Melted glass that bubbles, pops, and cracks
like a laugh, or the slide of shining skin
on porcelain in the bath — you rise and splash —
you settle and relax, you sigh and glisten.
The smoothness of a thigh like pink petals:
fragrant silk just like the heart of a rose.
Grey moth-eyes of fluttering fog that falls,
fading into the night — why are you closed?
I should have known better. You should have known.
Even honey sours and petals drift
like snow. But there’s a place where love still grows,
row on row, a quiet garden. Be quick —
before our hearts are hardened, we’ll go and find
the snoring bees, where time has conquered time.
Apr 23, 2018
Apr 23, 2018 at 9:44 AM UTC
We stopped to eat at a McDonald’s after —
I’m sure the counter-girl could smell
the plastic-clean of stitches and nurses’ gloves
and medication hanging over him
while we ordered fries and burgers to fill
our guts before we made the long drive home.
And when we found a seat I thought that things
were fine. We sat there talking about the family,
until he spilled his drink and lost his ****
real bad this time, and he stood and said:
“I was alive when Carpenter’s was still
the biggest bus maker around — your grandpa
lived in Tunnelton and drove to work
across the cliff to crank them out. He smelled
like oil and the dusty river all the time,
and he used to never let your mother out
at night, because he thought that cougars
were thick around his farm. You bring her back
before the frogs are calling, he’d say, you bring her
back before the cats get at her face —
my daughter there’s worth more than your life —
she’s a queen and that’s a real queen’s face.”
He paused to **** a piece of ice and smiled,
and then he looked at all the busy people
bent up over their plastic dinner trays
looking at him, and he bit the ice and laughed.
“I never saw a cat like that. It was
the cliff that got her, and he should have watched
the river, driving by it all the time
the way he did to go and build those buses —
lots of things were rusting in the river,
and I guess the busses rusted, too. I didn’t see
a killer cat around the farm, but I saw
a thing or two that’s worse. I saw the light
they lit over her grave — you were too young
but you saw it, too: a propane thing we filled
together. You can’t buy one like that today —
today it’s all electric and plastic stakes,
and you never have to see the grave again
after you’ve planted one of those solar lights.
It stays for good. Those lamps outlast their names —
as long as the sun remembers to pay respects.
But I remember liting the little flame.
I remember how your grandpa’s face
lit up like a ghost’s, and I could see the scar
something large carved in his cheek one night
when he was hunting raccoons by the riverbank
out near the mouth of the Tunnel. It’s all
gone now — even the river’s lost the way
it used to smell like pines from on up north,
and only ghosts walk through the Tunnel — gone.
All of it. All gone. I guess he should have watched
the cliff, because it’s all gone now. All of it.
Even the buses rusted away, and there’s
no flame to mark the ghosts that’s left to stay —
all we’ve got are lights that last forever.”
Apr 18, 2018
Apr 18, 2018 at 9:10 AM UTC
A pile of rotten maple leaves
looks like a granite mountain
after the fluttering confusion
of confetti-cut whirling snow
but do you remember when your
lemon-scented hair was plastered
across the icy sleeve of my coat
like the leaves around my porch?
Mar 8, 2018
Mar 8, 2018 at 9:22 AM UTC
I read some beautiful poetry,
and I thought that I would write a poem
as if I was making an axe handle
I could use to free the feelings stirred
like termites in the roots of my chest,
which is to say my ribs —
even though that’s not quite
exactly what I meant to say.
What I really wanted to say
was something more elaborate
like, “all the birds sing
spring, they don’t sing for the spring —
they make it suddenly spring
by singing.” But then I got selfish.
And I decided not to write
a poem. You don’t get to know
what I felt, and what a joy it is
to keep these feelings to myself.
Mar 5, 2018
Mar 5, 2018 at 8:15 AM UTC
You see where the city trucks sprayed
all the roads with salt this morning?
It was supposed to snow. The news
said we would be snowed in, but then—
you see these lines of salt? It's not like
they're doing much to keep us moving.
Feb 26, 2018
Feb 26, 2018 at 8:20 AM UTC
**** and fire. The smells of food and drink:
desire. Small handprints on the rocky womb
mark where we began to want — to think —
before we left our ignorant stone tombs,
tossing rocks behind us, where thoughts arose.
Memories awoke to chide us. Confide
in me: who was the third, the thornless rose,
you held between your teeth? Don’t try to hide
from me. There are some things the blind can see,
and I have known them all — and told them all.
Flowers grows where tears flow like a stream,
and soon, if you don’t speak, these vines will fall
across your eyes. I recall a stolen kiss:
tasting the words before you could confess.
Feb 23, 2018
Feb 23, 2018 at 9:11 AM UTC
The snow has let go of the leaves
it held mached with ice beside
the western stairs of my back porch
like-half forgotten valentines
it tried to mail before the sun
cooked the corpse of our Christmas tree,
releasing all those mint-sapped scents
like the presents I forgot you gave me.
Feb 21, 2018
Feb 21, 2018 at 10:29 AM UTC
It wasn’t the stirring songs of night-bound birds,
which hid in the blooming apple tree to rest —
or the mellow drums and bronzed music we heard,
or the cloudy-red aroma your roses left.
❀
It wasn’t the dancing, the soft-stepped unfurling —
the twirling or the gold champagne after,
swirling in our cups, or when I said, “Your girl’s
so tired. Your girl’s all ready to go,” and you laughed
at my bluntness, or at the way I tripped and fell
through the swinging silver-boned glass doors.
❀
It wasn’t the way you picked me up, or the swell
of your arms as we pulled apart — or how you snored.
❀
But when the church bells cried midnight, I sighed
in surrender to a surreal host of lives.
Feb 15, 2018
Feb 15, 2018 at 10:09 AM UTC
The difficult thing about a love poem
is that it doesn’t want to be one.
You see! I’ve already let the meter go
wherever it wants to roam, for the sake of fun,
and to make my point. It’s sort of like the way
our feet get tangled when we sleep, and we trip
into each other’s dreams. Poetry can’t contain
how gently you kissed me — even when I was sick.
This type of love requires an honesty
that poetry can’t express. A careful glance,
chocolates, red wine and all the rest
can’t capture the drunk-in-love ways we’ve danced —
or the magic of long plants. But who’ll blame me for
trying to count the ways that I adore you?
—and in fourteen lines, no less.
Feb 14, 2018
Feb 14, 2018 at 10:58 AM UTC
We slept on rocks, chased pink flowers
and brushed our teeth with ***** fingers
while hitchhiking back in time
on a pile of your stuffed animals:
the next time we find each other
let’s be children again, eating
strawberries and chocolate kisses —
not these half-slurred hateful words.
Feb 7, 2018
Feb 7, 2018 at 9:31 AM UTC