The Hunch

There’s so little town in between us.
I thought that would be
the solution; a resounding nail-bit
crack in the box that was
supposed to be a treasure trove.
With the streets so short, my
skirt could be too,
and that was all the reason I
might shiver up to you. A corner away,
maybe. I’d take them all on
tipsy toes, just in case. In your case.

I wanted to be in your case. This
tiny place pivoting the world should have
tumbled me into you, at the same time it
held my ankles steady. I could have been a tower.
Every day was a chance.

But you are a man with small
lungs and heavy breath. You kneaded all the space.
I walked around in a flower vase even though
you refused to see me as the bouquet.
Gasping, panting;
I was wilting.

It was our roads which cut
us, to the quick:
Each of my moves you could see;
you were right down my neck about it.
And you making an Atlas out of me
turned into a hunchback complex:
I knew—it’s how close we were—
this foyer, that hallway, the very lawn I stood on
was your next canvas, to sigh at me
head to toe. A judge twiddling his hammer.
Making me bend, crane, stoop,
lest I look silly to so-serious you.

I just wanted to take a step without
touching all of my nerves, without
waiting for all your weight to hit me.
I had a hunch; you made it bad.
That’s not going to mold me. So would you
take the next turn, away, so I might
unwind myself.

An Arrival at Afterward

My eyesight’s now one hundred
days in retrospect. How could I
have known that three April’s worth of hurt
would come to quiet death by the July
that dutifully finally followed. Through and through-
out I said I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out
on a thing even a bullet could teach; that’s why I declined
to dodge you, smoke rising then from your eyes
to that handgun handshake. Too bad it came to
cloud me over, and I was so long dryice-mystified
til the truth reigned as rain and hosed it down.

You mattered most when you were
my muse. You’d better beckon luck
to be yours if you want to ever again arrive
on a climate with climaxes like
you found at my side. The danger’s over, your
feelgood comedown gone. Look and there’s nobody
left to sing for you. How’s it feel for you?
Tragic! Because it always was, I bet for me it’s different—

It’s hard to make a soul
that’s been pinched back from the brink
of systemic shutdown believe and behave
in a bold voice. But I may say,
if in a fit of inspired inclination: do you know what?
I’m happier now than I’ve been
by far; far back behind as the oceans prehistoric
when they collected and came to draw apart
me and you. That was the last era
the sun lifted on a smile, but I remember it
in instinct and have not a problem
molding like fluid into the motions—first
finger-sucking clean the shot wounds. Allowing the lid
of a tugboat to close the gape that would yawn awake
with me in the mornings. Again and again coming to rest
in flowerbeds, until the fragrance adopted into
my skin. Tell me what this sounds like:
Straight-kneed stance from my bike pedals. Apple slices
chill in my cheeks fresh from being picked. A dance a day, while
music plays loud always near me; never stops like other things do.
I lost my license but that is joy,
right? I recognize it. I’m recalling it.

It’s a slow dawn, the brightest one. On me now;
the light. Only No One would have guessed it, and,
who are you, again?

(You’ve got so little poetry left in you.
There’s a lot
you’ll never say to me, and that’s
a likely line
I’d be the first
triumphant tenor in the chorus over.)

Consolation Paradise

You weren’t supposed to win,
you see; partially. After all
the scrapes my knees sustained
and my post kept a year’s worth of
nights by the windowsill, still
asking for angels and looking for
the return. It’s what I should have got—
if not in you than just not
you in any way, okay? The altar was always
mine to take, and gods were going to
wed me to my requests forever.

That and I thought
things were through being partial
to you. But what do I know of the
world, I guess. Because this place continues on
behaving like there’s a lockdown on
summer feeling until you pull back up and grace
in a graze the tiny keyhole your love
fits into.
It’s canvas to your artist.
I’m bent up in this:

Nothing’s been brushed for days.
My hair, the secret soft spot
underside my arms, or sunshine upon
the landscape. All the outside-looking glass ever shows is
rain. I check each hour, stupid with hope,
and overcast is the only option as far as my vision
can see; I’ll need the sky to stop
missing you if I want even a shot
at not missing you.

