The poet Madison Cawein wrote poetry about fairies or about Julia, a name he found carved, discrete on a tree. He, nicknamed Keats of Kentucky, would use the same traditional approach for his work, about his love of nature, died age 49. His international reputation, 36 books, 1500 poems, losses, home and library in the 1912 crash, left him destitute, and living on his benefactors’ relief list his final months of 1914.
Between turbulent rains
there is time enough to gather
our belongings and air
them on (the) line.
Not for long because
yet more clouds gather,
like the neighbor children,
come to gawk at our
thin garments.
They shower jeers
they don’t yet
understand,
terse judgements
they have only
heard after prayers,
around supper tables,
spotless and bland.
i time jumped
searching for your answer
after all the years
of beating fists on walls
the midnight fights
the children cowering in their beds
echoing through that house in the suburbs
and i am still there
looking for some kernel of truth
about you and me in our yellow bedroom
waiting for you to answer
This morning on my way to church
My hair freshly colored, having been to the salon the week before
In my new car, dealer tags in place.
Clean, fed, clothed
Not seeking or needing anything of this world
I was accosted by a woman it would have been easier not to see.
No shoes on her life-worn-bare brown feet
Hair cut close
Clothes so dirty they ceased to reflect their original colors.
Agitated.
Angry.
She walked to my window and yelled at me, pointing, her breath and hatred against the glass.
I dared not open the window, much less make eye contact.
“STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING”
“YOU BITCH”
I was scared.
And I know she was yelling at her demons,
of which, I was one.
If you’ve gotten out of bed If you’ve brushed your teeth If you’ve fed the cat If you’ve saluted the sun If you’ve acknowledged one good thing
about a friend, about an enemy, about someone here, about someone gone, about yourself If you’ve done one piece of work
to show and tell
If you’ve touched your toes
dusted a shelf
watered a plant
given yourself good food If you’ve hugged someone literally or figuratively If you’ve grinned from ear to ear
at least once,
then you’ve had a day of bits and pieces, a winning day indeed.
Once I’d see those not-quite city
houses tucked between river
and road or up a gravel lane, place
for a garden, two cars for parts,
and think—my people.
My vowels would slow and stretch
a hand to theirs. Now
I scan for other signs—
MAGA, Trump, the battle lines
now visible as scars crisscrossed
against illusion of who and what
was ever mine.
It’s always that morning leaving New Orleans on I-10
when you see in the corner of your eye a small boat
in the bayou to your right, a breeze ruffling the surface
of the shining water & a seated fisherman casting his line
in a perfect arc across the narrow channel toward a stand
of swaying sweetgrass. You begin to salivate & start to pull over
onto the shoulder with your camera ready by your side
but an eighteen-wheeler’s right on your ass & you hesitate,
just a second, & the next second you’ve missed your chance,
that rippling carpet of diamonds & a thin strand of nylon
catching the light & defining the line between water & sky
lost in an instant. You drive on toward Biloxi, your mouth
brackish with the brine of a picture that will stay with you
for the rest of your life, that you can never share with anyone.
