from and for my dad
The distinguishing mark of an alligator from a crocodile is its snout.
Hand sanitizer is the best thing for a cut.
Don’t make wide turns, you’re not a semi.
If a snake has a diamond-shaped head, it’s venomous.
Hot air rises.
A perfect PB&J is made with double the Jif for every slather of Smuckers.
I will always recognize a red-crowned crane.
It will be a world without television screens
flickering anxious light up living room walls,
forever leaking that sick dread, static, low hum.
There will always be clean dishes and bedsheets,
a warm space to lay my head, empty before I dream.
The house will be deadly quiet, all vaporous peace.
Gas me out with the smell of orange blossoms
budding white. My garden will be prolific, vivid.
I’ll sting my hands on the leaves of yellow squash,
lie out in the heat before dusk as the overripe sun
drips grapefruit pink. And I’ll go out in the morning
snipping wet lavender, deadheading climbing roses
that regrow denser with each cut. The wind will snake
behind the nape of my neck, kiss me as an old lover.
The mockingbirds who shriek like wounded dogs
from the gutters of the house will cry no more,
they will not know the noise to mimic it. Instead,
they’ll be forced to sing, as song is all they’ll know.
The road sirens will not exist, but the distant cars may
be allowed to roll onwards, unrushed, a background
to frame my sanctuary. But I will leave when I want to,
return when I please. Shameless, guiltless, a blessing to be
satisfied by any choice. It will not be a horror or threat
when the doorbell chimes. The mail carrier will bring
no hospital bills. My unwounded heart will beat smoothly
and know that it wants this, to live.
goodbye, firefly
know I never meant to hurt
but our time is by
goodbye, firefly
although our wings are extinct
I see you in the sunshine
Do both. Reject the script
that says you must be happy
or sad, but can’t ever feel
opposite feelings at the same time.
Deep grief can live along side
of deep connection with those
who also loved and lost the one
you loved and lost.
Let your tears flow.
Let your feet move to the beat.
Dance.
There’s always been this rot
in my chest.
It gives me away;
I’m decaying, never to rest.
You’re shining gold,
you don’t know what it means to rot,
never felt it eat your heart.
I hate you’re everything I’m not.
You’ve never sobbed in the night,
begging for it to end.
How could you know how to deal with me?
I’m not even your girlfriend.
In mathematics,
an asymptote is a line
a curve approaches
without ever touching.
The distance decreases.
The pursuit continues.
The gap remains.
I think about this when people talk about sex
as something finite.
A thing completed.
A destination reached.
What interests me more
is the rare feeling
that another person
has continued arriving.
Year after year.
The body can memorize its choreography.
The sequence of movements.
The expected responses.
But intimacy seems to require
a different skill.
The willingness
to remain curious
after certainty becomes available.
To resist concluding
you already know
the person
beside
you.
The deepest forms of lovemaking
occur less often than people imagine.
Not because of a lack of desire.
But because devotion is difficult.
Attention is difficult.
Because most of us
eventually stop pursuing
the ever-expanding edge
of another consciousness.
The asymptote remains.
The distance narrows.
For a moment, you feel impossibly
close. Then you realize
if you are paying attention
there is more to learn.
Why would anyone want
the end of that story?
Has it been twenty seconds
or twenty days?
A lot of superheroes pass overhead
this little area of the state that I now find myself
utterly stopped at.
The windows shake as they go by
(don’t be impressed by that
I stole it from Kurt Busiek)
and I wonder to what exciting adventures
they are rocketing toward.
I switch through radio stations
and they tell me about supervillains, clones, aliens,
and hitmen.
There are some vampires in the mix too.
I fear that the tank
is running on empty.
Oh, here’s a report on a car bomb.
Now that’s
a cheery subject.
Mercifully my Sirius XM trial ends and
well, that’s the end of all that.
Everyone else seems to be moving
in every other direction.
Every day I go this way to work
and every day I get stuck right here.
There’s at least one other route
that I suppose I could take
but I’ve never been good at learning
new directions.
I’m walking in place
stretching out this writer’s cramp.
Maybe bananas?
Dayana
was my tramlator when I
went to Guatemala.
She could speak English
and Spanish.
Her family,
except for Susana,
spoke only Spanish.
I spoke English
and German.
If it were not for Dayana,
my time in Guatemala
would have been me,
tongue-tied
like most Americans.
Dayana had a desire
to go to college.
I told her I would pay her way.
I gave her money,
electronics she wanted,
including an electric keyboard.
Her aunt and I took her to the school
and paid her tuitiion.
Everything I gave her,
including money,
I was told she gave to her boyfriend.
I was told she quit college;
moved in with her boyfriend,
and had two daughters.
After three years,
the college sent me a letter,
demanding no money.
Dayana had graduated.
Needless to say,
I was happy,
and felt guilty
for doubting her.
She also sent me a picture
of her, sitting on large rocks,
her right leg over her left,
with both feet in clear blue water,
no doubt, she was beautiful
in her two piecce bathing suit,
and I could see in it, her pride
in her accompliments
and she was happy.
