Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
A scroll of ash transcribes
a deposition for the gods.
The mountain wakes
to clear its throat.
Don’t tell the sea of how
the animals are daily herded back;
its vestments, shred, are still
more beautiful than night.
In the wilderness, even the soot-
smudged bees can lose the path
to honey; even the rain
can stumble and lose its way.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
and let the barnacles go another year
without paying rent. Let the days lengthen
like an old cardigan that’s kept its cables
if not its shape. Let the jasmine, still
fragrant in the mind, shed its husks
like dried asterisks on the deck,
and let the garden go—
Let the mottled green of moss
slipper the waiting hearts of stones.
In response to Via Negativa: Interment.
Sunlight that syncs in and out; broody skies, no birds.
We wait out the wet spell, coffee in hand, after first
asking the dark-haired barista for the wireless password.
Sunlight that syncs in and out; broody skies, no birds.
Nearby, a teen plugged into his earphones Skypes words
of mixed English, Italian. Steam and chatter: our cursives.
Sunlight that syncs in and out; broody skies, no birds.
We wait out the wet spell, coffee in hand; not a first.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
It is always the same—
a carnival of rooms,
exit signs
leading deeper
into the labyrinth.
There is no unseamed
clearing, no door
that opens onto
anything else but
corridors of my own
desires. In the corners,
the nervous skitter of flesh
or fur. In the rafters,
a mutiny of wings.
I walk and rest
and walk again,
as daylight tints
the tops of trees
glimpsed through
a vestibule. I eat
the things I find,
I make from twigs
my little fires. I fold
my coat-sleeves underneath
my head to crease
and cradle sleep.
Rain hammers the leaves; the lilac trembles from without and within.
And life’s requirements knock on every surface, asking to be taken in,
wed, fed, fattened. No frailty wants orphaning, no hurt forsaking.
Rain hammers the leaves; the lilac trembles from without and within:
such downpour makes all surfaces open pathways, yoking core to skin.
What larger thing comes to win, to teach its lesson on surrender, yielding?
Rain hammers the leaves; the lilac trembles from without and within:
and life’s requirements knock on every surface, asking to be taken in.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
In my chest, a thin rain.
We played chess with empty matchboxes.
Meanwhile the dead, shedding pilled sweaters.
In streaming windowpanes, the look of others through
their own eyes—
The slightest taxidermy thrills me.
At times the air is so scented that we close our eyes.
Like human breath though regular,
if there were nothing in the world.
You fit like a fig in the thick of my tongue.
You stop the clock in your paltry chest.
The one that says choose, choose.
What can your past now say to you
that has never been said before?
In response to Via Negativa: Spiritual teacher.
(*Line sources: Dave Bonta, Ilya Kaminsky, Kathleen Aguero, John Ashbery,
Kevin Young, Arthur Rimbaud, Louise Gluck, Ravi Shankar, Tina Chang)
Thank you you’re welcome I know what to do. One pail of bath water to see me through, one ganta of rice. Who made up that saying about beggars and how they have no business or choice? But you come to me wanting to know if I know where to get you the part that your vehicle needs, if I’d know where to get someone who’ll come clean your house wash your clothes eat your table scraps say please excuse me so sorry no problem at all and won’t murder you in your sleep. Yes my people have industry, my people have thrift. They’ve saved every caption, every lie, every fib. You hold forth at table with your bible or ledger, a scale in one hand, your dick in the other, correcting my grammar and adding up sums. How do I measure, sir? How do I do? Oh the knowledges I have mastered because of you.
When I look at a fruit
I do not necessarily think of a body,
man or woman, or the ways to peel
or unpeel skin from flesh to get to the pith
and the rind and the seed—
And when I touch a wound
I do not necessarily think
of martyrs or saints and the light
that flayed open the lacerations
on their backs—
And when the moon passes overhead
I do not necessarily think
of the wilderness of trees whose arms
upraised might catch its hurtling
into the healthy tonic of oblivion—
In response to Via Negativa: Party.
And so was I also taught: the branch
where an invisible bird
surveys the landscape, the flat
horizon toward which,
supposedly, everything aspires.
All things defined,
reducible to a few
quick strokes to show again
the mechanism beneath,
the fatalism which determines
where they go. Here too
on the table:
nothing but a bowl,
a cup; from where the worm
looks up, the shadow and smudge,
the last figs given by the tree.
How long has it been
since you tasted joy?
And I said what
do you mean by joy?
Do you mean the fleeting
spasm of joy
felt in proximity
of another, or the joy
that quite literally
melts on the tongue? Joy
and its feathers,
its coursing blood—
joy of the particle
made to dance.
In response to Via Negativa: Shortcut.