isn't barely right, not for the gleaming new cars or the shiny vacations for two nor the sleek latest model grill and wine cooler; and it's the best or the worst kind of deception, this thing called choice when the host hands you a pair of foam-covered dice.
Eaters
1
i remember Japanese construction
workers at a noodle bar
joking with the queer foreigner
who talked like a child
and didn’t get what word
they were trying to teach
when all they wanted to hear
was an audible slurp
2
I don’t eat anything
without a face she said
however blank or fanciful
it must have personality
like a tomato that bites
back she said
and hugged
herself tighter
a black leather coat
draped over her bones
3
they say if you eat chanterelles
in the dark of the moon
you gain the power to hear
what the worms are whispering
they say if you drink ginseng tea
you’ll have very expensive piss
they say if you’re starving
you can eat the inner bark of trees
but i feed the serpent in my gut
nothing but eggs
4
i’ll have
the usual
delectable products
of animal misery
comfort food
isn’t it
6
Goya’s two old people
eating soup at the Prado
a year after the death
of the butcher
of Guernica
and 12-year-old me shocked
at the potential horror
in something so primordial
learning how wholly consumption
can consume us
Place holder
morning smells like a burning hymnal
now that it’s afternoon
like a vast excavation
by archaeologists of the present
a blend of fresh earth and mildew
ozone and the blood of cut roots
if i were a dancer i would
know what to do
with this wild scent turning
into end-of-summer heat
as it is there are sun-drunk leaves
insects and vagrant warblers
and they seem to have
things under control
while i sit and try to be
a better place holder
On the Cusp
- after Sonia Sanchez, "Poem at Thirty" I too used to think I liked midnight for the stories music teachers told me Three candles guttering down to their hearts of wax on one end of the piano keyboard while the composer writes notes and staves with feverish ink even as the world goes completely dark Now I like the much smaller hour in the morning when all who are asleep are still asleep and all who have gone into the world have shut the door and left There is a cardinal out of season in the tree The fig's branches lean closer to the ground exhausted from all their summer bearing My tongue fingers the space where a cracked tooth used to be I thought the potted Buddha's hand citrus given by a friend had perished in winter But here it is pushing out its signature green laddered with fresh new thorns
Chain
"A map to land where my body will die..."
- "Carry Me," Tyree Daye
My father looped his keys on his belt
and jangled them like change
in his pocket.
Every night, he walked the periphery
of our house, touching window locks,
door latches, turning off the lights.
In the morning he thumbed
a rosary of olive beads, counting
his way out of the wood.
He felt sure his saints would carry him
when it was time; sure they would see
his milky light unclouded by cataracts.
Stargaze
Never having believed in happiness, it occurs to me, might have had something to do with why i never actively pursued it. If it showed up regardless, well and good, but in general, day-to-day contentment seemed enough. And you know, maybe it is. For far too many around the world, it’s an unattainable dream.
But what about love, Dave?
And you call yourself a poet!
Pleiades
syncopating
crickets
One-winged wasp
for sale:
wilderness
travel
trailer
wilderness is within you my friend
assuming you have a healthy gut microbiome
*
we live in a time of signs and wonders
known as the present moment. a moment in which a tiger swallowtail might be bugging off but you capture it anyway in a good-enough-for-the-internet photo on your phone
E.T. was prophesy man i mean look at us now we are all extra, extra terrestrial man, just always phoning home. I guess that’s what it means to be terrestrial
a log i’ve stepped over hundreds of times was garnished today with these distinctive-looking cup fungi which i have never seen before in my life
***
it’s interesting to consider how much or how little work the word “natural” does in a phrase such as “natural smoke flavor added”
***
mayapples may not ripen until August it turns out, on extremely rare occasions when the local wildlife doesn’t get to them first
tastes may vary but to me a mayapple tastes less like an apple than something that may or may not be made with apples—like a junk-food version of an apple, with a very different texture in the mouth
not at all bitter, like wild lettuce
but nothing i’m going to make a point of seeking out the way i go after sassafras for example
***
when i last saw her this one-winged wasp had walked all the way up to her nest in the rafters
*
walking up the road after dark to look at the stars, but the road is full of winking glowworms—how can the sky compete?
Altar
Today I learn the word
waterleaf
Heartfear
uncontain me
Saved by Death
forest downpour heard
first in the treetops
i picture a cinematic
rain of arrows
or maybe small frogs
like the two in the road earlier
one still moving
the other just bones and wasps
i took picture after picture
on my phone which now
rests like a joey
in a dry pocket
soon the gravel road
is two torrents
and i am a turtle hunched
under poncho and umbrella
and half a heartbeat
behind the flash of lightning
a deafening crash
up where i would’ve walked
had i not stopped for death
and taken pictures
From formlessness, form—
a shape the girl coaxes into her lap
from the mass that would like to swallow
her whole or take her unborn child from
her womb. Turning the shadow around
and around she gives it back its name
until it sees itself and shrieks
into the floorboards.
Warp to weft,
a threading or unthreading: whatever
is necessary to preserve the line
from which we come. Above the hills,
the ancestors watch from their caves.
Patience, the wind says. Water
counsels: stones are nothing
in your path.
The girl knows
one stitch must follow another.
She is not powerful like the Fates
but she can see gold in straw.
She can follow a line to what looks
like its conclusion, and find another
door leading away from that room.
(after Rebecca Solnit)