Outsider feeling
worn like a shroud,
an aura screaming
obscure sorrows
unheard.
The stolid, snow covered
pasture oak radiates
a magic beyond our touch,
squirrel-stirred sorcery
of the simple truth.
We all grew up Grendel-kin.
What happens now
the temple of my body
isn’t new and shiny any more
No lit candles at its altar
No prayers recited in its space
No incense burned in its aisles
Only ashes now
and dust
and refuse
How now am I loved
The Pyramids of Egypt
or urban blight
When a door slams & there’s a broken
bond, a reaching still occurs. Something
crawls out of such an event like a slug
after heavy rain. Even when a schism
occurs in a hidden underground shaft a fertile
emptiness is created. Hawaiians
have a word—puka—they use
instead of hole. It turns
out there are many kinds of them,
a whole language of holes. Kaimana
likes to take his fist & punch an empty
spot into his laundry hamper when
it’s spilling over with swimming
trunks & T-shirts, therefore
making a temporary puka
for the the Roman candles he hides
from his little brother. Keone
says the indentation at the center
of a nest where the thrush
broods over her fragile turquoise
eggs is a puka, an opening,
a hole where the baby
bird, wet with blood
& birth fluid, pecks
out of his sticky,
dark shelter.
place a word on the table
there beside the key you thought you’d lost
there all along to open the box you were ready to discard
stay close
to the texture of its uplift and swirl each letter
ripe under your fingertips
this is so like what the sun is
to the meadow ripe with flowers
evidence enough
ignore the illusion knocking at your door keep focus
so that when ready you turn your face from the table
and the entire room ignites
without assertion your life is yours
it simply is.
I woke up at 4am
My alarm is set for 6
Ive been trying to fall back asleep since 4am
So my alarm can stay employed
I wish I could see the glass half full
But frankly I’m annoyed
There’s good and bad almost everywhere
Almost everywhere, but we’re not trained–
not trained–to see it. Dichotomies are easy,
as in easy-does-it, because they give us an out.
Out meaning separate. Something to no.
No, I believe in a plethora of yesses.
Yes to the book of poems by Jim Wayne Miller
and yes to the grist mill in my hometown.
Yes to my hometown, even though I didn’t
stay. Yes to the creek. Yes to the patches,
to the till, to the little stone house they built
from field rock.
My elderly cousin was a poet,
lived close to the family cemetery,
had a brass family tree with names and plates.
She showed me home in her verses, pointed
my branch on the tree. Said, this
is where you are. This is where I am. This, we.
What is Appalachian pride?
Is it my aunt
500 lbs. and bed ridden?
Is it my teen cousin
orphaned by meth addiction?
Is it my best friend
curbing mental potential with Ritalin?
Is it my little sister
20 years old without her mother figure?
Facetious?
Not in the least.
This is not culture—
This is disease.
Faulty education
drives macronarratives
of our Commonwealth
when the individual
must come to recognize
this is not in good health.
