Poem for Friday, July 3, 2015

Backstory

Death is at the bar, always the same bar,
waxing defeat with his cards on the table,

looking exactly like what he is: a cracked relic,
shoulder-slouched, skin the color of

neglected wood, the shade of a certain surrender
that no one else can understand.

*

We assume he's just old and thirsty, that
he'll eventually step outside, cross the threshold

into the night: wind in his face, the shadow
of a dotted line snaking down his chest,

dividing his body in half, 103 bones 
on each side, perfectly symmetrical, and

it's uncanny how he's so much like us,
how he takes in the smell after it rains and

dreams of beautiful girls waiting for him
in the meadows. Do you know that sometimes

he looks up at the crescent moon, compares its
shape to that of his sickle, wonders

how much longer before he enters.

Poem for Monday, June 22, 2015

Summer Solstice in Lonoke County, Arkansas

On the longest day of the year, the water-pocked air
has managed to drown in itself as the sun descends
into the final embers of the evening sky.
It's a quarter past eight, but it only takes minutes
for sweat to salify on my skin, to tumble down
the creases of my forehead towards a slow little
death. From my grandmother's porch, feet dangling
off the edge into a thicket of ivy, I gaze up to study
a flock of birds perched on the power lines
that bisect East Main. There are at least fifty of them,
charcoal-breasted, poised with the posture of
disciplined soldiers. Some are motionless. Others
flap their wings and shuffle around the wires
to find their appropriate place in the hierarchy of
a new summer. And then, there are those few that
are easily scared, maybe even ashamed, so they
fly away, tempted by the anonymity of the clouds.
Consider how you and I aren't so different
from them, how we've behaved in all of these ways.
Do not think I have forgotten those nights
we learned the order of each other with the sky
at our backs. Those mornings that slowly bled
into the moment where one of us was suddenly
not there.

Poem for Thursday, February 26, 2015

At the Spillway

The fish have been reduced to flashes
of silver streaking beneath the current, and light
has never seemed so slow.

We set down our rods for a moment to
bait the hooks. You opt for an artificial jig,
fluorescent like sin. Now is a good a time as any
to say that love cannot be articulated.

Instead, I slip thread through a new hook,
banking off a metaphor while the sun
exploits my forehead. Before we recast,
I am branded a child of this earth. Consider this:

our lives, the tepid water spilling over

the edge.

Poem for Monday, February 23, 2015

You Can Find My Secrets

Like aspen in winter, stripped naked
of my gold, my limbs extend upward;
I am ready

to surrender to you, if only for a season.
We are not meant to know some things;
I will change

this. You can find my secrets scattered
beneath me, snow-tinged. Sift through
them carefully,

as you would with undiscovered photos
excavated from an attic, bleak with no
insulation.

Please tell me I am not like that
inside.

Poem for Saturday, November 15, 2014

Straggler

The day after she buried him, a layer of ice
had formed, covering his plot and creeping
up the granite to preserve the epitaph:

                        No Blood on His Hands.

Fifty years earlier, they were sweating on their
South Pacific honeymoon. She remembered
lying on the shore. He fed her June plums
picked from the vine.

But now, the cruelty of winter was apparent:
too cold for fruit, flowers, or birds except
a single flock-shunned goose, flailing
through a merciless gray sky

                       in fear and disbelief.

Poem for Friday, October 17, 2014

Spilling Wine in Your Kitchen

When the wine leapt from the bottle
into the air, your shriek became
a quartet of violins.

A hurricane of red had smashed against
the side of the refrigerator, the kitchen
wall, our newly washed skin.

Confronted with this aftermath, we began
our work, scrubbing each blemish
with paper towels and water.

But somewhere, a single drop remains
inconspicuous, embedded like history
in white gypsum, reminding us

that time is not meant to erase
                                                everything,
                                                anything.

Poem for Saturday, September 27, 2014

Deluge

I.

A white car struggles forward with sweet
caution, then a red, like infant herring testing
the Atlantic currents. Where are you
going in this weather, I want to ask them all.
A deluge like this has been known to drown
lesser things; even the highest trees are
only so high

II.

when the wind is this vicious, ready to strip
us of our skin, do not go outside except
for bread or for love. Do you need anything
else to keep you alive, I want to ask
them

III.

the advantage that rain has over us is simple:
we cannot detect from where exactly it is
falling. All clouds converge into a new concept:
gray. A histrionic pause, then thunder is born,
then the drops speed up, then we are struck
with daggers

IV.

when we were children, we played in puddles
that collected where the earth sloped down,
where the contours of its surface gave in to our
weight. This is how we learned our world is
askew

V.

the cars slice through the post-storm thinness.
Somewhere in the night, a man is pulling up to a
house and turning off the headlights that kept him
alive. Somewhere in the night, a new river has
emerged; that which it takes was never ours
to decide.