Turn music up
Tom came to his apartment adjoining mine.
He talked about you,
and especially your daughter. To him
she is precious.
He wondered if pine
trees cause allergies for you
or the little blond girl who showed him
around the house, made such a fuss
over him. But it was you,
and your stories about the hard life
you have lived that touched his heart.
He brought you pizza and watermelon.
You
won his admiration, for he, too, has had strife
enough in his past to jumpstart
friendship with only pizza and watermelon.
when i was a kid
i used to think of the endless buffet at the diner
in some middle of nowhere town
in some middle of nowhere state
as paradise
something shiny
something almost sacred
i loved the people that filled that place
patting me on the head
giving me compliments
in the same budding accent i had
in the accent my parents had
in the accent my grandparents had
telling me that i was gonna grow up big and tall someday
like i was a superhero
and that was my power
but now
i sit in the same diner
i’ve come to millions of times
in my millions of selves
and i think about how the people here don’t like the one i’ve landed on
now that i’ve grown up big and tall
like they told me to
how the man at the counter with a gun at this hip and toothpick in between his lips
watched in disapproval
my shaved head,
my tattooed body,
my genderless presence,
my obviously queer self,
try to fit back in where i came from.
His hand glides a steel blade along my shin —
slices and lops the scaly lump,
but I don’t feel his cut
as lidocaine masks the pain.
Instead I watch blood trickle down my leg
and wonder if I can carve you out —
sever memories that cause me grief
those what-ifs that fester
grow malignant in my mind.
The doctor interrupts my musing
with the word invasive.
He’ll need to chop off more bits of me
until the threat is gone.
I nod my head,
resigned to this fate.
I must excise my heart
to be free of your reach.
27.
Sometimes, even good old music isn’t enough.
28.
On music highway
from Bristol to Nashville, ghosts
of what once traveled.
29.
And then, music again. Gospel bluegrass
snatched from the air
through my cracked car window.
One of the only genres
to be named after a band,
Bill Monroe and his crew croon and pick
to the sounds of church, reminding me
of where exactly I came from–beloved
despite the things (it’s okay),
they just don’t work anymore.
1. Abrupt and cut up, obtuse and expressionless. Obfuscation is not enough,voice becomes meaningless. Emotions are very rough, isolation should breed mindfulness. Isolated: language becomes beautiful, the body rejects normality. My voice is not up to snuff, my body seems godless. Anxiety eventually, is useful. My thoughts reject formality. Echo is always stationary fluff, what is primary is always aimless.
The mind becomes too full, but not full enough,
Movement is functionless,
Language is mindless.
This message has a body, and it is godless,
I am communicating oscillations, the mind cannot process.
Slightly skewed end products.
For months I have been towing today
into tomorrow. Stuck in limbo, this is take,
is see, is pulling me loose.
I am exhausted with red tape, with tucking
and folding another email into the void.
Left hanging, imagine the last autumn leaf
on the old oak tree–this is my patience now.
But outside, summer makes its move. I think,
I have been separated from _________ for so long,
it is pouring me out.
One day, like a chrysalis,
I’ll shed this cocoon. Until then
I’ll beat my new wings against the walls.
thumbing brittle pages
it opens to thirty-five,
LESSON XII, The Genitive (continued)
that word, from college grammar, is a case,
nouns describing other nouns,
‘pack of dogs’ or Will’s ‘dogs of war’
or other such, relegated now to memes
(think ‘murder of crows’ funnies)
or scientific names, like
‘butterfly bush’ (see Wikipedia),
apt this blistering time of year
2. quis nostrum, who of us?
we rely more on possessive cases
in English nouns (true, Google it),
which makes me chuckle,
how unlike the dear genitive
gentle in its modification, un-possessing
3. quid est causae, what reason is there?
now I find myself drawn into
another lesson here,
a lesson of ‘that’s a good question’
as I try to make sense of this
brave new world, post-pandemic,
post wannabe dictatorship
(or is it really all that post?)
7. plus mali, more mischief
indeed, I’m fearful that is the case
(terrible pun, sorry)
and we might yet end up with more
leaders bent on mischievousness (continued),
more radical groups sowing discord
11. hujus modi consilia, plans of this sort
we watch for them every day, in the news
and often find our darker selves
out there, commenting
in the world, and we stare blankly
thinking, we must
make plans of a sort to eradicate
racism, genderism, every ism that threatens
1. Observe that the Genitive of Quality when applied to persons is properly used only of permanent characteristics; incidental or transitory qualities cannot be indicated except by the ablative.
now, the footnote makes me nervous, that perhaps
the genitives I’ve encountered are permanent
and we will never eradicate, or
correct our past, our futures
then —
13. quanti est aestimanda virtus, how highly virtue ought to be prized
the hopeful returns in the lesson,
smiles pass by upon walking the dog,
defenders rise on social media,
hands reach out to refugees, and
good deeds paint the future
around me, and
16. nomen pacis dulce est, the name (of) ‘peace’ is sweet
I breathe again, the sweet air
and I become
thoughtful, inquisitive, and I wonder,
have we found it, are we rekindling
our own genitive case
What is it in us that wants to take
in the ruined house of the past,
the exquisite pain of this world,
what I can only call a terrible power, the burden,
the accumulations of our years and griefs,
the neat, fenced acres of our separateness,
the temptation to step off the edge
breaking and falling and changing shape,
a darkness we have no word for,
those undefined days we stare into the blue scar,
a blister we scratch in our sleep,
something inside us that longs to be named,
molten and glowing as a blade hammered to silver,
heat that draws us to our life’s work.
There are twenty-two levels of heaven.
Gaze deeply into the excitement,
the world tilting on its axis right beneath your feet.
Inside the body, the doors of pleasure,
secret as the underside of leaves, the flipside of flower petals
opening, one after another, an arpeggio
humming notes to a score
where each of us is imprinted with a map,
gateways that lead us there: the torn edge
between this realm and the next
that forever marks before and after in the heart’s guest book
stretched out before us, limitless and absolute,
set down like blank pages on the yellow quilt.
We met last year in the lonely library lot;
it was early Covid times and we knew so little
but Roberta wanted eggs; I had them to sell.
Awkward it was, no thought of masks—those little
things that tip weighty scales. So we exchanged:
envelope hidden in a tissue, wry little
smile, the hope we wouldn’t get sick. At two arms’
lengths, eggs slipped from me to her. In time, little
losses grew bigger, smiles disappeared behind
masks or into loneliness lifted only by little
framed faces on screens. After a year and two
shots—mask and vaccine record in tow—a little
awkward still, Nancy chances a party. Finds Roberta!
We hug, talk, laugh—pleasures no longer so little.