And I haven’t felt healthy since
the day you left me. Heartsick: laughable myth,
right? Then what makes me drop my neck
against the shower stall wall to cool each morning’s
fever, and explain the vinegar stew that sits
in bed with me all nights, threatening to sail up
my throat. I wonder about the momentum
to make me the sick one—when it should be you
and the cause and the cure should be home.

I was the one
who was left. My God: I was loyal
to a fault! I ought to earn the consolation paradise.
I wanted to know I had universal support
in carrying on. Instead everything’s broken
for you. You are probably so sunburnt
you’re moaning.

Now, Now

The choral comfort my mother has
offered since I was younger; the same we’ve all got
once the first childhood began. Words ladled like
syrup, like serum, with the accompaniment of
a crop circle buffed onto your back. Attempt to swipe
blurry the target that rent the space before
hand.

I’ve always wanted to believe
in mysticism that satiated generations, and kiss
the fingers that fed my ease. But the
whispers sting. When I say “ow”
I get “now, now,” and that’s the spring
of the pain.

For you
know I was blind in happiness every instant
those days wrought. I spun
in golden circles, made every crack a domain,
laughed from my face and into others: because I was here
and this was now. Never looked over your head
or ahead of my shoulders.
I didn’t invest beyond one meager era.

Sure there’s a girl
twenty years from now who’s me and who’s over it,
but the one who’s two weeks in and after
could have used a plan of protection, a fallout shelter
for the grief that comes when her favorite spells
have passed and been lived.

Live on the inside, as you must. We’re all
encased by our eyelids anyway, we can’t escape
to see any farther out. There is no
forcing a future, any present we get
precludes and manifests the celebration;
the exclusive acclaim. This second solely
matters: a prescriptive mentality so
you stay lively in your enduring aliveness.
Swear it was only a moment
ago—I had one
that I squeezed tight like I’d
been taught I thought, but then
it popped and
I hate this now. Remember that
what you can, when you can lone as it occurs; but hope
you’re ready to nurse your stingy-spent
self when the time comes, when the time
ends.

Bonfires and High Water

Gather round;
it’s the first and only thing you need
to say. People leap up when
logs are being teepeed, on tiptoes to
make a stack that will last
past midnight’s hours. The air
chill with anticipation, not just because the sunset
is stealing our source of heat. We want the night,
we make our own light.

A matchstick struck, we all track its
spark and fizz. Tipped into the pit to meet
its wooden flint, the point of impact grows
from the size of that pin until we’ve got
a blazing halo between us.

There’s jostling for the lawnchairs in the
front row, jutting of pebble-whittled twigs skyward where
cinders mingle and alight on marshmallows. Soon
everyone’s teeth are sticky but with a ukulele
interlude we still sing the stars out of their shelter.
They’re shining
in your eyes.

Conversation pours long as the drinks flow. Mostly it’s
made in pokes—to the ribs and ego. We’re friends
after all. Hope we communicate this way
til we’re gone from all kinds of places. My leg’s on the vinyl arm
of your rustic rocker, heel cupped in the mesh pocket
where your can would rest. Close enough to have another’s
graham cracker crumbs dust my kneecaps.

Eventually the clock strikes everyone as melancholy.
Someone says something about
somebody long missing. The circle loosens its diameter
a little. It’s quiet outside of our breathing, and inside
it boils and bites. Demons come curling forth
from the smoke and flicker amidst us because they always
make room for themselves to belong.

The environment we’re in is ideal,
though. A ring, dotted in diamonds
of humans without a single sharp edge. Chocolate to comfort
at the crook of a finger. And an inferno that’s
refused surrender for so very long, since it was built.
We made this glow with our hands.
We made these friends for our lives.
And I’m trying to tell you: the only luck there is
is in the people you meet. And then that,
I’m not even sure is luck. What matters is
we’ll forever have these bonfires
to meld together
another high-water mark
for us.

It’s just the truth—
All eyes are honest on a fire,
and when you tire of
that decadent silence the stories that
come

are similar

shoutouts in

to nature.

Quietpatch

I want to discard the days
where we don’t speak; make up
a calendar of dates that barely matter.

It’s the first according to columns but the square
that deserves a star will be
the first in weeks
you think of me strong enough to
say so. Wherever you go for that while
you take the world’s music with you. I don’t
worry but I do wonder;
what I could do to beckon that symphony back.

