Ok, fine, at 35, I will rise from this lawn chair
and kiss the sidewalk almost laughing.
For now, but knowing not forever,
I will love and lean into this
powerlessness, God, be proud
of my being leashed to these urges,
like flying each of twenty crows
through two tornadoes with a bird tied
to each finger and toe. I will go on trying
to swallow all the grocery stores
because no morning feelings,
tomorrow, will forgive my mouth
its frivolousness today, so I shall regret
these schnapps-y lips less and less. Dark
manholes around my eyes, for five more years,
I will pour myself, again, too deep into whatever
it was I thought I had wanted. I will love this
gummed cement of me with a little more with tongue.… ...continue reading
The next day
after the war is over,
skeletons of swallows will return.
They won’t have beaks,
and their white, hard-boiled eyes
will fly three inches ahead of their semi-transparent faces –
or sometimes on their side.
Skeletons of babies will start whimpering in the cradles,
and the skeleton of a doggy will dig itself out of the ashes.
It will try to find its collar,
but it will fail and disintegrate melancholically into mush and bones.
The skeleton of a man in a gas-mask will come out onto the porch,
and will be looking for a long time
at the skeletons of chickens digging the radioactive ashes
and listening to the pensive caving of crows’ skeletons
on the fritted skeletons of lampposts.
When he hears a soft remote honking,
he will look up at the sky, startled.… ...continue reading
my mother, pearl, with folded hands, in rooms patiently waiting. her hands are a shimmering flame. time is precious in the inspiration. her wriggling in the doctor’s ear. a blanket for a shawl, taking three buses to the hospital in a blizzard to come get me. how is he getting better, when he believes the wall is a piano? at least he plays a real one at home. like the earnest search for the b section of a maple tree. not a figure yet, but the contours of one. he’s even composed pieces on and for the wall he calls “études for chalk piano and penumbral figures on the wall.” quite stunning really. the insistence that we be somebody somewhere impedes assembly. i’m in the middle of the piece with melody all around.… ...continue reading
I stretch another strip of packing
tape over the three holes and punch new
ones through it. I fold what I think
is a cricket in the bedspread while Lili cries out
for a Kleenex, then rummages through
the bedding bunched in her lap
for a black wolf spider. Which becomes just one
of the reasons I lie awake counting
breaths and commanding my body not
to stir, my ankles not to cross,
my nose not to itch. In the coverless scrapbook
of motorized vehicles I keep with my boy,
we flip though torn service cards, disembodied jeep
doors, a Hummer with Christmas tree
roof-strapped and polar bear in the passenger seat.
When I feel her weight lift
and bedsprings release, late night I cannot sleep,
I find the light on in the study:
my Montessori teacher wife on her phone,
ordering more books on the Scholastic website. … ...continue reading
Sometimes she says your name just to say it,
just to bring you like a breeze into the room.
She expects something of me, then, and who
knows what. After she said it today, I let it
dissolve in our South Georgia kitchen, not looking
to remember yours and mine in Denver: cabinets
too high, above the basement, which was riddled
with spiders, water glugging through the pipes.
Or our booze-fueled beginnings, or the break
so sharp there was no exploration
and no mend. Our life stopped
like a red light, obeyed without question.
You are a past, and only one. Your name
drifts like weed seed. I do not chase it.
– Katherine Fallon… ...continue reading
is not like a tree
without leaves. Some spaces
when contemplating
and seeing
beauty—
In the morning
I embrace it in, building
bubbles.
Under the soil
many lie swayed
without gain—… ...continue reading
Children thought the birds were falling off the buildings,
and they thought the birds were on fire.
―from an article in the Washington Post, September 12, 2001
The first few leaves are falling now,
our smiles and laughter echoing
in memories, or how
we were caught on disc or in a photo.
The unanswerable never stops—
there, at the edge of the idlest thought:
to jump from molten towers before both dropped
as though just sprung from dust. While
looking up, children had begun to weep,
thinking we were birds on fire miles
above. Now grown, some bolt from one sleep:
upon a ledge, narrow as a tightrope,
flames at their backs.
Nowhere but down.
– Mark Mansfield… ...continue reading