Underneath crystal blue skies
She yearns to be touched
By the soft fingers of tomorrow
Instead,
The roots wrap around her ankles
Not quite shackles,
But still yet there.
On each breeze
Comes the faint scent of freedom,
She steps, against better judgement.
Stiletto breaks in the tepid mud.
Maybe it’s just not the right time.
The coroner called it suicide.
Shot in the face with his own pistol,
three in the morning in his ex-
girlfriend’s kitchen. Only the two
of them to bear witness, one left
to give the report. He knew better.
Went there on a tear to prove again
his unworthiness, to tell her all
his words could fail to say,
to stumble over the coffee table
as if he weren’t two decades lost
on her tenderless stare,
the last look he would see.
She treated him as a bad
as woman could hate herself
and so he loved her like
the mother that threw him out,
into state care, because she also
grew from hurt and a poisoned past.
He is an entity who slid through interdimensional membranes to meet me
in a barn.
(I am a hobbyist medium for light entities from beyond the ether)
a pale thing the size of a fist with thin legs and wings like a fly
Born of pure bittersweetness;
a dense little embodiment
of the feeling of losing something you never had
A whole life being the dog
watching other dogs play through the window
Sometimes angels need batteries when they are made suddenly physical
and when I first installed his, he sent out waves of pain so saturated
that I began to weep immediately
And for a long time he wouldn’t tell me why he came here
Or why he called on me to sew him a physical body
Or even his name
He just cried in wavelengths
And wiggled his little legs
Like a baby does when it’s bored of its own sounds
But today he stopped- a sudden break to breath as anguish always takes
His name
is Birthday Sprimkle
like Birthday Sprinkles, But just one,
mispelled.
He chose his name because he has a sense of humor
An important trait when you are a minor angel of hurting and loving.
And he told me felt cut away
like rot in an apple
from two worldly things, and that made his pain
The feeling of falling in love
and also of sitting in the rain
I said well I only know one of those, sorry
But I put him in the bathtub under an umbrella
So his batteries wouldn’t get wet
And it seemed to bring him some peace.
everybody’s alone in new york
she lilts, disembarking the plane
and taking the metro to the city
where she’ll meet new people
her bag is stuffed
with books and photos
while her heart is stuffed
with longing
a letter punched out
with a typewriter is taped
to page eighty-nine
of a book she’s never read
just the right amount
water, pressure and patience
turning of the wheel
the containers form
fragile, they are coaxed to shape
some are tossed aside
the vessels emerge
thin, smooth walls tremble and rise
wavering edges
the dense ball transforms
slick clay breathes around his hands
finding its true form
– for Ken Tucky Swinson
I’ve been busy recently.
Well, in a sense, anyway.
Cracked open the suitcase of my ribs
and started unpacking. Removed
every trace of the man I once was
and took a vow of silence.
I never learned how to stay in contact
with the ones I love,
remember scrapping thank-you letters
because the right words proved too elusive.
Forgive me, I’ve left you with nothing but ashes.
After embracing alienation,
when every trace of this vessel
has faded from memory,
what will remain, then?
they come
in the quiet,
in the secret
place of thunder,
the voices
of ancestors,
of those who’ve
gone before,
they come
just before
you settle
into second sleep,
after reading
another chapter
in another book
you won’t recall
in a few years, or
maybe even a few
months, because
the words won’t
matter, don’t equate
to the fables whispered
into honeysuckle air
somewhere between
