I’m from a Southern backyard —
Magnolia grandiflora sporting huge white blooms
Honeysuckles spilling over the fence
Red roses soaked with the aroma of tea
Hollyhocks springing up yearly into flowering towers.
I’m from a Southern backyard —
Mud pies being made beneath a magnificent pin oak tree
Mint leaves mysteriously exploding with flavor
Milk pods’ white fluid being tasted not knowing it was poisonous.
I’m from a Southern backyard —
Bedroom window we escaped to crawl space door
To meet our coonhound Jethro and to play in the moonlight.
Bedroom window we each escaped on separate occasions
Out into moonlit streets until returned by kind policemen.
I’m from a Southern backyard —
Concrete foundation swirls scarily like a gorilla’s face
Wooden swing where we watched mad Mommy fleeing
Crawl space source of hound’s howls after Daddy’s death.
I’m from a Southern backyard —
From which Mommy returned to hospital after the funeral
From which we left with barely known Northern kinfolk
Into which other families came to live in the bosom of its beauty.
POEM: I am an immigrant, nomadic desperate for home,
to hammer myself into existence
out of pain in depths of yearning—
for what it’s too immense to bookend in language,
perhaps only indicted by silence inserting itself
into the form,
the only self-portrait I still trust.
I am a book without pages,
textured with continents of feeling,
narratives adrift,
unlatched from each other,
passersby that do not
even graze gazes.
I a solitude of friction between
antagonist, protagonist.
I am a nest rigged,
unsettled high in the
chokehold of branches.
I am three:
tiny, frosted fingers caked with unbaked dough,
marble blue eyes glinting in flashes of exposures.
My mother’s ear just beyond the camera,
my jean jumper, chilled kitchen tiles
redeeming me back into a body,
inside the thought that I am one at all.
All I am: an isthmus of thick froth, melting chocolate chips
nurturing the sensorium of decadence against tongue,
summer falling like a painting through the back door,
foregrounding my living lore,
the high volume of aliveness.
I am nine in ballet shoes and leotard
inner legs skirting a horse’s mythic rib cage
cantering through campgrounds after dance,
hair flossing the periphery of eyelids,
helmet holstering my head,
codifying my mixed media of kinesthetics,
stretching the kite of romantic light filling
the vista enshrining the fence fencing
wild horses, geese in shocks of gold,
a literature of self-reliance in enacted experience,
hands holding fast to the mane of affirmative hair
roiling in the midday heat.
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I am 20 negating my dear affection for the word
to negotiate the sciences,
left hand wedded to pencil,
numbers screeching through lead onto page after page,
consumed by an excess of equations—
how to balance them,
make all of the atoms content,
as though each molecule had a mouth calling its rage up
from the page—
my upper lip bitten into by lower teeth.
I am my own muzzle,
as though the numbers trapped me there in ember, the pencil erasing me,
the accumulation of the solvable aggregating at the base of the throat,
ghosting me out of being a being
in need of regular snack, bathroom breaks.
I am an experiment
breaking all the rules of
experiments,
the central tenant:
reproducibility.
I take issue with being now, at almost 30, at an impasse
with being those girls,
this one derived from the
ambush of a stroke stoking feeling out of my right interior,
an objectionable experiment running out of control,
out of senses to lose,
out of reproducing any semblance of myself
I know as myself,
out of stock of emotion
dragging me through, into.
I am not even a fiction projected onto a history,
not even a hovering presence.
I am so far away from my nested selves that
I’m outside them now,
an absence vanishing into silences that
generate all of the amplification.
Truth, trust: I need to anchor my weary body,
because I’ve lost my reference, my voice, my rhetoric,
so I’m unzipping structures—
theorems, sonnets, narrative, farewell.
I let myself wane because all I trust now:
these gaps to be my guide, and when they can no longer guide me,
I will step into them so they can swallow me,
so I don’t need to explain the inexplicable,
to remember what I cannot forget.
