Friday, September 28, 2012

Poem for Friday, September 28, 2012


Strangers and Pilgrims

when you tore out of my skin, sewed me
back up to hide my shy vitals and sopped up
my blood on your supple body in a single
towel wipe, you asked,

if we have to be here, can we at least walk
without sinking into strangers' footprints?

no, I opined. we were born too late on
finite soil. you embraced me then through
all the seasons, sucked out the remnants of
death from my neck.

pulled the hay fields from my hair. said I
tasted like the cedar in your granddaddy's
table, the salt in the Dead Sea. Let me tell you
a story about Lazarus,

the universe and drowning in bathwat--
before I finished, you tore me open again.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Poem for Monday, September 24, 2012


Fetal

in this manner, the cold needling my bare back, you will find me
excavating her image. Squeezing a pillow for equilibrium and
she appears, apparitional. Let me tell you how to feed your heart

by the spoonful, she whispers. Let me tell you how ghosts taste
the wine we cannot drink. How I, with Japanese hands, have
repaired all of your torn sutures between breezes in the syrupy

nights, painstakingly. Do not cover yourself, then. Let your bones
breathe in the afternoon lull. Before you awake, what is most
tragic will be irradiated: the broken-winged crow in the morning

sky. The blood taunting the veins so hollow. The words that
could have saved us swallowed down with Sunday's breakfast.
You will not have me unless you shiver and sweat a minimum
of five drops. I am inflexible on this matter. I take one of your
eyelashes along with my sorrow.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Poem for Tuesday, September 18, 2012


Cemetery Saunter

All those tombstones with German names etched on them and

alabaster Christ illuminated by a futile fluorescent light and

God the night dripped opaque but I still saw the spear wound.

          To house the dead along the railroad tracks is not an

          accident. It is steel smothering the sobs. It is strategy.

And the black iron fence smiled Death with gap teeth.

And the wet grass stuck to my bare feet and ankles.

The tallest monument screamed farm boy and Roma.

          You learn how people love when it is time for a

          burial. How all of the quiet years suddenly sting.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Poems for Sunday, September 16, 2012


The Midwest Circa Simpler Times

In the 1950s, my great uncle usually slept in his van
parked in the lot of the mattress factory where he worked
along the blue-collar edges of Kansas City. His family
lived too far away for him to commute every day. In the
factory, god only knows. Tiny flecks of insulation always
hovering in the air, creeping up workers' nostrils and into
blackened lungs. Sticking to the crevices of skin that
weren't inhibited by plastic or canvas. Chemicals slowly
dining on their organs throughout the Truman and
Eisenhower administrations. When his day-eating shifts
ended, he curled his gloves into his back pocket and
retired outside to his van. Lucky Strikes balanced on
the dash, cans of Coors Light crumpled in the passenger
seat. What he probably saw: smoke rising from concrete
stacks, dancing skyward. Rusty Union Pacific boxcars
smothered by their own shadows. Emptiness here
and there. When he finished his beer, he ate the sunset
and dreamt of the suburbs.


*     *     *


At the Pick-n-Pull

Two dollars to enter, hang a left
past the imports. Patiently parked
at the end of the row:

a white 2001 Ford F-150.

The model was inexact, but the
color and the parts would match
well enough.

The tools came out quickly.

Ripping, stripping, popping and
lifting. Prying and unbolting for
an easy outcome.

A picker approached us.

Pushing his pseudo-wheelbarrow:
"You guys need any help pulling
those parts?"

He would've charged us.

"No, thanks. Appreciate ya." He
rolled back towards the entrance
with metallic ambition.

After that, off came the fender.

Hauling it, I sliced the base of my
palm. Contemplated the chances of
getting tetanus.

Ah, fuck it. Gamble with blood.

The door came off fifteen minutes
later. It weighed more than I'd like
to recall.

Through muddy gravel, we left.

The parts cost $114. We sweated.
My hand stung like hell when I tried
to wash it with soap.

We snaked back towards I-435.

There are certain people who never
leave these junkyards. Their love is
measured in cylinders.

Their poetry hidden in truck beds.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Poem for Saturday, September 8, 2012


Leaving Hernando

conquistador country
sunny delta driving
dripping Memphis blue along
the way


i. Hwy 51

At the Citgo, I interrupted the clerk with
his Greek conversation. Put me down
for nineteen, I said. Why don't you get
twenty, he asked. I wanna buy a drink.
Oh. Then I headed north, past the Love
Cemetery and the obligatory chain of
southern Baptist churches. Past the ice
cream shop where jean-shorted men
devoured simple vanilla cones. Past
the intersection that had no business
existing. Past the stoic Mississippi
oaks planted by post-antebellum hands.
I left you near the lake with thoughts
of lichen on the willow.


ii. I-55 N

Breaking north again, Tennessee a blur.
Gunning for the river bridge. The water
blocked from view, I knew it well enough.
Blue-gray in color, bordered with
barges. Catfish and motor oil. The things
we're too afraid to contemplate. When
they fought that war, I bet they never
dreamed of a sky bisected by steel beams
and hot asphalt. I bet they squatted at
the bank, cupped their hands in the water
before they wrote to literate lovers.
Sweated out a little death. Halfway over
the bridge hung the sign for the Natural
State.


iii. I-40 W

All these rusty structures claimed by
kudzu. Fields of lush-green soy four lanes
across from wheat stalks burning
dry. I was welcomed into Palestine by
racing clouds and verses from Mark.
I drove the stretch mile dedicated to a state
trooper. To have your legacy carved out
between piss-ant towns in agrarian Arkansas
is sheer poetry. I held in a piss from Hazen
onward, coasted at fifty miles through the
road construction. This interstate goes all
the way to Los Angeles, but once the tractors
and combines cease, America starts to shrivel
up like a worm.


iv. Hwy 31

From Lonoke to Beebe, the churches
spring up again. Apostolic thrown in the mix.
I swung into a Valero to relieve myself
in an Employees Only restroom and didn't
buy a damn thing. Sun-scorched, the
thunderstorms of yesterday were further than
a memory. On the radio, Bob Dylan pleaded
with Queen Jane persistently. It wasn't even
five o'clock yet but I wasn't melting. Hwy 38
stuck its thumb out on the left. I turned,
headed for the place where we first learned
of each others' existences. All of that gold
de Soto might have found is suddenly
pyrite.

Monday, September 3, 2012

Poem for Monday, September 3, 2012


Some Kind of Rebirth

i. when the pine needles,

   dampened with moon sweat, stabbed me benevolently
   i took them with my skin. when i rolled over, i gave them
   to you, gift-wrapped.

ii. arkansas summers,

    they let you breathe once in awhile if you catch them
    in an easy mood. my breath was infrequent. my lips
    were spiced rum.

iii. if there had been stars,

    i would have picked venus from them and placed her
    in your hair. you could not have crushed my chest
    if you tried.

iv. arkansas nights,

     those dark, humid paradoxes. they give you rashes
     but keep your secrets. they gamble with the hills
     for your memories.

v. thirsty and dirt-kissed,

    that is how we arose. like some kind of rebirth
    achieved through non-death, spelled out in the sap
    stuck to our backs.

vi. thirsty and dirt-kissed,

     you separated me from the sky. i will never forget
     how i closed my eyes, despite the darkness. how you
     did the same.