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D Becker Nov 2019
Polaris screams at Orion
The milk spilled between them
Jupiter sulks out the back door
And Mars teases the sisters
Saturn stumbles into the foyer
Rings dangling, hair disheveled
Chaplin’s muse stalks the dipper
Saturn staggers after Jupiter.
The sandstone, the pinyon, the yucca
Gape in conspiratorial silence
Quiet rings ears.
Who needs Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
When the stars careen
Above the desert.
D Becker Nov 2019
You call when I’m reading
(Every article, like I’m in prison,
Something about rifles and cartridges)
Even in second language jokes
You’re the best part of their day
You talk of Abaco and water
Anne and the Mud
I can only say
It washed over.
I wake in the night
And my mother’s up
With a light cane thumping and florescent lighting.
In the early morning I *** outside
Relieved by open space
I pull the arrows
I list groceries
It’s the best part of the day.

The feedback of his hearing aids
The forgotten novel
Solitaire
The lightly fondled newspaper
What’s your mother doing?
Did your Dad go back to bed?
What day is it?
They mostly miss each other
When death idles under the carport
When the starving aren’t hungry
I miss them too
While she was forgetting
And he was dying

I remember when my grandmother died
My father, aunts and uncles around her
A minute in the bedroom
A hug, sudden
Death crisp as a *******
But this, it’s not you
The table you made was there, and here
Refinished
I’m not sure how to clean the pellet stove
I hug your wife
The ballot issues alongside her coffee
“Oh, ****!”.  Just vote yes.
Toasted banana bread
As I stand at the bedroom door
Checking for signs of life

She asks me who your wife is
Who your brother is married too
Who am I
Marriage is a fading order,
My kids don’t know.
After 66 years of her own,
Now my mother doesn’t either.


I stop for fossil fuel
For the long-handled sponge and squeegee
Radio whites talking Jesus between scans
My sister caring, weary, crying
Competency smiling
I lean there
Eat raisined grapes, frog eye salad, boiled egg
You sit bedside in my brace
With alabaster thighs and raspy breath
You want to write checks
You guess to stay in bed
I don’t know what death is
But I want it for you

My hunger is a coated almond
Next to your pill box
Only Monday is empty
You thank me, not knowing about tomorrow
Creases in the carpet, shrinking
You’re the smallest of the nesting dolls
You want an Oregon pill
Not what Tuesday offers
Your disappointment breathes
I wonder about your loving God

I have a birthday card
Still blank
Don’t know if you’ll make it to Friday
Doubt you’ll breathe enough to wake
wake enough to read
What to wish for you
I wish for the end
I scribble deep breaths

We came, somehow all of us converging
They came, and wrapped your body
Wheeled it out the front way
The bed changed, a meal shared
Lives diverge again
For six decades
We had you
To gather around
To go first
I’d like to miss you
But you’re still here…
What day is it?

Cookie crumbs and flower petals
Sympathy cards when death is over
Moments when you miss him so much
His ashes noticed by parcel post
I clean the pellet stove
I rummage in his drawer
For a T-shirt
In your overheated house
Stain of glue
So like mine
Home where you were

I took some nails, washers, some trowels
Rags, wing nuts, his stuff
You think I’m as obvious as lasagna
But I’m more than layers
Today I found the post office
Took the box marked
Cremated remains
She put the canister
Behind the chrysanthemum
Blooming in November
I stretched on the floor
She on the couch
We napped
Had ravioli for dinner
D Becker Nov 2019
i sit in the pine
absent from the internet
fluttered under feathers and flies
glint of spider silk
silent prancing doe
you want the world
one experience at a time
i want the experience of time
and detritus
hands in the fungal internet
D Becker Nov 2019
The roofs of the oligarchy scrape the clouds, shadowing
the fire rings of the trickled-on, mending
humpty dumpty, with cigarette butts and kale.
dumb money and a roof
is my country
my country
‘tis of thee
D Becker Nov 2019
The sun scrubs darkness
Night a shadow in the flood
All those stars surrounded by dark
Light on a drive by ricochets
A single wide, roan cliffs
Strip of clouds
All the frantic light
In darkness nonchalant
You stand shuffling
Adding steps
I can’t rise to tread
D Becker Jan 2019
is there any reason to continue
when tomorrow’s tears are on your face
the snow white on the land
we love
your hands smiling
into the wings of the angel.
take these wings unbroken
and let them fly
over the song beneath the snow
over the shadows of today
over the redemption we cry for
in the sun and wind
billowing thru yesterday’s dress
flowering in swaying grass.
life laughs for the chance
to live
like we long to sigh
relief.
...for my daughter, and all of us, looking for a future for the planet we can laugh in anticipation of.
D Becker Jan 2019
From the elk beds
to barb wire
the lion runs
chasing the cheap
winter of our hand.
its spilt
this wildness,
oozing under our fences
pooling unto the concrete and asphalt.
we slop thru the puddles
booted in complacency,
plastic
shielding our futures.
Would that we bled
with what we’ve cut.
...maybe this edit is better?

— The End —