I am clawing at my throat
Doing all that I can to rip out what’s beneath
These heart shaped glasses and flowing sundresses can’t cover what is me
Strip me down lovingly and what will you see?
Shove shove shove
It away
Mask mask mask
What I think from what I say
I am a facade
Hiding from
God?
Don’t look at me
Don’t look at me
Don’t look at me
This gluttonous reptile cycle,
Ends second fourth, humid and anchorweighted.
i.
I’m a Taurus in a china shop;
But i can kintsugi fragments together,
A gold and porcelain helmet over iron skull.
ii.
Where I begin bonefragile as faith,
Once broken, twice, thrice, quartered,
Heals stronger, spiderwebbed with new histories,
As the body and the head.
All retrograde and rampage,
All draws of the tower,
Quelled with steadyshaking hands.
iii.
Ashtongued with soft joys,
Enjoying another hungry year.
Day Three in Guatemala
Yesterday morning as I look out
from the upper level of la casa
your grandparents live in,
two helicopters gunships pass noisily
and I wonder which president
is being flown and where,
and for what purpose.
I did not suppose
Vice President Pence to be where
my thoughts went.
Oscar turns on the tv
to get the news of the day in
Spanish and drinks his tasa
café. The reporter, with a shout,
begins a biography of Pence, from his
early days and his rise
to the top of American politics,
and then the vice president speaks,
in an interpreter’s voice,
outlining why migration
must not be illegal entry.
Deiny enters the room. She
goes to her drums, her mission,
one of choice,
seeks
music, her soul, not politics.
The light in her young eyes is contagious.
All poems are translations,
purveyors of our position,
in or outside the story.
The narrative
contrives an argument
in terms of our values.
We become who we’ve always been–
curators of our cabinet of curiosities,
circus barkers in search of an audience.
What the poet wishes to say
remains forever forthcoming.
The Imagination
creates blue zebras wearing freshwater pearl earrings
and druzy agate cameos of long necked turtles,
a whole alternative world full of impossibility
becomes possible, as possible as a noonday
total solar eclipse; perhaps not as probable.
Nevertheless. Adam’s last words? Imagination
tells me that they were: Boys, grow up now
and help your mammy take care of the garden
this side of paradise; it wasn’t all her fault
as I’ve lead you to believe, irregardless of what
god has to say about it. Whatsoever she says
is more probable than anything I’ve said.
She was present before we knew about good
and evil after all. And that zebra with the pearl
earrings, stop taunting her. This is her world too.
And every time mammy says [he had a few strong breathes
yet in him] Don’t give me no more of your backtalk sass!
I will hear it from above; boys, I know how to take care of sass.
I know more than zeus ever will.
Melva Sue Priddy
I tried.
I wanted to write something
meaningful.
Something with
staying power.
Instead, I had to
navigate
this tiny text box
on my computer
that only allows me
to see
a few lines at a time.
And, believe me,
I’ve got an awful lot
to say. Or write.
Whatever.
Am I the only one
pissed at the machines?
Azimov had it right–
they should serve man
and never harm him.
But this computer
is raising my blood pressure
and filling me with an
urge to kill.
Kill. Kill. Kill the machines!
Oh well.
Let’s be realistic.
It’s not like I have anything
interesting
to say.
And who the hell
reads poetry,
for God’s sake?
Nobody, right?!?!
I need to chill.
I’m going to put my
ear buds in
and listen to
the new Death Grips album.
And maybe take a few swallows
from the tiny bottle
I hide in my desk.
As you grow
you’ll learn I loved you
more than I ever showed.
I hope the way I
act doesn’t affect the way
you feel about me,
because I love you more
than you could ever
dream.
Your imagination
makes up these scenarios
in which I’m your knight
in shining armor and
I wish more than anything
I was,
but I can’t be the hero
who saves you
when I can’t even
save myself.
LETTERS TO THE DEAD: TWENTY – NINE
6/29/2018
For Mark Morgan (1950 – 2017)
I)( from Jonathon Greene’s
“Seeking Light”)
………………..
so few drops
to evoke
a sea
II) on Celia Street
bottlebrush
butterfly bush
coneflower
giant hyssop
milkweed
zinnia:
Monarch Fuel for
the Great Flight
to the Sacred Firs
of Sierra Chincua
today, the first reports of
their arrival in your yard,
this fall you’ll fly
with them
III) on Dividing Ridge Road
today i miss our friendship
but suddenly you arrive:
1) I plan a trip and my Ohio atlas
falls open to Port Orchard Point
where you’d creased the page
to show a birding spot
2) in a stack of papers to file
there’s a photo of you,
binoculars to your eyes,
peering out at me
3) behind the calendar
on the kitchen wall
your pencil drawing
of a locust tree appears
4) in my newly purchased
book, “Seeking Light”
I discover I’m not the first
to dedicate a poem to you:
Boomerang*
for Mark Morgan
You squared up
a cresent moon for me.
Toss it towards the heavens
with the right slant
it comes back
as if I had called.
(* – page 52 of Jonathon Greene’s
“Seeking Light”)
No, I won’t tell you how I found it;
just that I spotted it in a place
more than a little unexpected.
I smiled and remembered all the good times we shared.
This time last year, I wasn’t even a man anymore
you had broken me to the core.
This day last year, I destroyed
every memento that was tying me to you.
Today I fondly recall the warmth of loving you,
especially on those late nights sitting in the car.
Every day I dream about having that again,
though I know it won’t be with you.
This has only been the latest of several instances
where you have found your way back into my mind.
Recently, a friend thought you were looking for me
and that’s when we spoke for the briefest of moments.
I could never blame you for what you did.
The specific pressures that fell on us
would have broken anyone with their intensity.
Still, I’ve always thought our ending was all wrong.
Or I did, until you spoke with such hate,
not a forgiving tone in your voice
and that’s when I realized that despite all the hurt
our ending was really the easy way out for both of us.
after Wallace Stevens
I
Over the week, the baby
deer collapsed. Its body
turned into many fibers.
II
Two tawny-headed hawks raised wing
and showed thir red tails, dodging
the blur of cars on highway.
III
To a maggot, roadkill
is also home.
IV
Roadkill on the highway, roadkill
on the old city route. A family is missing
its little gray
something.
V
I don’t know why I’m stuck on the dead,
their fragile bodies & mine, flying
down Highway 25 like instinct,
like always.
VI
The squirrel never looks both ways.
It runs & runs, doesn’t stop
until it runs sweetly
under the oncoming truck’s tire.
&3/4
I weep, swerve grateful
in the rain, miss
the slew-footed green turtle
& his wise and wrinkled body. Slowly, smart,
he waits for space. I hope
he made it to some cowpond.
