Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
I never checked the boxes.
Or I checked them all.
*
Mountain and valley fold.
The creases deep and sharp as blades.
*
I am all my names. And something more.
Perhaps that’s what is meant by Becoming.
*
The sales clerk said, helpfully: Sometimes
the size is different depending on the maker.
*
The lizard sheds the tail
that has been caught in the closing door.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
cast by our streetlight imaginations,
then I am not the silhouette made
by bluebird or song sparrow. I am not
the trace of a wing dusted with snow,
nor the spruce and the yew outlined
at the edge of a meadow.
What shadows speak through me,
shimmer with the heat of asphalt.
What shadows parse from the light
bear stench of sewers, salt-spray,
the perfume of jasmine flowers.
Dull pewter, the blades and makeshift
implements pass across the terrible
whetstone: and come out singing.
– with a line from Lawrence Ferlinghetti
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
“To see and be seen
is to be taken prisoner.” ~ D. Bonta
At the end of summer, dance class recital. Grass skirts and crepe paper leis, halter tops with coral flower prints. New breasts of girls refracted in the prism of men’s eyes.
*
Children milled about after church service. The commons was an indecipherable blur of bodies. Where did he come from, how and why did he scoop her up in his arms? At first she laughed then squirmed. We crossed the room as she was set down. How did no one else notice?
*
Two eyes peered out at me from the thicket.
I was pruning branches. I was cutting back
abundance entangled in vines.
The vines were slender and outlined in barbs.
Tendrils wrapped a season’s growth
in their complicated embrace.
Which of these are not equally
implicated? The animal watched
then slunk away. I lowered my instrument,
examining the detritus left in its wake.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
My love came into the garden
when I was not looking.
All that was fallen
and forsaken, tattered,
used up, shriven—
pushed against the hard
beds no hands
all season had made
or tended, furrowed,
seeded, fruited.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
“To see and be seen
is to be taken prisoner.” ~ D. Bonta
The mother hands her child a sandwich and some change before putting him on the bus. Don’t talk to strangers. But if you must, be unfailingly polite. Look them in the eye but not for very long.
*
Marble and gold, pillar or stone. In the circular building, cells arranged around an outer wall, around the single tower. Network of tubes for extending the work of inspection.
*
We will raise our placards, light candles, and walk in a solemn circle around the square. We have our permit to peacefully organize and protest. Of course we know we will be watched.
*
Along one side of the street, lamp-posts festooned with the faces of missing children and animals. Every help number begins with 1-800. Infinity and many zeros.
*
One summer, I ached to see the row of grandfathers who’d tethered themselves to the White House fence. Veteran does not only mean one who has served in the war, but also a person with long experience: old hand, past master, doyen.
*
In fall after Rodney King was beaten, mother sewed a winter coat for me. She sighed and wished I did not have to go to America, this land of violence and burning storefronts.
*
Third person point of view: I do not understand how people you don’t even know can talk about you as if you weren’t right there, as if they think you must be deaf or do not understand English.
*
From the bridge we can see the spill of neighborhoods. We don’t talk about the blueness of the water and the stillness of wading birds. You tell me how everywhere you walk now, your nape prickles: the aura of the constantly surveilled.
In response to Via Negativa: Proverbial (10).
you can hear the struggle to breathe, you can intuit the instance of the body’s anticipation of the viral load, of the impact of what is ultimately coming. If you stop for just a moment to admit I don’t want to die before my time then life and what follows after becomes a ritual of self-care. In unbounded space we were bound and tripped up in entanglements; for this is what passes as history. How long have we held our breath? If you listen you can hear the struggle to breathe, to say the unsayable in bounded space. The woman who was speaking said, find the pocket of flesh between the shoulder and the jaw. Cradle the elbow of the arm as it burrows into that hidden space, looking for the pain of tenderness. I say yes when I want the taste of the bud more than the clay. Even the dead trees of winter want to return to life. They have not yet hoisted their banners but the assault is on its way.
In the early hours,
still dark, I hear them;
and their plaintiveness,
also dark. They settle
the little gashes
of their talons,
question marks
on my shoulder.
In response to Via Negativa: Owl.