Walkable Distances (That Aren’t Really Walkable)
The taste of exhaust fumes
gets a little less bearable
when you’re sunburnt
standing on the corner
of TurkeyFoot and Industrial
remembering that this
is all the outside you’ll get
The taste of exhaust fumes
gets a little less bearable
when you’re sunburnt
standing on the corner
of TurkeyFoot and Industrial
remembering that this
is all the outside you’ll get
Waving off father wounds like wind
The crow blows trumpets over the
Sound of vehicles fighting for a
Parking space, more emptiness
Searching for eyes to swallow you
Whole tinkered worn ascendants
With bloodshot blinkers catching
There coughing, forgetting where
I am but then I come back to an
Unfamiliar life without solid Earth
Where death is humming prayers
Thoughts of radiance and drifting wood
Crowns of tears over barstool counts
Our blessing on tadpoles and sores
No chariots for Thomas to examine
Forgive the father, a child of wax
Beaten into place, cornered
In places we once called home
Forgiven like God after every natural disaster
it was a white hot day
cut open at the belly
spilling too much light
and heat across his
rolling landscape
land that he
earned through whatever
he did before retirement
I could feel the penultimate
moment in my bones
with the hot edged lip
of summer’s honeysuckle
call to break wide open
across the ridges
older than any god
thought possible
ran like I did
before I was me now
instead I sat on
my landlord’s tailgate
preparing a day’s work
that he’d pay me for
so I could give it right back
he’s going blind
he tells me
says he’s running out of time
which means we’re running
out of time
in the end he’s a stranger
who will have to let
all of it go
sees the end coming
and I’m not in that plan
though my blood and sweat
are soaked in that earth
there isn’t room for words
that we need to say
so he tells me to cut
the grass at 3.5 inches
I’m not a mother
But I think I could be cut out for it after today
scooping up a box turtle from the road
and telling him
Go ahead and pee at me all you want
I’m still gonna save you from traffic
In April, I went to the grocery store,
and came home with only a jar of pickles.
Clear glass with a green lid, store brand,
Whole petite full pickles.
At home, I opened it right away,
Fished them out with my fingers,
And ate them all right away.
I tried to stop and put them down,
But like a siren calling from the fridge,
I couldn’t walk away.
The next jar was bigger
But it’s still almost full.
They don’t taste quite like they did
That night in April.
Today, they had pickle balls at the store,
Like cheese balls but pickle flavored.
I didn’t bring them home.
Save that metaphor
before it slips from your hands
and crumbles to dust.
I had a line in my head
as I arrived to work on a Sunday
I thought of it as I passed a grove of tall pines
where I often see crows playing
It was a dull and dragging line
heavy as death
I thought, that’s a prompt of a line…
asking me to further describe .
The kind of line that needed to be lighter
that needed musicality, to give it a sense of irony
to glorify it at all
The kind of prose that doesn’t sing
or ring around the pines in brilliant blue
A music that falls backwards with a thud
an ambient hum of mud or blood
A line that I knew would be the last line
The rest of the poem would stretch in the other direction,
like one of the underdog Wile E.’s contraptions–
a slingshot which would fling you face first
into a dry cloud of dust.
One less fist through drywall
probably wouldn’t have kept me here,
but you could have at least tried
not to swing at something we painted
together, as if three coats of semigloss
were cement around those combat boots
I was always tripping on in the hall.
One more rosebud in a dainty vase
wouldn’t have kept me here,
but at least one is more than zero.
