we stayed cheerful
i brought snacks you might like
we sorted
papers and pictures
ignoring the wasting and spitting up
until we couldn’t
we warded off
anyone we didn’t want to see
we pretended
nothing bad was
happening to either of us
until we couldn’t
we tried to be cheerful
i ate the snacks
slept in
a chair beside you
ignoring the clock
until it stopped
I.
Cubs scale a mattress
discarded by the dumpster.
Mom dives for dinner.
II.
From a berry bush
comes an unholy growl, turns
my horse on his heel.
III.
Cause of traffic jam:
three cubs monkey, cling and climb
on a roadside tree.
Call of the Owl
In a quiet sheltered holler,
As dusk begins to fall,
While mist is slowly rising,
I hear a lonesome call.
It drifts softly down the valley,
A haunted shade of blue,
Words applied by habit,
“Who cooks for you?”
In the quiet darkness,
Answering notes rise and fall,
From the hollow beech tree,
“Who cooks for you all?”
I think how oft I’ve heard it,
It brings comfort when I do,
A childhood song at nightfall,
“Who cooks for you?”
Spooky tales told ‘round the campfire,
Sent shivers I recall,
When the story was punctuated by,
“Who cooks for you all?”
Now I stand and listen,
In the night wet with dew,
The stars overhead glisten,
“Who cooks for you?”
No matter where you find yourself,
When the darkness starts to fall,
Take a moment then to listen to,
“Who cooks for you all?”
The way I jut up and shimmer,
sun glinting off my reflective surface
while I am at rest in the day, lethargic
behind sunglasses that suggest
I do better in the dark
when the moon looms big or not at all
over this bustling hive, this faster Egypt
risen with less detail, but still a flash
in the pan, a momentary, necessary scar
scratched across the face of the Earth.
What is sin?
Locked cage or guidepost?
A mean look in the street?
Is it a feeling?
Does it go away?
Or does it leave you wanting more?
I say it is definable by many things
Harm caused by one to another
To the earth or to self
But from what I hear nowadays
They have written that sin is whatever makes them uncomfortable
And yet they’ve stepped on bones to climb
Up to their high place where they cannot be touched
By the unclean
It is built up resentment
Of seeing us fly while their feet are planted on the ground
It makes them seethe
From jealousy and hate
Because they cannot see the truth of it
That queerness is far from sin
Queerness is holy
And it is joy and truth and bravery and respect and hope
Hope in the midst of something that feels utterly hopeless
Spitting in the face of prejudice and death
Like those who have before us
Lighting candles on the table next to the flowers
Feasting with friends, laughter rolling off our tongues and into the night
Hot passion in strange apartments
Nails digging lines into old bedsheets
A vintage dress, flowing and elegant
The spark of joy in their eyes when they see me
His wet lips and their pretty glasses and zier kind presence and her crackling spirit and my own smile
Dancing, with lovers in the rain
Cheek to cheek and heart to heart
Water dripping down the tip of one’s nose
To be queer is to be vulnerable
And is to be strong
Stronger than the heat
And the ice
Not just because we were built to last
But because
No matter how much they hate
We will always have something so much stronger
one door the wife asked for,
saturday, the part of her that coils,
water and pink brick,
and raymond’s hand at the peephole
like a man warming himself beside what he’s burning.
she soaps her breast,
green below the waterline, unread.
nothing has happened yet,
and she is still hers, by a brushstroke.
The overgrown trees suddenly blacken,
pines and leaves curling into decay
as they fall to the forest floor.
All the flowers rot
and fall to the ground.
Morning falls backward into night.
You blink, but the vision stays the same.
Looking down the trail ahead,
the dead are stretched outward,
all the trees, plants, animals,
with unblinking eyes
stare up into the sky.
It does not move like fire or flood,
but a thought you cannot unthink—
quiet, patient, rewriting green to ash.
The bark peels away,
rings of years unraveling at once.
Roots loosen their grip on the dark soil.
A cold wind arrives, but it carries nothing;
no scent of pine, no promise of rain.
There is only the hush of things once certain,
now erased mid-breath.
You realize then it is not the forest
that is dying.
It is you.
Life nods in the shade where nettles grow.
The afternoon’s swim bladder hisses away
as in the stone trough, the water’s cord unspools.
In a fish-stained plastic bag, five flies hum and drone.
A fish scale in the trough is a bright jewel.
The smell of wet stone and of newsprint.
Of a crossword, halfway done.
(The solver’s dozing off,
taking refuge in the cool upstairs.)
The year is halfway through its steep descent,
relentless on its downward road.
The planets of the grapes here swell,
clear in the sun, and streak with colour.
Wasps feast on their early sugar,
sating this ancient hunger of females.
On the hot tiles by the shed,
a tin tub’s standing in the sun.
Beneath the blue sky,
in sun-warmed water,
they’ll soon be bathing
a young daughter.
That young child is me. (My children’s skin
is not one of fish scales.
To them, this sun-warmed water is a treat,
a happy chance of this brief visit.
They’ve never bathed in a pond
that’s above their knees.)
Hissing somewhere, a tap washes away
sharp-scaled grains of sand.
I always thought that pickles came from ponds
That somewhere out there in the countryside
Among rolling hills were large pickle farms
And on those farms were countless pickle ponds
When I grew up, I knew what I would do
I’d become a pickle scuba-farmer
To gather pickles I’d need scuba gear
To dive deep beneath the green pickle ponds
In those green ponds grew strands of pickle-vine
Taller than a building they’d grow in height
Then I would get to work picking pickles
I’d fill my net with as much as I could
After diving I’d return to my boat
Filling my jars with the catch of the day
Then I would splash the jar into the pond
Filling it with juice direct from the source
After a very long day on the farm
Next to my gear, I’d relax on the dock
Smelling all the vinegar in the air
And eating all the free pickles I could
But as we grow up, we face some hard truths
Santa, Tooth Fairy, and Easter Bunny
Responsible for letting down our youth
But for me, it was the discovery…
Of Cucumbers
