Poem for Thursday, August 30, 2012

Years Later

here is what's left:

             
              fields of soy and wheat, wilting

              a hundred god-poking steeples

              the memory of her scent, the

incense half-burned

dropping carbon into silver cups

not among them:


              polka-dotted skirts, navy

              atlantic oceans and the like

              the glides and fricatives of, listen

the thing about love is

it is a transient toting a single bag

stopping for no one

Poem for Thursday, August 23, 2012

Man of Velleity

At some bar--

his daydreams ride the smoke upwards, stick
to the carcinogens and evaporate.

the finger of the woman three seats down
skates along the rim of a whiskey sour.

her finger could be more majestic, it points
towards his chest and curls backwards.

he is neither drunk nor courageous but wonders
how she smells in the morning.

how does she smell in the morning, is the sun
kind to her bare olive skin.

can they exchange words about Rimbaud
when the yawning ceases.

if she sprays water next to the sink, will it
irk him or make her more endearing.

does she have a sob story about her people
falling under painted swords.

can she speak French, will she comment
that his wardrobe is tres passé.

her finger, that serpent now writhing,
renders him immobile.

she glances down her glass where the ice
distorts her facial features.

his eyes peripherally stroke her thighs,
his wallet is out on the counter.

the door opens into afternoon heat, but
he halts on the threshold and turns.

how does she smell in the morning, the
words, the yawns, the sink.

Poem for Thursday, August 9, 2012

In Santa Cruz

What I remember most is the damp sand colonizing between
my toes as you told me how we could technically meet death
at a couple of places. It was high tide at Panther Beach. The waves,
blood-hungry and thrashing. Fiercely azure. The cruel separation
of grace and mercy. I hid the beers and my wallet, dug my feet into
the slick rock, longed for solidarity. We scampered towards the
cave in wide arcs, avoiding the suicidal wet spots. Every time I
gaze out at open water, I think of Edna Pontellier and wonder
whether she was courageous. I envision her seduction by sea
whispers, inching nondramatically towards the Gulf of Mexico.
The wind, coaxing her hat from her head with white gloves. Then
I think how this time is always different. I hugged the outside
of the cave, became a physics problem. Fought the roaring gales.
Can we be more than scattered ash and salt, she once begged me.
For awhile, I suppose. At the mouth, I hid the Pacific from you,
ravenous for the view:

Flawless. Symmetrical. Azure. Tinged with God. So many things
more.

Poem for Thursday, August 2, 2012

Things Hidden in the Fog

At the intersection of Del Monte and Aguajito, a pelican
lies dead in the mulch. Wings akimbo, neck and beak tilted
sideways, there is no blood. No apparent cause of death.
It could have choked on kelp or lost its heartbeat. Perhaps
it swallowed chemicals or was shunned by its flock. But

the fact of its death, like the thick fetor of  fish and diesel,
hovers. If I were much younger, I would have forced tears.
I would have cathected the bird's charcoal neck feathers
and slit eyes. Speculated the flights it took, the ones it could
never take. Pawed through the sand with my tiny hands to

make the grave. Prayed. Being older, I worry that the species
may be endangered or the ecosystem is contaminated.
That this particular Pacific memory will be marred, despite
the roaring waves, masted sails and all the wonderful things
hidden in the fog. I try to shirk off such thoughts and walk

towards the beach, where tourists tread along the brine in
camp shirts and Vietnamese conical hats. The gulls swarm them,
pecking at food scraps and nothingness. Their cries resonate
somewhere between the bleak sky and the lulling water, and
they will never be sated.

Poems for Tuesday, June 27 & Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Rivers

when the rain pelts
unlevel ground
it becomes a
cropless squatter
settling in muck

or a vagrant
wandering in circles
not crazily but
without purpose.

you see miniature
rivers trace them
upstream all
salmon-eyed to
its source:
                                         a rift
                                         in sloping concrete.

you awkwardly hop
from curb to
rock while
your pant cuffs
suffer.

you think the
glass shards
make horrible
fish.

sweet sun drinks
brandy behind
nimbus clouds
red-cheeked
growing old
                                        the city stench
                                        down below.

(7-4-2012)



Background Buddha


glows                                  big and
gold                                    behind a
stretch of soviet blocks that have
been shedding their plastered skin
for decades.

rain                                     drips
down his gilded spine, tickles
his posture. he dines on rice grains
while everyone dozes through
mosquito nights.

i gawp at him through windowless
frames five stories up. i tell him
my asceticism falls with each
cigarette flicked at the sentient
grass below.

he tells me through the bleakness
that everything has never been
more alive.

(6-27-2012)

Poem for Thursday, April 26, 2012

Post Funera Gifts


your bones became black
tea leaves, submerged and scattered
in the spring earth--
          i tasted you in my water.


your son or daughter
grew stoic, stuffed bags with soap
incense and matches
          as if to say,
          "her corpse is clean."


i struck three for you
smelled the chemicals you once
breathed, watched
           the flames dance
           and die out.


they burned goldenrod
like our sun, which was shining
that morning
           but inevitably set later.

Poem for Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Burn

I knew a girl
shapeless save
her crooked spine

plain as beige
tasteless as
communion crackers

but her eyes
the last two embers
under heaps of ash

dig deep enough
you can extract them
from their sockets

pocket them and
you’ll burn glowing
a newborn phoenix

she had a name
that blew away like
refuse over the sea