Actaeon Tanka
Sun’s too bright today,
Apollo, leave me alone!
I miss Artemis,
so beautiful in her bath,
who gave me these sweet antlers.
Sun’s too bright today,
Apollo, leave me alone!
I miss Artemis,
so beautiful in her bath,
who gave me these sweet antlers.
forgive
forget
defund
ICE
uncurl
grasp
unpin
Most Wanted posters
empty
pockets
see emotions
fluttering
no skin
hides them
I want to make comments
nice rhyme
vivid images
I can taste the sky
but know I mustn’t
you see it’s fresh in my memory
the jaw-dropping moment
when someone stated
my opinion was irrelevant
I shut up
swallowed
what I thought
was allowed
in that safe space
I felt embarrassed
when with the group
whose ears were privvy
to that life changing sentence
I thought of suicide
I dwelled obsessed
even confessed
my twisted thoughts
to a few close peers
then I realized words
like bullets can kill
if one gives power
to another person’s
opinion
I’m just sad
that red white and blue
gun
in this land of freedom
put an end
to one of the best
workshop groups
I’ve been in
I miss y’all
Jostles of colors soon to fade back into the breathless land
Enraptured by the sudden life that envelopes me, I pause.
Aromatic breezes bring me the scents of my childhood
Nestled in my hands is the vessel that contains my heritage.
I offer to the winds the memories and dreams of a life
Not quite completed; Not quite finished.
Ending here in the place you loved.
Blossoms of ash merging into the sand.
Days numbered of both sorrow and joy
Ended in a shroud of acceptance
Holding onto the thoughts of unknown tomorrows
And the remembrance of love that never fades.
Rest here under the vaulted sky in the place that held your soul.
Time for you has stilled and it is only me that now mourns.
My father was so blitzed
he couldn’t get the coins
in the slot of the cigarette machine,
they kept dropping
to the linoleum and he kept
bending over to pick them up
and the high school girls
working the burger joint
started laughing at him
so I took steps backwards
to put distance between us
and saw from my new vantage point
the split in his pants
grow like a sideways smile,
white teeth and everything,
grinning again and again
as I kept retreating
until I couldn’t see
anything more of him.
Mingus en Enfer
This meat is the blues,
meat my favorite, a color—
the running blues bleeding red. These are reds
victorious in autumn, from now on there shall be
no more virgins, and no more marriages
when the street lamps stab the pools of water
in the gutters green, in the orchard flashing money—
the jungle in the pink clubs beneath the curb.
Taxis! Stop to hear him, pound and hop, Duke’s piano,
the upright coffin of rumbling stallion’s strings
break and curl, crack and split, lengthen lacerate an eye
with the drummer’s fluid crashes and booming toms.
Charlie Mingus growls a throated cry a tremulous shudder—
a full bodied wine the Spanish waiter flies to bring
to table for twelve guests of maybe sixes, sevens, nines.
The swaggering devil lays his head against a wall,
music is his coronation of roses—yet I remember
confusion, sifting a comprehensible honor and beauty—yet
music, making speech unable; sent far away and alone;
our pupils were white-a-freezes as if we’d seen God. My God.
Abigail Adams held her children in the threadbare Massachusetts winter
and the British cannon showed no sign of slowing,
the ground molted no feathers—and the boats brought no coffee.
Providence-God’s winter gladness was a labyrinth of quiet madness—
and Charlie Mingus perched harpy atop a HiFi speaker at our side—
our intimates mad swollen—limbs congealed—impotent on fire—we were
souls cleft. My lover’s affluence crumbled slowly with every passing beat.
The voices of Continental soldiers swelled through the bay whispering—
Mingus—hell. Mingus—blues. Mingus—angel, beautiful and Black.
Mingus—hornet buzzing SoCal sun to a swing and flamenco strum: castanet, guitar, dancer, and drum.
We saw red spilling on the fields once green, will my Friend return from
Congress in Philadelphia? We’d seen the scrim of morning lit over the East—
Mingus—now a Nor’easter beating the shore’s eggs and lemons into an emulsion.
Have you ever been married to a musician?
Your dowry is a city of dances
where nothing ever happens.
Old leftovers, fresh sandwiches.
Tongue-tied.
Perhaps
next time we should spend time alone in a cabin, surrounded by crickets—
the loudest silence possible.
It is very cold tonight
& there is nothing you can do, Laverne
but give her $60 & drive away
having no idea where she’ll sleep
you lean over your desk
rest your forehead in your hands
a familiar feeling
that anxiety in your stomach
that knot
that hollow hunger
it’s been there before
how selfish of you, Laverne
helping
in order to
get reprieve.
something rustles the floorboards
the house doesn’t feel like home
we hope to kill these two birds
with one fanged creature
so we adopt a kitten
who we name Oedipus
think maybe we’ll call him Rex
but he only answers to Puss Puss
falling asleep with the TV on
I jolt awake to a goblin’s gobble
toothy crunch of cat food in the corner
but my pet slumbers beside me
head a cloud of confusion
my eyes focus on a rat
the size of Texas
and I scream
