Stones encircled by dark, bare
branches of thorns.
Fenceposts throttled
by grasping vine skeletons.
Trellises, gloomy in fall’s grip
show the scars of growth & removal.
Does it have good bones? Plan
for what it looks like when the garden dies.
I woke to a sky
as black as the backs of my bleary
eyelids, turbulence shaking
me from fitful rest, but Pacific Standard Time shoved dawn
back into the East, rewinding
Wednesday morning. I am granted a second sunrise
as my day begins anew
with purple petals and postcard palms.
Her self-defense mechanism
was to stuff him in a predetermined box
without checking if he matched the label.
Guys only try to be your friend when they want sex,
she tells a mutual friend
as her way of blanket dismissing any hopefuls.
The right, and sometimes duty to herself
to keep such protection cannot be denied
but it doesn’t mean she is always right.
His heart was genuine. Learning love through her,
all he wanted was to see the girl she could be
after allowing herself to shed some anxiety.
But his heart was also damaged. Low on self-esteem
he couldn’t fathom why a relationship wouldn’t form
unless he was just that messed up. A flaw in his code.
This was the unfortunate tipping point for him.
Revengeful fury at another rejection
was never going to turn the momentum around; he’s just so
tired. Immediately regretful of the breakdown,
he’s spent years trying to leave the beginnings of toxicity
in that place where nothing grows. His wasteland.
You would think time would soften the hurt,
but every comfort found came from temporary distraction.
He always falls back into this.
Because she was so unlikely compatible.
Because her wisdom bounced so well off of his.
Because that spiritual connection was so electric
lost in a moment of misinterpretation–
he looks like every other asshole who’s crossed her path
and that is the last thing that she needs, it’s just
not what she was initially getting from him.
He’s aware of that, and it casts a long shadow
stretching through years and years of silent unfulfilled yearning.
A cool solstice eve:
it rained all day.
Ducks lolled, alert for drizzle’s ebb,
under branches, ducklings sheltering
under their outstretched wings.
Here & there thunder undulated
from one side of lake
to the other,
then off to a wild yonder.
The bustle of shower slicking off leaves
kept up a steady pace
while wind grayed the green day.
What was a casual twilight stroll
became a shivering briskness.
The next day
sun broke from clouds
& humidity settled on spiderwort
& thinning lily.
Lilac shards & confetti salvia
threaded flowerbeds & dappled grass.
Robins assaulted the wet soil
throbbing with earthworms.
Ducks cast off from shore,
darted, sailed, darted, their quacking & rasping
cutting thick air.
Ducklings’ peep, peep, peep
punctuated lake’s expanse.
Midday heat alit on skin,
lodged there for the duration of an amble.
Now, in the evening,
ducks are silent
while pickerel frogs let loose their drawn-out croaks,
creaking under moon’s bright eye,
joined by spring peepers filling up the air,
shrill cacophony.
Strains of crickets’ strident stridulations begin,
& katydids add their rasping pulse,
two, three, four, two,
to the sonata.
Time flickers in fireflies
rising like slow embers of summer’s bonfire.
A shock of daisies stands still
like a crepuscular pause
by water’s brink,
smoldering.
I can never hear that song without picturing
my granny, her gray hair roped up in its bun,
a wad of tissue pulled from her cheap cracked
plastic purse, spilling out coins. Yes, warden,
I’m just here to get my baby out of jail.
Maybe Uncle Willie. His baby-round cheeks
and shock of black hair on his forehead. Or Ben,
his sharp-faced older brother. In the pen. Again.
Around my mother’s maple table, all
the sisters sit. Coffee’s percolating hum.
And I am…where? Invisible. Waiting for bright
coins of story to fall through the cracks to me.
This time, a gun. The sisters shake their coifed black
heads and pat my granny-s wrinkled hands.
(“I’m Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail,” recorded by the Everly Brothers, written by Karl Davis and Harty Taylor)
an erasure poem from an excerpt of “Twenty Thousand Leauges Under The Sea” by Jules Verne
The light astonished me.
And I distinguished
gradations of
obscurity.
Truly,
the impression
of the sun.
Shall I be believed when I say
I was broad daylight sown with the
impalpable dust of
degrees?
Darkness should help, outlined
in the distance—a tapestry at
ten in the morning.
The touch of light
as through a prism.
Shell- shaded edges, a feast for
complication: green, yellow, orange,
violet, indigo and blue. In one word:
admiration.
I want better. (I talk
to myself, more air than wise.)
Various clusters of brilliant
grief prickle under
me,
inexhaustible.
But we were bound to walk, so we went on,
a band of us, in sun and fiery
darkness.
the days when summer was a gift
moments seemed endless waking
was a wonder of what could become
long days fireflies sunbaked skin
bleached hair turned green
friends meet up without text or message or social media hook up
now seasons descend with a regularity
anticipation comes in a much different form
will the plants wilt with the air conditioner work will I have to be out in the sun at noon will I finish this task before the melting humidity soaks through my underclothing
there is something that is a gift in this present time I am sure
just at the moment of writing my mind
no my heart
my body
long for not what was
but what can be now a gentler
simplicity.
White strips over grey,
what is your raison d’être?
No oink, no money,
no bacon, no honey.
Book club
