You know that moment when sensation knifes through the oily film—

Take for instance today, with its rain and fogged windows and cars splashing passersby in the street; and the smell of wet dog under armpits, and the plastic wrapper feel of clothes on skin. Take the light that pulses intermittently through drops of water, refracting each countdown at each traffic stop. Oh love, why did I forget to take a raincoat, and why is my umbrella filled with bent elbows? When did I last nuzzle my face into a fresh-made crater of bread, into the cool woven lattice of your fingers? Take this longing that trains its wet face toward each window, meeting its millionth twin and doppelgänger.

Lessons

What I had no skill to finish,
your hands took up despite the daily
endless supply of chores—

Into the night, on my school sampler,
you cross-stitched chains and antlers
upon a bordered field: deer

with craned necks and lifted hooves
impatient as I was for an end
to the ruled hours. When and how

did I come to know at last
all I had no clue about? I learned
to watch and listen as you worked,

making thrift with rations, but
unstinting with anything that could be made
to bloom in the wounded rags of our days.

What do you think the animals know of ourselves?

Aren’t we all looking for some shade of grandeur,
some fountain with a bronze patina against which to lean;
for the invitation to a secret ball, some spectacular circus
to celebrate the onset of the monsoon? Would that not be
a most appropriate event at which to debut one’s crushed
silk garment with pleats that look like darkly
moving currents, one’s jewels that shimmer sapphire
drops of water? Our pizza days slide into their cardboard
boxes and there are only two little hot peppers curled
in a corner with the tub of faux blue cheese sauce.
Glimpsed through the open window of a neighbor’s house,
teenage girls raise their freckled arms, glistening,
shaking their Just Dance wands to the pulse of music.
They aren’t tired yet. A parakeet watches from its indoor
swing. They eat cream from cold bowls. Their eyelids
flutter in the orange glow of a kitchen lamp,
refusing any servings of clairvoyance.

 

In response to Via Negativa: The real news .

Stung

Little mouth, you work
in spasms even in the midst

of dreams— and I must ask,
what will sate that gnawing

hunger, once and for all?
In the field, gnats draw electric

circles around your ankles, near
your arms— every warm body

in the grass, a vessel brimming
with blood and unsung ardors.

Pinapaitan*

Slaughter the raucous animal
then singe the short hairs down
to ashy gristle. Take the knife
and sweep it across the length
and breadth of its back until
it glistens like pale marble.
Under its voluptuous library
of organs, that one olive-
shaded sac you’ll puncture,
those bitter drops to scatter
like benediction over the soup:
May you live with this aftertaste
of metal, with this glint of iron
and the sharpness of bile. Dissolving,
let the wound make bearable
every taste that follows after.

*Pinapaitan

Primer

The five-fingered leaf is a word
that keeps its own counsel in the wood.

Evasive in moonlight, it instructs
on the ways to avoid repetition—

Be one and be many; be brief
in your longing. Let boundaries

flourish with your handwriting.
Cast a shadow, but be green.

Vectors

This entry is part 15 of 19 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2015

 

Spokes of light that sang over the valley,
spun flames that trembled like the wings of doves.

How did we walk all summer and into the next
season of rain? But we did, as if into the arms

of our most familiar, into the flesh of our everyday
fate. Did we have time to make garments out of our

recurring laments? We must have cried out in the heat,
in the cold; or clung to a bridegroom, an archipelago

of circling desires. Sometimes to wait is not an option.
Sometimes the only thing to do is hurry into the coming storm.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Hello, hello

This entry is part 14 of 19 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2015

 

I imagine you
at the end of the line, your ear
cupped close to the receiver, a bud
on the cusp of bursting from sound.

And sounds skitter like birds
tumbled from a high wire, like spiders
shaken from slumber with the sudden
snap-open of umbrellas.

The syllables I form with my mouth,
you send back as slightly misshapen
echoes— as if a child tried to turn
a page with sticky fingers.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Events of the Century

“after foolish talk
the discourse
of rain” – D. Bonta

Earthquakes do not clamor for attention:
you could say they trump all versions of Cartesian proof.

Every time the odds are stacked,
the only ensuing discussion is what history tends to favor.

So much for talk of loss and triumph, for the length
of his reach compared to his opponent’s; his weight and class.

How fast is a punch delivered? It’s hard to determine if sounds
welling up in the amphitheater are from pain or jubilation.

Those who work a hotline know which exchanges are code for help.
I forget when presidentiable became a word.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Cowboy haiku.