling fan
sets its tempo—swinging marcia moderato
but still I dawdle with the patter of rain
lazy and scattered, from thin watercolor clouds
The city is asleep and the buses don't run
but down the street, Lorena is late
for work—even on Sunday the march carries.
Henslow's sparrows are readying to fly away
(they know nothing of Sundays either)
and the ceiling fan plans on in circles
They will return, and Lorena will
be home in the evening
but the transient sky will always
blend back into geyser blue
and perhaps I too will sway and waver
and dally along the coast at low tide
straining my eyes to remember the colors
in every moment of melded sky
dancing to the ceiling fan in 6/8 time
Sep 21, 2024
Sep 21, 2024 at 8:26 AM UTC
I often wonder why he hated me,
what it was that drove him,
and what I had done to deserve it.
I sometimes think it was primal,
with nothing he could do
at such a young age, just born into this world himself.
But my mother remembers,
"He loved you," as she hands me
a picture, high exposure,
my infant body: half-asleep, drooling, smiling,
his toddler face: eyes crinkled, lips pressed upon my soft, fat cheek.
I don't remember that.
I remember the curled, fatty muscle of his hand,
landing on my shoulders, my arms, my back,
rock-paper-scissors with everything at stake,
over, over, and over and over.
No knuckles, never in the face.
That nasal-rushed snarl,
a barb around his tongue and
razorwire lips, and all their violence.
I remember learning what I was:
Stupid, weak, small—*fucking ****** shut up ******
And yet at the park,
when Mickey pulled my hair and sicced his dog,
burying teeth deep into my right cheek,
I remember the weight of a body crashing.
Mickey, crying loud, runs home,
his hand over his face, bloodied and bruised,
and my brother darts away on his bike.
Mar 28, 2022
Mar 28, 2022 at 5:16 PM UTC
Remember chocolate
when it's just out of reach
when it's stained into your warm fingertips
and clinging to your palette
Remember chocolate
when you give it to your firstborn
One morsel swooped over itself like a shoelace,
melting in their hands,
smeared across their lips
Remember the crumbling,
sweet velvet on your tongue,
the air through your nose,
and my hand in your hand
Remember the moment
has already passed,
as all good things before
So remember chocolate
when you go to the grocery store
Jun 26, 2021
Jun 26, 2021 at 9:29 PM UTC
You'll find sparrows, my mother said
Not in the thick,
nor the deep dark
canopies of the woods
You will find them, in droves,
at the ends of tree lines,
busy, busy—always busy
whether in song or with a twig
You will find them in coves
perched upon the green vines,
busy, busy—always busy
calling out upon a sprig
They are small when alone
like me,
in the long, silent hours of my nights
But in the morning they are a chorus
reminding you of all the work yet begun
So, go, find yourself a tree
You'll find sparrows when you're done
Jul 16, 2019
Jul 16, 2019 at 5:55 PM UTC
The only time I've ever thought
to step out in front of a bus,
and feel its treads roll me out
like gold—malleable and elongated—
if the pain I left you with
was that of citrus resting on your tongue:
bitter and cold and sour
like lemon meat
gnashed and torn.
No longer holding form,
or fitting perfect
in the cup of your palm
like my hand once did
In September you spit
and cursed my name
And walked home
in the middle of the night,
stumbling,
Maybelline blurred
all down your cheeks,
with the picture of home
upon a foundation of stone
you had hoped to build with me
Feb 2, 2019
Feb 2, 2019 at 4:02 PM UTC
It’s not you I miss;
not your cherry red hair
or the crack in your voice
when you’d fight back tears
(You never did cry much)
It’s the loss of the feeling
of prairie fires in our chest
running with the wind in perfect time
like we made plans to run
out from under the sprawl
toward mountains and cedar trees
to find new languages
and faces we’d never seen
The world grows larger in passing time
and distance becomes relative.
To think we’d have made it to Nepal
to sit upon crystal white shelves—glass figurines
looking to build a new home somewhere overseas
Nov 30, 2018
Nov 30, 2018 at 6:04 PM UTC
Biddle-ding deedling,
Hear the sound wind chimes make
Summertime rolling in
East from the west
Lemon wedge swirling round
Whiskey kept icy cold,
Tangy now, bittersweet
Soft words confessed
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 1:49 PM UTC
I walked along the quiet streets we knew
from years ago when we were just sixteen.
We lost so much of what we had, between
the nights we shared when I was holding you
to aging slow and cold and dead and blue.
And I became a ghost inside routine;
now I'm an apparition barely seen.
And like a dream I prayed it wasn't true.
You said that you were sorry at the bar
because I built you up inside my head,
and you became an idol in my mind.
In twenty years (or more), when I live far
away from you, with words still left unsaid,
I'll love you still, with all we've left behind.
Dec 15, 2015
Dec 15, 2015 at 1:48 PM UTC
Their noses share an awkward shape,
both too large for their faces, drooping
low and out, the crests aiming down
toward each other's chest.
My mother holds her youth and beauty
tight as a red and white bouquet in her hands.
Her smoky white veil falls behind her shoulders
and down her back, folding gently like summer curtains.
It wasn't love in her eyes; she's admitted before.
but here, anxious and barely 28 years old,
she wears hope on the smile reaching across her cheeks.
Perhaps it was a single thought, a flicker
of a candle's teardrop flame: *Maybe
I will love him forever.* And though
it was a lie, here it forced an affection
that pushed long black lashes apart,
and each hazel iris gleamed
with momentary faith, light flooding
the sudden click of a 1/100 shutter speed.
My father looks like another man.
He's consumed by fervent confidence and swagger,
built upon conviction and certainty.
He ought to have a big wet rose in his teeth,
and a big wet bottle clenched in his fist.
His shoulders, broad and rigid, push his chest
toward my mother's fragile collar bones.
His gaze meets hers, and he admits a stubborn smirk,
the same one his father had wielded
in an Army portrait 30-some years before
—that you could see on me now, as well.
This moment is dishonest,
those candid smiles were sudden
and fleeting, a bolt of lightning
splitting the sky in half.
But it's captured here, forever.
Two wild hearts in a moment
of sincerity, toeing a wire
they'd come to learn they
could never balance upon.
But I caress this photo some nights
slowly with my thumb,
knowing neither is my mother
nor my father, but two kids,
who might just hold on
when they're swallowed whole
and buried under rubble and silt
of all the world crashing down.
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 1:05 PM UTC
I stood slumped into the corner
of two converging granite counter tops,
struggling to focus on what
he's remembering next—some bland anecdote
or an irrelevant detail: *Larson,
I think,* he says finally.
Between pauses—with small, contemplating eyes
set deep, split by his dark, Italian nose—
and dragged uhhh's and hmmm's,
a sowed adoration splits and grows,
a seed (a supernova now).
A man—half my connection
to this world, to existence,
to a trickling, patient bloodline.
He, I; a rambling, scatterbrained mess
of neurons and hard-wiring, sparks and electrical fires.
My father: plagued by anger and impatience,
a sitcom of clumsiness and a tied-tongue,
blessed by conviction, faith and reason.
I don't say any of this. He'll die first,
never knowing how easily I'm reminded
of what I am to become, 32 years from now,
unless he finds me drunk, perhaps after reciting vows,
now vulnerable to cheapening emotion into language.
Nov 7, 2014
Nov 7, 2014 at 1:44 PM UTC