Is it the poet’s responsibility
to record the raindrops
or the spaces in between?
the words, or the silence after?
It’s been almost four years
since I put down my dog.
Was the poem his life
or the emptiness in his wake?
The mosquito on my ankle
left a red streak. Was the poem
its life? the itch it left? was it
me scratching until it bled?
They seemed loyal enough,
They seemed conscientious enough,
They did their jobs.
But when push came to shove,
They didn’t care.
It wasn’t much to ask,
Maybe an inconvenience,
An hour or two out of their lives.
But it was a matter of life and death,
And they didn’t care.
Inert and surly shackles sun-sick mornings wreath
around worsted nostrils, bunged again
as the fresh-fleshed infant’s
slickly split from shadowed stocks
in writhing, thrashing throes that foremilk clots
and cloys; stiff sputum callow noses know;
wet, pealing wheeze of tummies sunken
squealing from this sapling shucked;
some succulent’s frond,
a soulful palimpsest
potted in fresher flesh—
thin, spirited forebears throwing voices sharp
as curraghs’ fey and fumbling husks
glissade across prickling crests that woefully
low and sepulchral whalesong seeps through
lissomely simple as stars unfurl
first-light’s wet, waxy olios yanked
to welcome a blithering Drummond’s glare,
learned lines, and properties scarcely panting—
A black cat’s cringe claws corns from
barnacled glims warm, slumberous seas encrust
and caulk like shades drawn taut and stickily
stitched in sand-chewn sills, stripped jambs that,
erstwhile threadbare, longing lenses slowly smeared
to summon in scintillant swathes iconic,
echoic, and nacreous glimmers
some vitreous gods, among glib gambols,
skimmed from filigreed waves what
bleary horizons gleeked, then gulped and gushed with—
stirring still this frothing day,
which wets wan napes with labored breathing, begging
fingers visions sutured stiff as
ships sharp, shore-bound crags upend,
to grope about auric ears and flaccid,
foetid, quern-cracked grist,
or whatever enshrouds what bison once
would roll about dreamily dreeing grasses’
graceful lilt and sapid sway,
what writhing plains that sobering Kansas claims
and cramps, encages, blears by but a name
old, restless soldiers stole,
allured by illegible lines of a free state—
unfold those curling portals shrieks inflame
and sting as sullied scratches swell;
abide by what a tabby tells,
in jabbing her graven M,
slid smoothly as planes
lathe bumpy boughs of
driftwood, stamping
redundant as stammering,
diffident voices clamp at
mnemonic anemones enemies hem and indemnify,
raking inky rills of acrid mmm’s
through a furrowing scowl’s
bleak, chasmal creases:
a cat’s percussive nuzzle cribs
like blades ensnared in stridulous scrimshaw.
Knaves at play cold mornings wrought
in gnashing asyndeton streaking,
bald and raw, what soft parts freaking
cracked macadam some strawberry roan;
now, a kitten knows how laws are bent,
how claws are buffed and whetted snapping
rickety ribs of a rambling orrery;
Kittens arch and belly with low mincing moons,
in gambols grey and gay,
in stardust stylish quiffs most moon-borne
rabbits scorn and discreetly covet,
and every gilt, Jellico earmark
slumberous tails ensnare come shadowless hours
that charred macadam must melt and kvetch with—
lour at powerless rabbits proudly,
weed-wracked, cracking, cross if crossed,
and always crossed, and never acknowledged,
an aggregate Atlas smoothed from molten stone
no sole should deign to polish.
There upon the ragged bluff
our star’s brash, rankling ankles stab,
alights amid onerous crepitus creeping
murder ballads grackles bay
and, bothering low-borne blood to boil,
wry clarity emeralds bend and tinge,
blithe sunrise prying glims to seethe
when weighing clots of powdery tuna,
salvaging glaucous flesh from sunken peaches,
skulking, scarring navels bared, and
brandishing bilboes blood inspires
long and thrawn as borders’ stories sicken,
mere lice-lengths shy of empurpled shells
a twig, a lash, an asthmatic breath
could tease to share sweet, supple pearls
a kitten’s nail, unclipped, should wantonly puncture—
or deign to benight the world.
