Posts for June 1, 2019 (page 10)

there’s chatter in the ranks
at the purple martin penthouse
grackles quackle
taptoeing around
on limestone slabs
the smallest sparrow sings his heart out
to his muse
the rising sun

folks in their finest
julep slur
a mix of pomp and prep
they put their money down on the deep breaths inhaled through
the nostrils they think will cross
the finish line
first

the neighbor and her live-in
argue
tying strands of junk drawer string
to her rose bush
trying to coax it’s
wild-haired branches into submission
and up her bare columns

i
wait
wait
wait
wait
and listen
for the first croak of the
bullfrog

1.
Memaw feels like rain’s coming.
She says it’s in her bones–the rain,
her arthritis knows it, and I know it
like I know my nephew
and how he will cough all spring,
lungdusted with pollen in his hair. 

there’s a fog hugging onto the hills
that should’ve burned away
with the sunrise.
it should’ve disappeared.
dissipated into the country air
without leaving a mark. 
but it’s stubborn, like me –
determined to stay in this holler,
to sink into the tender skin
of young leaves unprepared

for scorching summer.
i fill my lungs with the fog,
sure that it will travel through my body
and leave spring dampness in my blood.

It’s your birthday old dad     time for petrified cake and brittle candles
time for America to dust off its lap and pretend to give a shit about

beauty and blooming marigolds and live oaks and that scent that comes
with old good parchment and the blood of orchards     today I think

of your voice creaking like rusted hinges from your reconstructed mouth
I think of you flecked with iron on battlefields where brothers tore

into each other’s flesh     I think of you walking gingerly along the edge
of the Atlantic fishing for different pronouns and also I think of my true

father     another Walt who made things beautiful     who lined up lumber
and drove nails one after another after another after another until there

was something solid beneath my feet     whose laughter was my first taste
of poetry    I come by this honestly    this tendency to build and also

to grunt stubbornly against my own flesh     to keep writing my name
in ink with my middle finger     to sit like a spider in the corner of a room

waiting quietly for just the right word     just the right nail     just the right
horsefly to bite into and fill my chest with warm and steady lightning

The mind awake and soft
flows tears of gratitude
the lungs take in life giving air
and breath out
thank you
thank you

I sit on the edge of my bed,
my eyes closed, with the light
from the screen burned through
my eyelids, orange like the sun
against them, reflecting off the azure
water of Ocho Rios, named
for the eight rivers the Spanish found.

Words spin round and around
within my brain, untamed,
too free to be caught on the lure
my memory casts. As if the sun
sets beyond the horizon’s vast blue,
darkness separates me from the light
of creativity. My poem tugs, dives head-

long. I fall asleep in this small town.

Unrelated infultrated.
The point is moot.
Why remain.
I can’t express the dialect,but the words been spread.
I’m a prisoner here.
But well fed.