Filed under: Poetry
Let’s say, on
an overheated Saturday afternoon,
that you opened your bathroom cabinet
to find a 2-inch long cockroach,
perched atop your new toothbrush,
antenna held aloft like twin scepters,
testing the breeze.
What would you do?
I suspect the gallant would have gotten a glass
and scrap of paper
and carried it to safer shores,
but I took my last copy of the New Yorker, rolled it into a baton,
and followed the shocked scramble into the depths
of the bathtub, where I crushed the delicate
clockwork of its prehistoric brain
and scattered nimble limbs across the porcelain.
It is always shocking how easy killing can be,
especially faced with an unexpected enemy.
A toothbrush becomes a battleground,
a bathroom, a russet-tiled graveyard. I find myself
defending odd corners of my life with the temerity
of a freedom fighter, cutting a bloody swath across what
I consider to be mine.
Filed under: 1
A short story of mine, written roughly 3 years ago, was just published in the anthology Philly Fiction 2. All I can see are the things I would change about it, but I have to say that for all the edits I wish I could make to that story, getting published never gets old.
Filed under: 1
A Tremendous Will
If I hang my sweater
just so
I may not remember the time
You took me up that impossible mountain.
Where it had rained. And there were no dry twigs to light (a spark.)
We walked down in dankness.
And though the trees were close and greenly smelling,
lights from the emerging campsites below marking the way,
I never thought for a moment
that I would ever have cause
to forget you.
Filed under: Poetry
Grieve
Nothing bad can happen in Alaska–
It’s a known fact.
The cold burns it all out,
Whatever’s left, the dogs take to their little corners.
If there are people in Alaska,
I don’t know about them.
If there were,
I’d make no guarantees.
I am told I will remember nothing;
All I see inside the vision is a sunless bright.
It will take awhile to float to shore.
And between mooring and unmooring,
Every eye that has ever laid upon me,
Will be shut.
One-at a-time,
By a blessed hand.
Filed under: Poetry
Mechanical Birds
At the base of your pant-leg is a little machine
Which makes you able to touch me.
Below it is the cerulean paste board,
Jade-flowered bowl and glass insect eyes.
I say, the flesh is not hard.
It is the living dust you swept out of the room
In which there is nothing but smooth silence,
White and harsh
And big, dark stains.
Filed under: Poetry
The First to Hold the Dead
Last night I became a tomorrow woman,
There was nothing I could do.
The morning sun offered itself early,
And I saw the swallows coming down.
The men in their identical beds chew a thick breath and struggle for
what used to pass as meaning.
A glass of juice is a beautiful thing.
And still—
Tomorrowland is caught in the meat of yesternight.
When the hands that reached out for comfort
Were hot with the fever of thoughtless life.
Filed under: Poetry
The End of Things
A tree is a memory of seed,
the shadow of music is sighing.
War makes all sound now.
The only time you hear song is in the dark when you’ve wandered drunk from the pack,
howling at the moon like a runt cub forbidden milk.
Wondering why, of all instants the notes should squeeze themselves from tin noisemakers
and pursed lips. At moments, when the fire pops,
you can feel the actual beings; you can hear the actual tune;
you can see a bomb as it falls.
“Santrofi Anoma may be translated as ‘the dilemma bird of Akan mythology.’ Endowed with mysterious treasures of the mind and voice, Santrofi is both a blessing and a curse. Santrofi is a blessing for the clarity of its vision and for the transforming beauty and power of its gift of song. But Santrofi is also a curse for its irritating and irrepressible urge to expose the unsavory side of society…Society is blind without Santrofi’s visionary guidance, but it stands forever condemned by Santrofi’s persistent accusations of improper conduct.” Kofi Anyidoho
Filed under: Poetry
The Bell Maker
Fill the form with sand and bury the shape in it—
Cover the copper sea with hiss and douse the flames’ fall—
Who rings this stinging bass—
Who makes this evening-song’s rice,
Cold with a drop of oil—
It’s the bell maker,
It’s the bell maker,
It’s the bell maker.
He who pulls the bird through a loop of wire—
Can hold his tongue the longest—
And he who shapes the wedded wheel—
Can Rope the bull the strongest—
But he who calms the sleeping hair—
And he whose hands the widows sail,
It’s the bell maker,
It’s the bell maker.
It’s the bell maker.
When the town is sleeping—
When the straw toads reap their dream of dreaming—
The nocturne shadow crawls the alley dusking—
Begging tallow to burn the bell’s dark husk.
And the first strike’s struck—
And the second’s a serpent’s call—
The third’s a devil darkening the quick wet sky.
It’s the bell maker.
It’s the bell maker.
It’s the bell maker.
Filed under: Poetry
The Ballad of the Widows of Vrindavan
If you ask my name, I say ghost
And wander the temples
And ashrams of Vrindavan
Bent like a cane left under a tree.
Lord Krishna, I beg you:
return the pyres of my mother.
She did not endure these aimless days,
enshrouded like a silent clock.
I eat my cup of rice cold,
I spy on the insects in the street,
For who could ever look upon
the bad fortune that life replaced with death?
I dream of my last sight,
I dream of a circle unlocked,
I dream of the bracelets of my daughters,
jangling as they make afternoon chai.