A baby bunny bolting from but silent sighs of slouching gates,
this cold and unplumbable grog one greets the quay with,
harbored along bright Hellespont’s beachhead;
Or, as my darling swears,
You’re only ever distracted
from the beauty,
and nary by beauty misled.
she said her name out loud
in front of mamaw’s
mirror
just to see the sounds
four syllables
made
then she did it again
mouth smeared pink
by lipstick found
buried
in the left middle drawer
behind old letters
both stuck there
by experience’s glue, by
the trappings we each make
playing childhood
games
in reality’s mirror
To curse one’s self to be so sure,
Not to be tossed on the waves of wood
That flow across the floor to the door.
Needle fingers harm without intent;
To suck and inject such malevolence.
Heard the cry from my bed, surrounded by furious candlelight.
Down stairs, where the spiral traps
Those who come bearing ignorance.
I thought briefly that carolers had come,
And that they’d sought to aid me endure my plight.
But my memory began to slip,
I was now caught in a lapse.
The walls began to creak and moan,
To goad me on and ensure my vengeance.
For out of the darkness I should see,
My own staring back at me.
I started at once to take flight,
But caught myself in jest.
If so surely, I had come to kill myself
And do my own family harm.
I surely would be better aided,
By the unswayed enemies I daily spy.
Certainly, this seems quite a dream;
At my feet lay the utmost tools of cruelty.
The eye of a writhing serpent,
Opening its mouth as if to cry for repentance.
As if to be so sure of this revelation,
I strode away through the nearby door. Only to fall, and land with a heavy thud.
Across my bare skin, I felt the smooth body of the snake as it slithered around me.
As it neared my head, I again saw the eye, ever open and utterly terrifying.
As it opened its mouth to strike,
I saw my own face in its eyes.
And woke up, as the fangs sank into my throat.
I found myself in a pool of sweat,
I tried to reassure myself at last.
Then I saw, lit by dim candlelight, in the clock beside my bed my own eyes so full of dread.
Then across the floorboards came a deafening sound, the cry of a voice that I knew at once.
“You’re mad. I should take you to a hospital at once. There, you’ll not be able to hurt yourself anymore.”
The voice of my brother, long ago driven away.
I could have sworn he was out to get me,
Claiming me to be ill.
My lapse over, I came to realize
My own brother was such a snake.
In the darkness that has been heralded,
Who am I to truly know.
To be so sure, as to not fall;
Through cracks in reality where sanity is so removed, the snake ever writhing on the floor.
Every drop of rain
a loud whispering conversation
the sound of silk in friction
cobwebs caught in the wind
I can’t help but wonder
what secrets those whispering
drops are sharing
what arguments
are tangled
between them
They’re in a race
to see who can crash
to the ground first
a slithering irony
sliding between them
Arguing all the way down
as they fall from heaven
the sound of silk
thin whispers
sliding between them
every drop of rain
a whisper between them
It seems
The air is filled by some unspoken
sadness, some feeling that we’re all too scared
to talk about or
to give life to.
There is catharsis in knowing;
the tears I shed tonight are cathartic.
The grief seems to always be one step ahead of me.
We must skim frog eggs from the pool
each day before cannonballs and floaty noodles.
That’s just the way it is living in the forest. The Cope’s gray
love the clear, still water, no matter the chemicals.
The youngest kid, who squealed at me
to skim, is now pouting that I’m killing baby frogs.
I explain these aren’t baby frogs. They are only
potential baby frogs, just like an acorn is not an oak tree,
but it has the potential to become an oak tree
if the conditions are right. Just like a ball of fetal cells
is not yet a child, but has the potential to become
a child if conditions are right. And I do the math
billions of women do. The two miscarriages had the potential
to become children who would now be 22 and 5, books ends
to the two that became. I had a Tuesday appointment to terminate
the first pregnancy but went to the hospital instead of The Who concert
the Saturday before in spontaneous abortion, my body freeing me
of having to make the decision. Responsibility traded
for a torturous unanaesthetized D&C in the ER
while med students stared up inside me.
