Did he drown?
Did he hit the ground?
Did he take flight again
Like a goose gone south for longer
Than a winters night?
Daedalus should’ve done a practice flight

Did he laugh?
Did he throw his head back?
Did he let himself fall
And with a smile on his face
Feel peaceful fright?
Needing less discipline to fall than to take flight

Did he make it up as he went?
His finale waiting for the sun’s repent?
Did Daedalus drop his maps and designs
Did even the sea reach out from the benign
To say, the sun shines awfully bright
You should’ve done a practice flight

A Harvey Refugee Reports:

When she with cats, papers, a change of clothes
And her old college bag to hold them all
Was one refugee among others in a dump truck
A Houston Airport Authority dump truck

Dieseling through rain and water and fear
With muck and mud sloshing across their feet
A woman next to her then laughed and said,
“Now we’re the people they take pictures of”

But there was no Capa to frame the scenes
Only oh-my-Godders with MePhone screens

I wanted to learn

so last night my fourth grade teacher
tore my eyelids off

and sat me near a television screen
that showed my mother dying
over and over
and over again.

I left as a cavity
of a boy,

collapsing at the sound of passing cars

as I searched for a payphone where
I could speak to the static about Gabriel.

(where is he?)

When I look at my brother and father

I beg for my eyes to be caressed until they’re scarred

with every daytime matinee
and curtsy on the train platform

that built me into this mosaic
of a “man”.

A Saint Jude Prayer Card


I thought to pray for a serious need, you see

But

Saint Jude seems a little annoyed with me