You assume prey is soft
and scared, pounding
in the brush at sounds
of endless side steps.
While we sigh—
wily and worn—
at thoughts & prayers
& platitudes, we take aim,
shoot hollow point bullets
through your fallacies.
Your Kevlar chest shreds.
When will that stone
you call a heart
explode?
the bird does not
see
the window only
more
sky more branches
emptying
themsrlves and the
light
This heat makes my head hurt.
Coats my brain in humid haze,
clings to delicate cerebral crannies
and leaves me feeling fuzzy
all damned day long.
This heat has about killed my strawberries.
No matter how much shade
I try to manufacture, it seeps in.
Sunshine soaks the concrete block
and singes deep down at the root.
I’ve only had one sweet taste of summer,
one little bite of berry still warm
from the first of June,
so sweet on the back of my tongue
and chased down by the salt
gathering on my upper lip.
I feel like we’re wilting,
me and the strawberries,
but at least we made it through May.
The trees in my backyard have exploded
with bundles of green boughs,
enveloping us in a paradise of birdsong and leafy emerald.
A picnic blanket of pure blue sky snatched
from some 1950s sitcom neighborhood can only mean summer days,
their yellow warmth and sunshine riptides
unpacked and here to stay.
Welcome evenings spent strolling
through the outdoor mall, mannequins
clothed in flowy sundresses and floppy hats
watching as my sister and I sneak licks of whipped cream
from the bright red straws that are supposed to stay in our foamy milkshakes.
Days filled with novels under splashes of sunshine,
ungraded poetry,
and nonsensical laughter mark our calendars.
On Fourth of July nights we’ll light our sparklers
with the sleepy glow of a sun dripping drops of gold
into an ocean of forest.
We’ll wave our sticks of lightning sparks
like Tinkerbell’s pixie-dusted wand,
create infinite circles from our stolen fire
in front of fingers poised to cast a sorcerer’s spell,
imagining we are opening a portal to a dimension
we cannot yet comprehend
in which the idea of summer never spoils
and June remains an untouched dream.
Whereas poets economize sensual brilliance,
pestle esteem and passion flush from a toothless matchbook,
bright as Walpurgisnacht;
sleuth from scum-chewn trails of sponges
pestilent pearls of a peeping Argus
crowned with an ocherous aura forged
from orange pith, lye, and vinegar tendrils,
Lo! the bubbling queen of gossiping cigarettes, licorice aspic, saccharine;
sculpt among lurid aluminum flat as a shunted wick wan wax ensnares,
beat thin as a thwarted foil,
fiercest forms of carnal acuity, cumbrous
beauty born of a swollen stern
or a buoyantly beckoning bowsprit beaming
sharp as our tower-bound star escapes
to whisk with a cloud-shorn tang
some sunken wave,
born grey as decaying snakeskin,
tickled and picked
to the tourmaline moire of a prom dress
wove among moon-licked ivy;
winnow from warbling wrens
wry wills and testaments webbed amid aching antlers,
fixed in a feathering flurry of frantic fowl
that glisten as palates pearled,
or stitched ‘twixt slithering shoals un-
furled from frothed and over-salted tongues;
spot morbid tics ‘midst tides eternally
dandled, pinched by a mewling moon who,
emulous, urges the perfect earthly bulb
to imperfect proportions;
inter in untidied scowls and dimples
tickled in tenuous silt
those stippling pips
of preponderant
Sycamores
preening
wild and lithe as life permits—
I simply change out sordid slugs
for fractured fortunes freckling finicky ticker tape.
I pity those yawning moles ensconced
in greige and feckless flesh
as harrowing ink encrusts glib guts of a sump pump,
red as the reins of American mooncalves,
comrades, neoconservatives, cynical tipsters,
shiftless centrists, transients—
I cramp in crumpled bulbs of cudded pulp
such twisted epistles, styptic pith of the lemon
left green as the chin and cheeks of a virginal thistle.
I spit in the cauterized eyes of trees
blown jagged and black by a baleful epiphany,
goading something green to grow
that’s more than a chortling bloom of mold.
And so
a dendrologist plies,
what are you taking notes on—?
points to the elms and smiles,
missing his dexter canine—
And I’m left to reason
why I was just about to
pen in pluperfect conclusion
(yank yet another knot to the germ of a tumid tumor tired and tried):
And so old poesy smiles and sighs and,
winking at me, pries,
what am I?
acclimate
iterate
repeat
acclimate
iterate
repeat
repeat
repeat
reconcile
emphasize
repeat
reconcile
emphasize
R E P E A T
R E P L I C A T E
S U S T A I N
To find the perfect near rhyme
wrapped inside finest nori sheet–
like paper, thin, inscribed with words
like eel, wasabi, daikon – whose saying
tastes like lunch with an old friend who loves
fermenting words as much as you
and the click of boxwood sticks as they touch.
Note: A Demi-sonnet, devised by the terrific poet Erin Murphy, is 7 lines with the last word echoing a rhyme or slant rhyme with another word in the poem.
I want to think you reached your threshold
for electric heartbeats and full lungs
and burst right there on the road,
spontaneously combusted across US 60
and spread like holy water, purified the asphalt,
washed away the exhaust and marks of rubber,
the dandelions sprouting up through beer cans,
your death some grand symbol
of transcending the body,
or at least a need for nature, or even
an inciting incident that leads to rosy crosses
in the ditch, peace treaties signed in front
of the castle on the hill, more tolerance
for the weeds around everyone’s front stoop.
This was not that, though.
This was death like an upside-down urinal
or nails in a flatiron, death
by the need for bigger tires, death
for not a goddamn reason at all
beyond the scattering of spoiled venison
and a driver need one more reason
to complain about his luck.
The result is the same:
dark bloodstains on the highway, flesh torn
to pieces, a faint song from distant trees.
