Poem for Saturday, January 18, 2014 (2)

In Passing

When they buried her, they could not
understand it all: the aroma in that room
born from hot lead and lavender, the
shrill cries of the newborn rising from
the crib down the hall. Years afterward,
they maintained their habits: kissing her
framed photograph before leaving
the house, stacking the dishes after meals
in the same manner she had done.
When her birthdays came, they always
mentioned how beautiful she was,
how her hair was brighter than a
thousand suns.

Poem for Saturday, January 18, 2014

To Explain Venus to a Mongolian

I remember the night the three of us walked through
the dust back from a small shop hollowed out in
battered Soviet concrete. Little Orgil, pig-tailed and
smiling, cupped an apple that seemed far too
large for his hands. That bright star, I told
his father pointing northward, is not a star at all.
At this, we stopped. The sky was a black sheet.
What do you mean, he asked. To explain
Venus to a Mongolian, it is best if your words
are like our own planet--a bit broken, spinning
in circumlocution, simple in the grand scheme.
Tell them that we live in the third world from
the sun. Then tell them that what they believed
was a star for their whole life is the second world
from the sun. Wait for them to ask Really? 
as per their custom. What I remember most was
his amazement, the moment of his comprehension.
How he gazed down at his son, face sticky
with fruit, and felt the need to take his tiny hand
in the dark.

Poem for Sunday, January 5, 2014

Dreamcatcher

What guards you, then, is a willow hoop:


inches in diameter, webbed with blood-red
yarn, adorned with feathers and beads, first
tied together by Ojibwe hands, brown and

splintered, a stone's shot north of the Great
Lakes. The stretched quadrilaterals, those
subconscious gatekeepers, filter out that

which longs to haunt you. Someday, one will
break tradition and seep through. Worry not;
simply wake up next to me. Feel it shrivel,


like so many things, in the heat of our sun.