haiku 3
Every poem is
a confession of some sort–
the truth veiled in verse.
last night we took
bedtime pills
in tandem
this morning we followed a red-headed woodpecker
foraging among the oaks
shared a gaze with a browsing fawn
stared at a ruby-throated hummingbird
flitting from feeder to branch
in my camera roll
a scroll
that knows me better
than i know myself
on our pilgrimage
to the rare books room
your best boy
close by
at the back of
the book of hours
a goblet
rouged at the rim
intent on holding
wine and blood
angels drawn so lightly on
the folio they crowd
you enthroned
gorgeous beside morris
open to book iv of troilus
head thrown back
golden
audienced expounding
seeing now what
i cannot be seen
to have seen
No one watches me
Everyone watches the show
Even when they sit in my lap
applaud and clap
their eyes are glued in granite
to the show
though
the empty stage appears to be
only a light strobe light strobe
That’s my problem:
I do care what I do and what I say—
in Italian. Reading the Gospel
at Mass, and trying to pronounce it
properly, I read Non preoccupatevi
pet la vostra vita and what follows,
knowing I am preoccupied with what
tumbles from my tongue, scrambled neg-
atives and rushing to finish the next sentence
only to realize He was asking a question.
I didn’t speak it from birth like my listeners,
only a year or so afterward when acqua
was my first word in any language,
taught by my Nonna who cautioned us to
“Parla in italiano, così quei ragazzacci
in fondo alla strada non capiranno
cosa stiamo dicendo.” But now, no bad kids
down the street, but the friars out there in chapel—
shouldn’t they capiranno what I’m dicendo?
I guess they can guess
but still like the French
I almost care more
that I pronounce it properly.
The Trump administration has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks … including a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man showing scars on his back.
— The Washington Post, Sept. 15, 2025, about The Scourged Back
He carries his country on his back
scars corrosive and thick hack
his skin, and the ideology he reputedly
represents dies decades after his death.
Poor Peter or Whipped Peter or Gordon
(his name melts to welts in silence),
just sits, pain slain, a present not-so-
prescient president leaves it repressed.
Dead mountains of rigid tissue last,
retract into a land’s unspoken past
The lashed returning to plow his skin
Scourged Back sowed with evil crops.
The boys and Zelda are coming
her text states, we’re starving
holding Thanksgiving dinner
until everyone arrives.
Her text states, we’re starving
meanwhile the bird is drying out,
until everyone arrives
no one eats.
The bird is drying out
the sniping has begun
no one eats
miniature pickles to tide us over.
The sniping has begun
rheumy Aunt Flora moans
Miniature pickles to tide us over!
I wish I’d just stayed home.
Rheumy Aunt Flora moans,
Zelda and the boys are never coming,
I wish I’d just stayed home.
Oh, to hell with Thanksgiving dinner.
we are hiding from the tongues of the gluttonous sun
that keep licking the fondant facades
of this sickly sweet city
we are hiding in the cellar
away from this city’s gardens
where peacocks drag their jeweled boredom
through fallen jacaranda blossoms
this city where languid church bells
melt
and drip
into the syrupy heat
with courtyards of
old lace
ceramic virgins
and manicured rage
we are hiding in the cellar
robbing in turn the stones
of all the cold they have hoarded
teaching our senses
about need and appetite
we are praying to the north
to please send our way
a rumor of pine,
to drop a cold coin
into the begging bowl of our cupped hands
to let loose
its weather of wolves,
to slip into our palms
something sharp
to scrape off
the sugar
