Dear one, anxious again about arrival—

do not be disheartened by the appearance
of yet another detour: that there is road work
suggests this path has not been abandoned yet,
or that it is time to look more closely
at the establishments that line this section
of the map— Not everyone perhaps is an hija
de puta
, a heartless bruja, a bitch only waiting
to trip you up or put you in what she assumes
is your place. So she was born with a silver
spoon in her mouth, a blingety-bling in her nose
ring, her father’s stocks to cover her precious
behind? Ya qué? Remember what your grand-
father used to say about their kind: just close
your eyes and think about all the ugly and unkind,
all the beautiful, snooty ones who live in their cold,
drafty mansions with no one to love, no one who loves
them back except for the miserly crumb of a saltine
cracker beside their bag of tea; and think about
how everyone on this earth is reduced to that common
denominator of skin beneath these artificial layers,
how the fat around the waist dimples then folds
as the body strains on the pot to expel its daily
load of crap— Take a look around and see who else
is on this pilgrimage: you’d be surprised at how many
are inching along, making clearings, hefting their dollar-
store supplies, their thrift store finds, their non-
designer bags filled with an assortment of viable dreams.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Breviary

I tried to teach the children
about prayer, that discourse
similar to poetry: except I too
find it often difficult to make
my way to that door cloaked
in the rotten hedges, its wood
smelling faintly of apples,
its many branching tunnels leading
back and back to the stumbling self—

 

In response to Via Negativa: Workshop.

Dear spurred and caruncled one in the grass,

don’t stand uncertain in the cold dry field
looking up at gathering rainclouds where the wind
could untie your snood or ruffle your wattle. Don’t
open your mouth and drown in the rain. Don’t streak
the black, hairlike feathers on your breast with tears
or thickened gravy, don’t get so worked up to change
the colors on your head— Don’t worry about what
might be moving in the bushes, closing in from
a hundred yards away— You had ten million years
to get to this moment, you might as well go out
in a beaded flapper dress, doing the turkey trot.
Don’t watch anything except in high definition
color, because at night everything turns black.
And when you go to bed in the trees, don’t
startle at the first plaintive call, don’t
have a random heart attack; don’t let any
little thing keep you from clicking.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Carpenter, make a door into my life:

make me a tunnel more ample than the width
of the one I’ve wormed through with nothing

more than my shoulders scraping against
sediment and shale. Make me a flying
buttress so the roof of the earth

holds up and my breaths
ricochet past their fear
of the unseen—

Make me a trowel light
enough for my hand: down here
nights are velvet or animal

fur, flecked with metal
or dormant fire. And if
I touched the flint

of its pewter
to the gallery’s edge,
I might find the chink

in stone, the spring
hidden in plain sight;
I might find the lever

and the toothed guardian
asleep on the landing, the gate
beyond open to the garden

where the moon hangs like a lost-
and-found earring, a sickle,
an ornament, a pear—

 

In response to Via Negativa: Commission.

Monsoon

Mist turns to rain, then windows
curtain with fog.

Months of watching doorways
grow ruffs of green, fronds

dimpling the wood. We unroll
parchment on the table, take out

our inks and instruments. One of us
climbs to the roof with a spyglass,

calls out the shapes of islands
emerging from the dark.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.