Half-fear a chandelier falling
one’s made of tusks
beside portraits of goblins
on the wall time-greened
goblets containing mysteries
oil paintings can’t answer
I was reluctant but we
had a loud seat at the
last table, the closest
in our observable universe
(a prophet holds a decade
old brochure, taps her shins
the same dance I thought
I made up last week clapping
and hollering) the room a loud
bluebell wreaths of light
trees of a traditional
American mindset (all
garbled rebirth and sin)
What can’t an accordion
do? The accordion is new
a drone of pressed blackberries
on a machine in engineered air
in which your crumbled piece
of paper reverses its
timeline (the pen
we belabored to find
behind finished wood)
going as far back
as to the simple
piano (all string and
hammer) whoever
doesn’t sweat
by the end of tonight
isn’t worth my time
(originally published in Poetry Super HIghway, Fall 2024)
accordion
Switches
Dad knew which fuse box switch did what–
in this way, he chose for us the light and dark.
His hands blackened from cracking walnuts
over the years, hammering husks in the
night when the rest of us were sleeping,
loud whacks startling us temporarily awake then
drifting back into our own darknesses beneath familiar
stars. After his death, we found Dad’s walnuts
in barrels in the corner of his workshop alongside
spiders and memories we could not yet scrape.
My brother said, to honor him, we had to break
and eat each one, despite the bulk. That Dad lived
a rich life poor, that the taste might activate
memory’s accordion, careening us in and out
the past and present, turning life to death then life
again, discordant in its forlorn loudness.
(originally published in 3Elements Review, Spring 2018)