Utah
jutting mountains
fade into green hills
fold us in their embrace
There are times when
the cost of our journey
our progress
our daily trek
our venture out of darkness
our return home
is higher than times before
We may try to make the trip shorter
or not as fast
or we may coast down the hills
but once we’re at the bottom
there’s another hill to crest
and we have to keep the pedal pressed
and know this is when the engine
works hardest and uses
the most of our fuel
We think how hard it is
to make it this time
and hope we have enough in us
to fill the tank again
Sometimes we hear the
scream beneath silence
behind a curtain of rain
hear the dog whistle blow
for God, for help, for a friend
Each of us, really, in our way,
in the pop of the champagne cork
or the key turning in the ignition
express a kind of giving
that cloaks a subtext of begging
But only so much dare we
ask in lipless whispers
because common decency
commands we bear
despair with dignity
So when you hear them
let your heart be moved
by common decency –
give them your love
so affordable, so priceless
The Friday night special
at the country store.
A grease feast for someone —
fried fish, hushpuppies and slaw.
I just could not order it,
as I reviewed the menu.
My stomach would howl
and other parts too.
So, I got a house salad,
it was not great.
Then I bought an ice cream,
that was no mistake.
it keeps coming around
monday
moon-day
emotions run high
is it because we humans have made this the day we get back to work
or because the moon has stuck out his foot and is there giggling in the sky as we writhe on the ground where we’ve tripped
abashed as I am by the day’s decent in this way like a falcon swooping onto road
kill
didn’t even see it coming
again
the trickster, nearly full and glowing
this thick-aired wet-hot break of day
it is futile to pull on my gloves hold them high guarded
who will throw the first punch
it has already landed
between the sternum of dream
and this light glow of day
time
there is tomorrow after all
defend myself today I can
but it will probably be better if I simply nod
at his smirk regardless of the knowing intention
and go about my life all the same
I wonder if this will make him more
pissed off
he’s sure to let me know next
moonday
I am turning into my mother.
Collecting the extra napkins,
Sticking them in my purse,
To place in the car,
Just in case.
I have gathered a few forks and spoons
For the times we aren’t given one at the drive thru.
I check and recheck the drive times
To make sure we are not too early,
Or too late for check-in.
Pick up the pens and pads from the hotel night stand,
Stow them away for itenerary notes.
Pack the slivered soaps into a ziploc,
Can’t let those go to waste…
Being a grown up
Is cramping my style.
I love her casual reach for cold silvery plates of film to capture the gangs of the city in
grainy daguerreotype. Her lipstick never looks quite right, because she never wears it. She is one to herself, planted with the tripod in an unseasonable fur lined leather long-coat in leopard print, her red hair flying in the easy wind. Her lion’s mane of a sometime Rita Hayworth style rattles the gutters of El Gran Hotel Paraiso. It whips persistently like flame. Madeline mine, her eyes gut the chain-swinging graffiti guys into slices, those govoreeting goons in groups of threes—soulless thugs making mincemeat of the children on the street. She shoots them from under the awning hidden beachside Escondido.
red delicious fruit
is hanging by the doorway
serving boys on plates
She coaxes images slowly, wafting in like smoke, to a symphonic, rumbling Victrola of Señores Crosby, Diamond, and Dylan—who sings of red headed bathing beauties under parasols, and of the burning in the bottom of the soul found in poems from the 13th century. The ghosts of the boys’ victims came to reckon with them, leaving them infected with three incubi on spiritual reassignment to make throat cultures for a feast somewhere in the desert. Perhaps to grow mushrooms for nearby brujos. You can see the horror in the daguerreotype, and what seems a ghastly tint overlaying each thug. Of course it wasn’t you. Of course you’re innocent. Of course you didn’t do it. No. Not you.
mycelium blanched
captured by ability
memorialized
Here’s a rosetta stone I’ve whittled
to live for a breath and then, blithering, wither.
Cheeky.
Sure.
A—
the grass like crystallized lime pulp splayed
to a bristling pelt—
and that’s my benediction.
And your anathema?
Well—
for another day.
B—
dandruff, death, indignance, doddering,
bricks disheveling murmurous doorways,
slighted sills and lethean lintels—
how do you get to Carnegie Hall?
It depends on where you’re coming from, doesn’t it?
C—
finer than fireflies flicker like hobbling porch lights,
shrunk to the seed of an alien inkling;
finer than ironstone china passed
like salmon slap around floundering bear claws;
finer than crazing platters punched, percussed, impacted,
shrapnel packed in impervious heirlooms
fierce as a mother’s impeccable itch; still
finer than paper cuts,
finer than bubbling blood or
the filliping pinch of a kibitzer—
“Bankers’ nieces seek perfection—”
Finer than that,
and relish and marmite, too.
D—
the alluring gut of a wryly wassailing clowder’s queen,
like patchwork batting or distaff snagged from
bedraggling mists unpinned from escarpments,
dormice suckling fractured thorns—
The velveteen innards of novelty.
Bless you.
E—
Promiscuous silverskin sleaved from sinew.
…that’s a wrap?
Well, I still need a deathbed confession,
and they’re becoming increasingly harder to come by.
F—
Where Napoleon hides his hand,
that place where the atom’s split
to allow some meddlesome welter of weaver ants
water and board and hospitable homecoming.
So not the Sadie Hawkins dance?
No, Sadie’s there,
and boring her cheek through an open bar.
G—
the cataractous gaze you’d cast in a delicatessen—
Because of the gout?
Because of the olive loaf.
And should you transpose it to C?
To see—see what?
Gus wore a filthy brown
tunic, rope belt & no
shoes. Some called him
half wit & threw
dirt at him. To me
he was like Saint Francis
in disguise. A tattered
oracle. While stooping
in the winter-dead
weeds Gus preached
to the winter crows. Francis,
the protector, kissed the black
boils of the leper. A three
inch coating of clear sparkling
ice on the bare
trees the day Gus
vanished. I heard about
it while ordering jelly
donuts at Stella’s. He was found
in a throwaway Woody
Woodpecker sleeping bag
on the bank of Difficult
Creek. Froze to death
clenching a pack
of bologna. He planned
to divide the thick-cut
slices among cronies
at the shelter. It felt
like a steam shovel
shattered the bedrock
behind my ribs. Grief
longer than lifetimes, mourning
for more than one life. Saint
Francis kissed the black
boils of the lepers. Gus preached
to the winter crows.
