No tabula rasa. Don’t
believe it when you hear
television celebration: happy
/ new / year. I ride a
continuous horse. Carrying
suitcases holding everything
from one year to the next–
Dad is still dead. Mom
will be soon. The dusk is
tomorrow’s same landscape,
endlessly looping.
(originally published in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Spring 2020)
I sit alone in this two-seat row
and the cabin lights are off.
I cannot locate the clouds beneath
the wing’s intermittent flashing–
my only light its metronome.
It’s my fault I don’t know Spanish
and understood so little
since arriving in Mexico City.
The only people I’ve spoken to
are retired professors
who told me about living
in Ecuador in the early eighties,
how they once witnessed
an eruption ten miles away–
tufts of smoke billowed out
every five minutes. At dusk they saw
lava seep from one side of the mountain,
but on the other side, a village untouched.
They asked, would you live
in such a village? Not knowing
which gate my next plane
will be departing from, a knife
inside me threatens the throat
of an ancient mountain, ready to erupt.
No matter where I go, I am surrounded
by strangers. Even here, no one talks, just
the omnipresent drone of the engine.
Out of nowhere, the moon a sliver of blood
disappears into air. First fingernail, then
speck, and nothing. So when the plane
descends, my world dark and missing
you who would have been beside me,
I do not know to what depths I will sink.
(originally published in The Literary Yard, Spring 2020)
A suitcase is just a suitcase,
a metaphor professor preached
in college. Though, as a poet,
I make my life more difficult,
trying to weave what meaning
tatters fabric, seeing in it a cat
we met one night. We rubbed
his soft body before finding
blood beneath the mewling,
and having just adopted,
we chose to lift our hands
and continue walking, vicious
in our trust that we discarded
the proper mercy.
(originally published in Gingerbread Ritual Literary Journal, Winter 2022)
maroon cardigan against brick–
I fade into the city’s
aging architecture. chameleon
piled on comedians,
a mountain of forced laughter.
haven’t found success
outside my tiny town, a steady
hand to click a shutter
to capture a memory, as bland
as they were, just few
in the crowd staring vacantly
at nervous laughter
that filled small stages, how
the water glass steady
on the stool began to tremble
as I lifted it to drink,
how thirsty one can be for a
reaction, how blank
faces stamp eyelids, present
still with closed eyes
(originally published in Fleas on the Dog, Spring 2020)