Poems, page 22

                    ALL CAPS
                    and pinecones
                            rest on moss
                                    on rocks
                                    or stones
                    as the poet put it:
                    maybe even bone

                          the lower cases
                    also rest
                                     or settle
           somewhere lower down

                                coverskulls
                to prop up patriarchy

            who made all your hats?
        leather       felt       cloth
                    and needles

                    up and down
                            and side by side

      mother     maiden      crone
                      babysitter
          whore      and      bride

                           matted hairs 
                                         collide

            challenge your beliefs-
                            unpry the grip
                                 of power

                wait and watch
                      for you to let 
                                          it slide

                      single strands
                                          laid
                                     side by side
                as if they multiply

            not mine       not yours
                                but my oh my-
                in the sweet
                                        by and by

            with no other choice
                                but to
                   wait and watch
                                        you die.

the pipe-smoker,
whose cursive-hand bedeviled me,
as it skipscrawled over the pages
cataloguing what looks like mess
to us but is mss. to the wise in matters
scholastic. Lay him to rest,  

the patient respondent
who interrupted his labor at Lombard
to write to the teacher in Fort Wayne
about the genius of medieval
art and thought. Lay him to rest,  

the brother caring
for family far-flung in life and death,
with suffrages borne of love,
silent caring. Lay him to rest,  

the giant striding across decades
and leaving tome-sized footsteps
translating not only texts but love
embodied in the Poverello’s band
from Assisi to Oxford to Paris,
to Quaracchi, to Grottaferrata and Olean
and here in this cocoon of knowledge
where in only a month
you awakened for me.

There’s an artist who lives on the street 
behind me, a woman who paints the lawn 
jockeys they sell at Keeneland.
Evenings, she works her magic on the patio, 
leaves the statues to dry overnight.

At daybreak, I head outside for a run, 
eager to survey whatever scene will unfold 
before me – small men scattered 
across the grass, standing on tables, posed
and frozen in various states of undress. 

I like to imagine they’ve been partying
late into the night, like garden gnomes 
who wait for darkness before they spring to life.
The mischievous glint in a ceramic eye 
suggests they’ve been up to shenanigans.

A few of them face off, fists raised to fight 
in a front-yard brawl. Others seem to shiver, 
pale and ashamedly shirtless, their torsos 
pasty, heads probably pounding, lucky 
they’ve managed to find their breeches.

But a handful are well-rested, nattily dressed
in bright reds and blues, alert and ready to race.
They all stand at attention in one neat row,
chins up, arms lifted to herald the rising sun
which shines so bright on old Kentucky.

I have a lucid dream

Perhaps 

You remain unconvinced of my emotions 
“How can a light that shines so bright once have been a dim flame”
I roll my eyes
im the poet, or atleast that’s what I say
you tell me 
“Keep writing”
“keep smiling”
to keep pushing on through the thicket of what was and always will be 
me
Do you know me?
or do you now think
You’ve only grazed the surface 

The mandolinist trills tremolo, a poultice for snake-tasted air.

Something my husband said
to me you live in a perfect world
and it almost doesn’t matter any-
more that he used those words
about something as inconsequential
as me pouring hot water on weeds
between pavers and having it occur
to me that perhaps we need to hire
someone to rework the mortar instead
his response is I must live
in a perfect world so I started
an outloud list where every bullet
point in the air between us be-
came an anaphora if I lived
in a perfect world and soon
there was a trail behind him
as he left the room.

Flat river rocks edge
garden, horsetails shooting stars:
green flash, yellow sway

Who ever imagined
That I would go from a child
That did not use speech

Until I was two and
Had enough presence of mind
To begin using

Words as a form of
Expressing my love for you
As soon as I knew how