Poem for Friday, August 30, 2013

Monsoon Season

Metal has a terrible voice.

It stumbles sot-like through a forest
of octaves. I lack the heart to tell it
so I let it sing me to sleep.

I am no trainspotter; I prefer clouds.
They stir me awake with their melodic
dirges--the price of omnipresence.

She asks how come the clouds in
monsoon season look so ominous but
bring so little rain. I tell her:

everything, all of us is a facade.

Poem for Thursday, August 15, 2013

Three Autumns Ago

This one evening in October when the power
failed, when it bled out from black cables


forming parabolas over sod fences, snakelike,
dissipating into the valley, I went inside his


house. Darkness abounded, of course, so
I followed a draft into the kitchen, gripping


the hem of its imaginary dress like a child, like
some curious little child. He pulled out a stool


at the table and lit a candle so I could write a
letter. Looking out the window, he stood with


his arms behind his back, one hand gently
cupping the other, watching the spectacle for


a few minutes. I stopped writing to watch him,
to feel his eyes wax and drip through the


glass like the very candle in front of me, and
without turning his head he told me to come


over and look out with him in a tone tinged
with a beautiful urgency. Then, he said this:


Tenger khaaya ulaan baidag. And at that
moment, there it was: a bloody war in the sky


started by the sun. Before it passed, before
I returned to my pen and staggering flame, I


had to acknowledge his words and whisper
back in agreement: yes, the sky is seldom red.

Poem for Sunday, August 4, 2013

A Hundred Years

Piano Rags by Scott Joplin
has been spinning all
day.


The whooshes and clanks
of thirty-boxcar trains
promptly follow;


black-ink night has seeped
into the sky. Tonight my
dreams


will drag me back a hundred
years by eyelids clenched
shut;


there will still be a war. If I
fight, my letters to you
will be


bloodstained and eloquent.
A thousand miles
away,


you will dance gracefully
as tattered flags kiss
the dirt.