I began to miscarry the other while hoeing a spring garden,
edging around plants that would feed the family come autumn.
My body kept the two that were planned,
and now I scoop and dash these frog eggs onto the grass
so those two children can pretend to be mermaids
and border control agents in the glittering turquoise water.
I’ve named the two only-ever-potential-children clumps of cells.
I’ve decided they were boys: Corbin Thomas and Elias Richard.
I wonder where their souls ended up choosing to be born.
I’m ok with their redistribution, my acorns who never were
oak trees in this forest, my pregnancies that were never children
in my family, my not-quites whose absence has affected everything.
The rain patters on the tin roof
My cars headlights brighten our faces
A fresh cigarette and salty tears
I fall in love with souls
The things we go through,
Make us who we are,
But that’s not all we are.
Everyone’s soul is unique
And your soul keeps me awake.
They say if you love someone,
Let them go.
I say if you love someone,
Let them know.
No one knows when our bodies
Will be gone and our souls will float.
So fight for your souls, never give up on your people
You’ll know if they’re worth it.
And dammit if you end up hurt,
Your soul just has another great story To tell.
June, warm, with thunderstorms—grass season.
Zero-turn mowers scuttle about the monoculture lawns
And along fencerows, like weird crustaceans,
Backward, forward, pivoting, unpredictable,
Their operators clutching the upright claws.
I think of them as crab-turn mowers,
Though unlike crabs, they can’t go sideways.
In the fields, spiked hay rakes turn the tall grass
Into windrows, not destined for the compact bales
That the shirtless boys of my youth
Once lifted effortlessly onto wagons,
Farm boys unaware of their own strength,
Or even their transitory beauty.
Today’s windrows will become round bales,
That weigh a ton and can crush a car
(I’ve seen it happen)
And must be lifted by machines.
A handsome word, “windrow,”
Nearly forgotten now, in steady decline
Since its peak in the agrarian 1950s,
After its first recorded use in 1523,
To describe cut grass exposed to wind
For drying before being forked and ricked,
As there were no balers then.
The OED offers no etymology for “windrow,”
Just a reference to “wind + row,”
“Wind” from the Old English “windan,”
Going back through Norse “vinda” to “wander,”
And “row” tracing its lineage
To an older source,
A Sanskrit term for “stroke,” or “line.”
So, each “windrow” is a “wander line,”
Lying in a pale curve though the shorn fields.
This honest word that limns the scene
Has the feel of Norse or Saxon kennings:
Whale-road, word-hoard, earth-stepper, sea-weary,
Wood-bane, blood-ember, mist hills,
All so much more eloquent
Than the ones we use today:
Arm candy, bean counter, pencil pusher, hot potato,
Slights, in a time that has almost abandoned windrows,
I think of how these peevish modern concepts
Would have confused the marauding Vikings,
Or been perceived as great insults, if understood,
By warriors with neither pencils nor potatoes nor candy.
Perhaps enough to work a pause
In the violent sack of Lindisfarne in 793 AD,
Had the distraught monks been divinely inspired
To shout them out, uncomprehendingly,
Before the mounting bale-fires consumed
Their glorious, hand-lettered, parchment books.
Or what might the original utterer of “windrow” thought,
Standing in a hayfield in Sussex, or maybe Devon,
Admiring a hay crop brought in before ruinous rain,
Had someone responded with “motor mouth,”
“Tree hugger,” “tramp stamp” or “bookworm.”
But that was 1523, when Henry VIII was in his 30s,
Still trim and writing poetry, still married to his first wife, Catherine,
Though that year he warned Henry Percy
To cool things off with Ann Boleyn.
And this is the sinuous path
By which the word “windrow” took me this morning,
In a poem that was supposed to be about
The wholesome pleasures of the month of June.
How is it that I even know “windrow?”
Books, surely. Has to be.
This was not the sort of language
My practical haymaking grandfathers used,
Nor a word favored by the tanned boys
In the long ago fields of my youth,
Fields now as nearly forgotten as “windrows,”
Where the lean boys laughed with hay in their sunlit hair,
As they tossed the first golden bales of June
Onto the waiting haywagons.