The old trees bend protectively around us
as we rest on the park bench in our winter wear
your faltering mind following the course of the river that is close and sure and deep
even now I can still find your younger face and remember the pillowy softness
of your lips when ours first met when we became love desperados
for now we will make our way to the bookstore by the famous church
and I will buy for you a neglected volume of stories
that will carry you into the long nights and when we find a place to take coffee
you will caress the weave of the cover as I serve your cup with an unsteady hand
and I see there is a little less of you this day
should we weight our overcoat pockets with rocks and wade into the waters?
it will seem like the most natural thing we will clutch each other and
let the current spin and dance us as our hats float free
if they find us washed up on some farther bank will our lips be blue like something that
burned pure
and is death just a river that will take us somewhere else?
for tonight though I will read to you to quell your agitations
–words you may still find familiar–
and in not too long a time when I kiss you again
will you think it’s our first?
ii. The Chumash (California) referred to meteors as Alakiwohoch,
which simply meant “shooting star.” They believed a meteor was a
person’s soul on its way to the afterlife.
iii. The black shuttle is passing overhead, sent each month into space to
orbit its cargo over our heads, and then to rest – coffins stacked like
hives, pumped with foam for stability, all with little spring
launchers to push them home (toward earth). An idea of
Amazon.com and Tesla to enter the funeral business and top each
other with the most expensive funeral: quarter million per, after the
Chumash conceit that shooting stars are souls passing to the
afterlife, coffins with carbonite beds, sprung to burn in terrible arcs
across deceased family’s night sky. Burial in the stratosphere: clean,
sudden, awesome, and godlike. Will wait for favorable skies.
Today is a day both rare and familiar. Tragic months before
another comes around. This will be the past that makes the
future proceed. Only what of the lack of true possession?
What of the decline spotted once again in our ascent, that
we heard in what was said in tired conversation on
sparkling evening? The altitude of pears? These figurations
were things seen by someone else in the branches and
leaves of a neighboring tree. I gave my life to waiting as if
asleep and my time was spent by others, observing me.
Beauty is what we’re here for.
To utilize our sense of wonder
To create a path of wonder for others.
Be awake in the now and
Find that connection to the universe
To dig deep and discover what is in us
That is moved by the aesthetically pleasing.
Why is that which we call beautiful pleasing to us?
It’s an innate attraction to that which sustains the spirit.
It’s the hope that the world is good.
Growing, caring, sensing meaning.
These are the purposes of being alive.
When we see how it all fits together
We want to help nature and help others
To catalyze the process. Then we can say
We were an active part of it,
We wondered, we connected, we acted.
The moment we say, “Aha!”
After checking each other
for spit-up stains, we head to an Italian place,
glasses of red wine, gnocchi,
in a booth by the window.
There’s a flurry or two, Christmas
lights strung across Main.
The marquee on a local theater
seduces: Ultimate Elvis. Tonight Only.
We buy tickets, take our seats
just as the bedazzled impersonator
wraps a scarf around the neck
of a blushing bouffant-haired retiree.
Pompadour swept high, new jumpsuit,
every other song: White Pinwheel,
American Eagle, Orange Sunburst,
Chinese Dragon, Black Conquistador.
With a hip-swivel-pelvic-thrust, Almost-Elvis
belts out “Are You Lonesome
Tonight” and we smile
because tonight, the answer is no.
During “Love Me Tender”, she lays
her head on my shoulder.
At the start of “Heartbreak Hotel,”
I flash my best lip curl.
We kiss, as the man crowned Best of the Midwest
croons, “The Wonder of You”
and tickle each other during “Teddy Bear,”
drawing glares from neighboring blue hairs.
We lip sync “Suspicious Minds”
and “All Shook Up,” passing
an imaginary microphone between us.
Then, we’re on our feet
for “Shake, Rattle, and Roll,” slow dancing
in the aisle to a bellowing encore
of “Can’t Help Falling
in Love”: sunglasses and sideburns.
At home, she puts her finger to my lips,
“A Little Less Conversation,”
pins me down on our full-bed,
which tonight, feels king-sized.
I miss you…
phoning
just to say hello.
I miss you…
calling
to hear about your day.
I miss you…
coming here to stay
giving me
your precious time.
I miss…
our travels together
taking in the sights
like kids set free
on a playground
finding pleasure
in exploring new things.
I miss…
your smile
sharing
hearty laughs.
I miss…
your affection
warm hugs
when you greet me
at the door.
I miss…
lying next to you
the warmth of
your physical presence
feeling secure
your arm wrapped around me.
I miss…
life with you
loving you
growing older with you.
Knowing…
You were my ONE.
I miss you.
moves through a life
so easily
and quietly
so that one spring day,
you’re ten, running to a neighbor’s to climb
his apple tree;
the next week,
you’re buying your first house in Adrian,
wife pregnant with a third child;
two weeks later, you’re drinking wine
at your daughter’s wedding, then kissing a grandson,
attending his high school graduation
until next month
when you’re escorted into a one-room apartment in senior living
and you stare out the window while the smiling aide says,
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