Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Some days, you do not want
to wrestle with; you do not
want to try too hard—
you know that even an only
steady rain can beat back
the just-purpled heads of
lavandula: and so you set
the pot to shelter under the deck
awning until the mist has risen
from the trees. You wait until
the air has rinsed to clear,
remembering the Old French
lavandre, to wash, the Latin
lavare, also to wash, as you go in
to close your eyes in the bath.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Dear milk and almond smells rising up from skin,
damp rope of hair I now can twist into a knot
from having grown it out since winter—
I look up at the clock and it is past
the midnight hour; still, I cannot sleep.
Books and bills, papers; a watercolor
set, as yet unused, on the desk. In these
late hours, I piece together disappointment
and hurt, remorse and tears; scenes
lashed with rushes of bronze wheat, fog
cloaking green hills, sawed-off limbs
of trees. Long ago now, in my childhood,
my mother kept needles and thread,
all her sewing notions, in an old
biscuit tin etched with lines: ocean
swell, frigate furling all its sails,
armored and fitted for some destination.
Where the billows rusted and darkened over,
I’d take a pin and scratch until parts
of the picture showed again— as if
to reassure myself there was something
that came before: canvas or sky; wing of water
bird, backdrop, color, history. Dear time
prior to this, you must still be there.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
I close my eyes, and you are children again:
asleep then waking in one room to rooster
crow, sharing blankets made unruly
in the night. I have a photograph in which
all of you are reading, a long body pillow
spread across all of your laps, a book
open in each pair of hands: in one story,
the pancake has run away from the hungry
mouths gathered around the table; or is it
a cookie in the shape of a boy, which later
gets eaten up by the animal that volunteers
to ferry it across the river, to imagined
safety? I don’t remember this thing you
insist now: how it was I that taught you
no one can be trusted, not even the warm
closeness of your own gut breathing hard
from trying to run away, or to find a way.
What I remember is I tried to teach you
to listen, keep your eyes open, learn
how the flicker of any epiphany is slight
as a bird, and quicker of wing. Everything
is instruction, especially when the lesson
can’t be neatly laid out on paper. Industry
picks up the chairs overturned by the child,
mops up the porridge trails that dripped
from spoons and the rims of bowls.
One bed is lumpy; the other is hard.
All have linens that at some point have
to be washed. The fox eats the bread— or
the cookie. Or is that the one where the wolf
eats the girl? No, she is smarter, younger,
she knows how to redden her lips and cheeks. She
makes an ally of the huntsman. The wolf gets
the she-crone, the grandmother, the woman who now
lives all alone by herself. Nights she strikes a match
to the stove, to the kindling in the hearth. A flame
leaps up like a tongue, like a flicker of something
bright come back to roost. Where wood meets town,
a hungry girl holds out her hands to stop the river
of milk and porridge. Knee-deep in such thick bounty,
and she cannot remember the words to make it do her
bidding; she cannot remember enough to make it stop.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
The 280 pound sophomore says, during a pause in the workshop, I go to school, I go to my part time job, I sleep. Sometimes I play games on my computer. Then I do it all over again.
All morning in the Triangle, the workers are setting up tarp, small platforms, brochure holders. Tall ships will ride into the harbor tomorrow, white sails unfurled.
Out of the blue, the landlady writes to ask what the backyard looks like now that the cypress trees have been cut down.
I snap a photo and hours later, notice that moss has grown between the bricks on the walk. There is no error here.
In a book I come across the words romantic dogs, penned in the margins. The handwriting is unfamiliar.
Dust filters down in the late afternoon sunlight. The blinds need cleaning.
I cannot remember how many funeral parlors there were between the City Hall and the church.
A stand of pampas grass gave me my first paper cut. Green against gravel. And then the surprising streak of blood.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
They come over the water into the harbor
as crowds jostle for a view from the ferry,
tall ships from across the world— enactment
of some yearly ritual of crossing that dates
back to a world when kings and statesmen of new
empires leaned over tentative maps unscrolled on
library tables. Their pale, excited fingers traced
the zig-zag journey across months, across a chain
of inked islands to some vaster expanse where the sun
might, conceivably, never have to set— And their
sailors: how different might they have been, really,
from these young men in optic white from Brazil,
Colombia, Ecuador, standing at close attention at the foot
of each gangplank as tourists nervously find their way
up or down, one foothold at a time? Those conquests
might now go under the name of history: the ones
that launched Magallanes’ ships toward some idea
of the spice islands, so that today, every grocery
store in the northern hemisphere has whole shelves
listing with fenugreek, coriander, and anise,
and salts in shades that range from white to pink
and grey— the ones that gave the archipelago
of my dreams and birth, the name of a Spanish king.
Sailors climb the masts and fly the festive
banners and the crests signifying their own
native origins. And after all, this is still
about territory: the way each boat’s carefully
berthed, the way we move from one to another
as though to test or bring tribute, knowing
the waters that slap against each hull can be more
jealously coveted— for oil, for nutrient life,
for passage to safeguard into that uncertain future.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Why can’t it be light I’d
like it to be light not
light like that light
coming in the window warm
morning at last but light
like a billowing unseen
without any sail
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
another— For instance, the moon
that has just cleared the trees;
and in the water, those mottled
tracings of rust and copper.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Before the rain, I snipped the heads
of brittle roses off their stalks,
then dug a hole in the earth for a handful
of herbs. A white moth clung to a trellis
and trembled the grid of wires. When the rain
began to fall in earnest, the wraiths of all
my loves and unresolved afflictions pursued me
indoors, then lay down with me upon the pillows.
They fingered my wrists and called me Darling,
Sweetheart. They told me of green ribbons
of snakes that flattened their ribcages to sail
through endless miles beneath the canopy.
They said, The body is a rivet. I stroked
their napes and whispered into their
orphaned ears, praying they would be kind.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
You never know what kind of light will do that to you—
break your heart, seize you with inexplicable longing:
you walk into the empty kitchen where all the dishes lie, stacked
on the drain board, dry; where one chipped cup spells longing.
The light is newly rinsed, newly risen, or just fading, but
it doesn’t matter: every hour hides a secret longing.
The colors of fruit are warm and full of life: citrus yellow, apple
green, cherry red. The blue-veined bowl opens its mouth in longing.
Who was it that was supposed to come today? No shadow crossed the walk,
or rang the bell; no face peered in the window to meet you and your longing.
You sit writing lists, checking papers, figuring costs—
By the door, lavender in a pot sends up tiny spears of longing.
At night when everyone has gone into their rooms, the ceilings
hush, the shutters turn, as though against a long-held longing.
What’s on the other side of so much longing? Surely the bird
that lined the nest has found some arbor devoid of longing.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
In the foyer, rippled leaves like giant seaweeds droop. Who remembers to water the plants when everyone is gone? The air-conditioning sends chilled drafts down, but the heat of high summer is yet to come. Overhead, the skylight’s a square of marbled white, like some trapdoor in the basement of the gods. The first fire-stealer broke off a branch of glowing coal, embers hidden in a fennel stalk, falling headlong with it back into the world. Take that, he spat to the vengeful ones. At the edge of the park, eagles circle overhead and return to the same tree. If you raise your binoculars, you can see them bring back things in their beaks, shred pieces of meat for their hungry young. And the liver, oh the liver: peck it out to nearly nothing and still it grows back. See if you can stop the history— Trains and ironworks rushing forward, sparks’ hot striving from struck metal. Hibachis firing up, backyards soaked in the smoke of summer barbecues and shishkebobs, scritch of a match on the sole of a shoe; bonfires staining the woods defiant red, even as the sun goes down.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.