Until the buds open in my ears again, put me to sleep,
like Shakespeare’s fairies—
easy if it means alone; sash up my eyes, jaw,
and chest. It’s the blowing dust that must
do it: settle on my lashes and drop them low,
and create the wasteland that you wreak when
you’re hushed. I don’t care
to hear what you’re not saying.

So turn me off like that;
and then it becomes morning
on your breath alone. A bolt upright to
the sweet sitar alarm you’re setting off from
my bedside—murmuring, hoping it’s
my name—the dream is forgotten because
reality arrives.
Every time I stir the reason will be
you’re talking and therefore the sunshine is broadening;
It’s birdsound:
you’re back around.

Able Mouthed

A toddler trundles from mom to dad,
punched in one weekend, someone punched out the next,
his parent’s little plaything. He’s learned
to be leashed up like last birthday’s puppy,
transported everywhere by adults who’ve held
a grudge since the candles were blown to smoke.
It always just means another year to ride this shuttle
in a kennel. On arrivals they make fists of the hand that grasps
his fingers and the other to rap on the
sliding screen door, shaking it in its frame.
The yelling starts welling from that very moment
from the inside, he knows;
of the house, the muscles of his mother,
frownlines of his father. The pane reveals them
to one another and they let the anguish
loose. He always jerks with the rhythm of it,
the jabbing and yanking and stamping, between
two bulls sharing one arena;
he is little like a red flag, never turning white enough
to make them surrender the battle and realize
they’ve already produced the prize. He just
quakes there on their shaky ground, too meek
to join the beasts.

If his mouth were able
he’d shout too, louder than them both,
how they make him feel like a tiny guppy
floundering, caught in the fangs they’re
gnashing at each other. It’s silly that humans
can’t believe what the animal kingdom has sanctioned,
when we’re all observed
eviscerating our own offspring.

When We Get to Paradise

Ask any well-read kindergartener
and they’ll rhapsodize on the blueness
of the sky. From the time you’re five
it’s the only thing that’s sure.

But in the life that’s ahead there’s room
for a whole color scale:

you’ll see how big it is in the red-river gash
that opens your knee when you topple
from your bike after passing the science quiz.

There’s cool greens and blues that reflect
in the ocean, which you won’t taste til college
and discover salt belongs in the water.

God’s got a bright orange eye; the same
round and heavy kind you grew in a garden in the South
when you got old enough to start heading down
there. They’ll both peel themselves upon your hand,
and you’ll remember the rainbow you followed from
then to the end.

When we get to paradise
I hope we’ll have sung all our scales, and I promise
the last thing you’ll see
is plain blue.

Extra Ordinary Sensations

He’s used to feeling his clothes cinched
at the neck, tying him in tight.

But for the weekend instead he’ll be pinched in
the waist, and shrouding his stereotype in a
robe. Retreat, they call it, and that sounds
right: the persona he’s painted over his frame
over years and years at the top of the shiny glass building
in the city is melting off and away.

It was his wife, coming at him and wielding one of her dangerous
ideas, saying,
“Let the boys handle
the business;
take a break.”

He suggested a detour seaside, but seeing breakers isn’t what she meant,
wanting him sunk in deeper than sea level.

Ten days later he’s sat on the right angles of his knees
and fallen almost asleep through all of it. The room is filled with
those slumped in kinetic energy, each told to await “sensations.”
This man is sore and convinced he’s a loser, and feels only ordinary.
He worries the instructors, in their eternal calm,
wondering why he’s disqualified from feeling. Maybe he’s nervous to
question the authorities, but he’s slick by the time he asks.

“Nothing?” they ask him, taking in his full sight.
“Nothing,” he confirms. He brushes his brow.

They smile, at one another and him in turn, their eyes alight and on
his broken sweat, and conclude that,
coincidentally, he’s broken through.

Anicca

Meditating, meditating, meditating.
Should I change how I believe?

Deciding, deciding, deciding
I’ll give a new god a chance.

Trying, trying, trying.
Sitting still on the rug for hours, restless.

Changing, changing, changing.
You can’t keep your emotions for anything.

Changing, changing, changing.
This isn’t how my mind is meant to work.

Trying, trying, trying.
To grasp onto my commitment convincingly.

Deciding, deciding, deciding.
There are methods to peace, but this isn’t mine:

meditating, meditating, meditating.