Today Poetry Is
listening to old songs
in the coffee shop
laughing and thinking
about the old college days
if I were you, I’d leave
poetry alone for now
because you might mess
up its idea for a new tattoo
listening to old songs
in the coffee shop
laughing and thinking
about the old college days
if I were you, I’d leave
poetry alone for now
because you might mess
up its idea for a new tattoo
It brings back childhood classrooms–
chalk dust and bright slick wall maps,
great expanses of blue water and now
miles above the earth I watch
the monitor showing our small plane’s
progress above the long familiar outline
of the world below–the still existing
frozen North Pole, precious brown deserts,
green, green forests. Unspeakably dear,
I wish I could embrace it, hold it to my heart.
a time, not so long behind
pain is hard to forget
i pour my coffee
a new song through the speakers
teases up a hurt long gone
rushing to the front of my mind
if it makes me feel so low;
why repeat it?
why do this to myself?
behind the wheel
i take time to analyze
both the song and
the way it makes me feel
i stop at the red light
feel my anger well up like a tide
the light changes
i don’t
it continues to play, over in my mind—
the day ticks on
i reheat my coffee
the feeling is distracting
something that i can never shake fully
these kinds of ghosts are
quiet and comfortable
not scary enough to evict;
just nagging
the song fades but now
my coffee is cold
to roll around in the ashes of your brother
your mother or the man who gave you his all
as others sipped tea from their skulls
gloved hands / pinkies out / teeth bright
– and this is how freedom births you? –
then you dare frown at how loudly i laughter.
I told her to run like we were famous
We were in tall grass and we
both wanted to lay down but we
couldn’t until we got to
another small town, another tanning bed
She said we have more fun than anybody
and I told her if there ever come
a day she stepped to me like
a woman, she better be ready
We went over some chug
holes and she laughed and said
have you ever met anybody
that wasted more money on nothing
the last time
i remember loving you…
it felt like
falling to the fear.
the blue glow as i blew smoke.
like fireflies in the fireplace-
beautiful and brick.
a kiss that tasted tender
with the tang of peach schnapps.
sex on the floor and stars in the sky.
it was a dozen pounds of difference.
it feels like the end of an era
in the prime of my life.
and i know now
that i’ll never feel it again
because
i just remembered…
it felt like
fleeting.
like falling.
like flying.
I got out of my car with the covered dish.
Casseroles
pies
a platter of cold cuts —
it’s what our mothers and their mothers have always done.
I climbed the two cinderblock steps to the screen door of the double-wide
and started to knock on the frame,
but she had heard me drive up
and was watching through the ripped mesh screen.
“We thought you might not feel much like cooking,” I said.
She opened the screen door and took the casserole,
dark circles under her eyes
matching shadows creeping over her teeth.
Pale skin streched tight over fragile cheekbones.
“I’d ask you in but I gotta get to work,” she said
in pajama pants and an over-sized Dixie Chics tee shirt.
She looked past me down the dusty driveway.
A Peace Lily, wilting in the heat
adorned with a pink teddy bear
its funeral ribbon fading in the sun.
“Go on. Take yourself a plant, ” she said.
“I kill everything.”
He says
he loves
the Wahsatch Mountains
that stand
like cathedrals;
I wonder if
he loves me
like cold stonecraft,
as a
holy solidarity
of ancient choirs.
Old men,
with scars on their fingertips
backs bent
fingers knotted
like an old tree growing up around power lines-
but they won’t admit it hurts.
Old men,
who won’t carry glasses,
but won’t have the menu read to them.
I see one right now;
wearing his spouse’s blue-flowered-rhinestone-studded frames
and hiding behind a menu from a waiter
who could’ve been him some years ago
Old man,
when I ask for a story he looks down at his hands
and talks about how he played on train tracks
and set a tire ablaze before rolling it down first street.
I see the childish glee return to his face,
then a wince at the irresponsibility,
then remorse cloud his eyes
as if he still wishes he were young
(and stupid)
enough to roll a flaming tire into traffic.
