I don’t know if God
counts days, stores them like marbles
humming in a jar.
does he chomp them one by one?
Does it hurt? The not knowing?
I don’t know why it’s
good dogs that exit stage two,
kidney failure. Still the curtain closes behind
orbs gone cloudy with our time.
I don’t know what I
would say to her, skin uncracked.
Eat cake while you can,
moisturize, avoid realtors.
Count every last white whisker.
Doncha want sumpthin’ just ’cause ya can’t have it?
Ma only took a nip now and then,
but when the saloons shut down,
she ran to the doctor for a prescription,
whiskey allowed for medicinal purposes.
Now, she buys a pint every three weeks.
She puts it in tea, makes it last.
She bought a kit to make sacramental wine,
and dug out the old Department of Agriculture
“How To” booklet.
She wrote to Cousin Clara in Jackson County,
“Any chance you know someone…”
She grieved when federal agents
smashed the still at Limestone and Third.
Cicadas, cicadas, cicadas
You are everywhere
In the trees
In the breeze
Singing and buzzing
You have my head spinning
Round, round, round
Like a merry-go-round
Up from the ground
Ready to play
Find a mate
Make sweet music
Three to five weeks
Above the ground
To play around
Reproduce
Die
Silence
Sweet
The hypnotist said, confident for once
In his craft, “blink once for yes,
Blink twice for no.”
The optometrist, lodged like a half-dissolved mint
On his own exam chair,
Blinked twice.
“Alrighty then,” the hypnotist said;
“why not just say something rather than
Playing along?” The optometrist, still blinking—
A gnat had torpedoed his eyes—
Said, “I forgot we weren’t playing
Simon Says.”
“In that case,” said the hypnotist, “you doubly fail:
You failed to hypnotize and
Simon never said.” “No,
You failed,” responded the optometrist,
“The chart says none of that.”
“To be perfectly clear,” said the hypnotist,
“You are indeed the loser. You see, I’m Tiresias”
(Lifting a breast as in confirmation)
“And my eyes scroll a different chart,
A view your phoropter’s denied.
Your chart’s written in vanishing
Ink, characters twisted from hair and bone.
My chart says you’re damned to the labyrinth
Of this strip mall hell. Collect your paycheck
And die.”
The optometrist looked in the mirror,
Face sagged in wrinkles too twisted to map.
A voice came from the doorway:
“Remember the Gregors’ son is scheduled For noon.”
And he sscrolled the phoropter
Through its confusion of views.
Her hobbies include
Carrying four plastic boats
In only two hands.
Just like her mother
Juggling elastic lists
Keeping us afloat.
I don’t have the answer
other than to explain, using
yet another metaphor we poets
are so fond of using when
we can’t explain the inexplicable.
It’s like peeling back layers
of onions, seeking the truth
to unlock mysteries even
a skeleton key can’t answer
and peeling onions is stinky
work. My eyes fill with tears
stinging from stench, I cut
my finger, blood clots under
paper towel, a gift you don’t
know you have until you have
a son whose blood doesn’t clot.
Hemophiliac child is no joke
to a mom who wants to write
a poem that makes you laugh,
yet I’m failing since none
of this is funny except for tone
of irreverence only a survivor
can adopt yet who isn’t a survivor?
The dead, I tell you. Those who
die don’t survive to write a poem
intending to elicit laughs I still
won’t hear from the audience
so let’s return to that onion, a
yellow onion I choose from mesh
bag, testing its firmness, cutting
first, each end, then down the center
to peel back brown layers that
aren’t even yellow before I dice
the way I watch chefs on videos
with knife skills I don’t have. Remember?
I told you I bled but it’s not so bad
I require stitches. Just a basic paper
towel, not even a band-aid because
now that my son is grown and flown
the nest, who the fuck knows
where I keep band-aids?
Task at hand, each layer
peeled enough to reach sweet
core, reward for getting that far
but I wish I could say peeling
back the layers of my childhood
only elicited a small cut on a finger
and the skeleton key is enough to
lock away memories I still have
to push away, even at my age and
let me tell you, my bones creaking
are enough evidence I’m getting old.
I wish I was mature enough to forgive
but the truth is bitterness and hatred,
contempt and anger are left in the wake
of a break-up I suffered months ago,
even though I remind myself what happened
in the past, even one day in the past is as much
the past as years ago and the onion isn’t sweet
enough to staunch the blood and stop the tears
but poems are enough to write instead.
The candle scatters gold overnight,
But I never believe it might reach home
I once saved devotion (now a trampled desert) under aches,
If I ever hold the impossible again
I might reach
The fine stream of hope
Folded deep inside.
where the text on my screen
is in white
on white
and the work’s
humming in the back of the brain.
Tomorrow’s poem bubbles
on that proverbial burner there,
just beyond the memories,
just around the hesitation
just before the sleep clears
and the dream slips slips slips into that crust
around the eyes before I wipe it away.
The lecture series to fashion
haunts my spine in that place
where my dad’s voice warns
when did you get the assignmenti
and when will you begin?
and how long do you have to write this?
Yeah, dad—
I’m working.
Even though I napped today
and scrolled today
and pumped some iron today
and watched the clouds today
over the Sandias
and went to sit
in the box-chapel
where the blue blue blue sky
slants above the face in the icon
where silence lives in his almond eyes.
