I am learning a new dance –
the steps are easy –
1 2 3
1 2 3
but the remembering hard:
pick up the mail,
bring the trash around,
change the filters.
You were always the lead
and now I am lost,
left trying to follow a ghost.
On the first blanketing of snow,
after you were gone,
I stood at the living room window
and wondered where it all would go.
Becoming Classic Rock
My childhood rusts
exclusively in pawn shops
and yard sales, lodged
between crutches, fishbowls,
most of a soldering
iron, Mormon Tabernacle
Choir on vinyl.
I would buy back third grade
if they had it.
I buy back what I can:
fishing poles, a bike,
a Super Nintendo, but now
when I play
I’m better than I ever was—
which is something I never used
to need to say.
Lost winding lanes dissolve into road rash
etched across my mind, sketched there
in bold charcoal and fresh yellow paint.
Guardrail’s come back to meet itself again,
snaking through creek-water and tar,
pointing up at the sky, crying out to God
for forgiveness that’s only dredged
from the remains of ditched aluminum cans
emptied too quickly, forgotten too soon.
Crimson firmament
atmospheric perspective
gradient contrast
A distant mirage
violet modulation
spectral pigment drips
Magenta meadows
weep for wandering willows
with lavender tears
Dismal miasma
forlorn hemlocks blacked ruin
evergreen dreams burn
Dashcam, she said, it’s from the dashcam
What do you say to that?
That wail, that sickening centuries old wail, that
Sound of ultimate suffering, that
Bell tolling warped steel tongue of a voice
Until the body ripped apart and flew away like
Ash on fire smoke into the night
She said, last time – like last time – like
THIS IS THE LAST TIME
Don’t look to me, don’t look at me
What do I have to offer?
This bloodied silver platter
Sans head on the dashcam
What do you say to God?
Wrap it up, wrap it up, wrap it up and lock it away
THIS IS THE LAST TIME
I swear it was the last time
Bury it deep and
Hush
a week before you turn 5
and a year after you tell me
all things must die
the ground-down stump
only remains that and
the drawing you make
Everyday her to-do list diminishes
like the point of a pyramid along
the Nile. Her papyrus, the back
of the ubiquitous ocher envelopes
from YMCA pledge drives, scrolls up
the magnetic column on the icebox.
My examination of her scribe
reveal May’s crossed-out tasks:
plant corn, pick asparagus, till okra,
mow orchard, file the hoe, finish
weeding pole beans, & horseradish,
harvest rhubarb, inspect bee hives,
fix latch on barn door…on and on
it ascends to the undisturbed duo
that describe what June may hold:
fences
silence
You call me a liar
for saying you’re beautiful.
I don’t know what else to say
except that I think you look like
one of Robert Crumb’s girls
curvy,
strong,
a little hairy,
red-haired,
bursting with energy.
Talking online,
I knew you were fun,
smart,
hilarious,
but that’s not when I fell for you.
When you showed up
at the bowling alley
wearing a dress—
lips painted bright red—
my nerves took over.
I became a cartoon
hearts in my eyes,
tongue on the floor.
You were my Crumb girl
and I was your Fritz the Cat.
-for Kate, born 2 June 2017
Doctors pulled a poem
from my sister today,
laid it red, naked, screaming
on her chest.
Published at nineteen lines,
beautiful meter, expressive.
Experts in the room said
she had done it again:
it was perfect.
Can you believe it!
My sister, Empress of the Caesuran Section,
Queen of the Pregnant Pause,
Laureate of Feminine Rhyme.
My sister, who couldn’t care less about Shakespeare,
author of another perfect poem!
Non-glitzy-but-comfortable glory that is my momma minivan
piloted by my command flies north—
perfect north
The search is on
for golden apples to replace a seemingly no good
rotten pile or maybe
just add to an insufficient one.
What if she doesn’t like fruit anymore?
Unlikely.
Full of junk?
Probably.
I dab my eyes and pray and
dab my eyes and pray
Surely I’ll find divinely mysterious
magically golden
apples perfectly sized
to fit into her life-space
waking her from wandering reverie
An angel babe sitting pretty on my right shoulder assures
“Your compass works fine.
Don’t give it to anyone to hold for you.
Use it.”
A gleam from within yanks
hold of my heartstrings—
pictures of silver
apples of gold
words fitly spoken
They’ve been with me all along
tucked between worry
and hope
They are me
Arrival made before departure.
