untitled
Blue light,
oranges,
rib cages and thorns;
Island sun,
brown skin,
and my father’s many names;
Inexplicable
imagery overused:
These once meant something
to me.
Cicadas crawl out of the cracked
earth, buzzing. She hasn’t seen
or held a hand
for six days. Is it solitude
or desolation? Sadness? The faucet
drips, the dog’s pink tongue
laps water from a cereal bowl,
then scratches at the door. The smooth
flags of her ears whip
in the afternoon wind as she scampers
through marsh grass chasing a swamp
rabbit. She can’t surrender
to his embrace, his exquisite dirt-
embedded fingers gone. He can’t lace
his leather & nylon snakeboots, mud
crusted from foraging, collect sweet wild
blueberries or scoop fresh
grounds from can to filter. Each day
rolls over her like a thick
fog. She smells, hears—even
tastes—as if for the first
time, fumbling like a baby doe.
I’m sorry I’m late for this life.
Can I borrow someone’s notes?
I had the wrong location written down.
Consequently, I got a lesson on love
that never really applied to me.
So I went to another location,
but that was the wrong vocation.
I tried something else somewhere else,
and that lesson lasted a while
before I discovered
that wasn’t right either.
I thought maybe I should return
to the location of my first vocation.
I thought I had nailed it this time
I just needed more education.
So I lingered there.
I drank tomes and I bled sweat.
When it was time to finally accelerate
my body ran out of gas at the side of the road.
So I sat.
I waited for a tow truck.
I opened my dusty guide book and looked.
A driver I had known all along
refueled me and sent me on. my way.
I had read my guide book wrong all along.
I was never at the right location
or in the right vocation.
So here I am.
Hoping I got it right this time.
What did I miss?
dying for the day sleep comes easy
with no phantom in my sheets
God hear me I just want
to be content in a room with only me
don’t get me scared being the only
one awake in the house
put me back in myself
turn my eyes back on high beams
I need to see this place before
it grows up without me and
give me the fullness
even if sacrificing mature in-looking
to walk this world by myself
if only this one summer
Conclusions would conclude
I already fucked up
it only took one day
to prove stuck in this rut
Well. At least I’m consistent
with this one theme
ill be insistent
for you
but for myself can’t redeem
The one goal I had
i didnt show up
Could say I’m mad
but the surprise isn’t at all
This is what I do
Because I’ll work
Myself for you
but for me I’Ll quit
Surrounded by music
most beautiful life gives
yet not satisfied I booze it
until perceived bliss
still. Proof of the conclusions
i drew
the gift of losing myself while losing you
sun burn on my shoulders
new freckles on my nose
spring peepers singing in
tandem with whip-or-wills
all night long: so humid out
picking June apples, so tart
they pucker your lips but
you eat until you’re full
to bursting; porch swings
and evening songs that
echo all down the holler
beaches are fine and dandy
the mountains out west a
real sight to be seen but,
Lord, there ain’t nothin’
else in the world quite like
Appalachia in summer
Tree, tree
dry and green.
The best girl, the beautiful one
is gathering olives.
The wind, that seducer to towers,
takes her by the waist,
Four riders
on Andalusian ponies passed
with sky blue, green suits,
and enveloping dark cloaks.
“Come to Córdoba, muchacha.”
She doesn’t pay them any mind.
Three little bullfighters scarcely
wide around the waist passed by,
with orange jackets
and silver antique swords.
“Come to Sevilla, muchacha.”
The girl doesn’t listen, she.
And when afternoon broke,
and day split with night’s purple light,
a youth passed that carried
roses and myrtles of the moon.
“Come to Granada, muchacha.”
And the girl did not listen to him.
The girl of fine face
continues gathering olives,
with the flannel arm of the wind
rounding the curve of her waist.
Tree, tree
dry and green.
Author: Federico García Lorca
Translator: Manny Grimaldi
“Tell me about your synesthesia.”
As first lines go, I don’t know which is worse
(when I typed it then or now)
but you answered and could be
reading, so
it was something.
It was really, truly, something
the way mere weeks (with you) erased decades of knowing
so little pretending to be so much about
love.
It’s the word I don’t think
I’ll ever get to say
and the one thing we can both agree on,
still, is that there is no great physician for this
costectomy:
This isn’t for appearances, or medical emergency.
There is no insurance to cover the loss
of self. Without rhyme or reason, knowing you was
letting you inside.
How does one even do this? Remove that
which has been grafted, in, throughout, but…let’s call it
simply a rib.
Were there anyone to help with this (I’ve read),
they’d enter through the back—make an incision near the spine,
cut—stab–break—what floats
(is this what you meant, Emily? When you wrote
of Hope?).
I’m sure you’re calling it vanity. I’m sure you’re shaking your head.
I’m sure there is no chance (left) of you seeing it as anything but my fault.
But you can be sure of this: It’s my choice. This is elective.
Not the procedure or the path I would have chosen, not since you
first replied to an understated request for attention, a sad
attempt (on my part) at starting something—a conversation, first—and then
more.
The “more” I believed could grow.
The “more” I yet believe.
The “more” that does not come
in the messages that are not sent.
The “more” I had to cut from my body
blood of my blood; flesh of my flesh
to survive.
is on love with early death,
celebrates its Byrons, its Dylans,
its Sylvias, who died young
and beautiful, who were too good
for this world, who could not
write themselves out of despair.
The Myth Of The Poet insists
the deepest souls are the most fragile,
spend their light in a rush of passion,
then burn out. The Myth Of The Poet
has no place for elders.
Then what about
Stanley Kunitz who lived to 100
and never stoped writing?
Robert Frost
Richard Wilbur
Maxine Kumin
Linda Pastan
Mary Oliver
who wrote to the end
still full of light and passion.
Are their lives less valuable
for being long?
