(originally published in Third Wednesday, Vol. VIII, No. 4)
Meditative
Theory of the Universe
Did we learn ourselves from the mirror
after we studied constellations
in ragged almanacs… we rotated mechanical
with a hiss of the so-slow
slowing axis…
No equation… can yet rebirth
a cooling star’s impending supernova
If the family cello were given to you
as it recovered from basement dust…
the bowstring part of me
moves… without asking
to the crescendo of ripples…
and F-minor weeping, the lake
awake not as often at night
the big bang must have stemmed… from a desert string
nervous tremolo through the ages, expanding
like a lung just before that first breath–
whole note for the endless meter…
(originally published in 99 Pine Street)
Eat Your Face
You wanted to eat my face
just as seven A.M. south Oregon fog
conceals trees over a low valley.
I wanted the same of yours.
What you liked was the sky descended:
how you’re able to grip, fleetingly,
the mortal, shifting clouds–
to think, I have touched the untouchable.
Many pines, from a distance, can be held
by two fingers. We can choose to let them dangle
or hold
steady, steady…
The fog consumes and rises
while we watch the sun burn slowly west.
When the rain begins,
the soft pattering against the windshield
mimics the sound of your jaw
fake-chomping my cheeks–
nearly-inaudible clicks.
The speedometer oscillates
between sixty-five and ninety.
The hillsides change so suddenly
with every mile– shifting smiles hidden
by a fog you know will also fade.
(originally published in VAYAVYA)
*Nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Writing Knights Press in 2017
The 2 A.M. Pacific Retreat
nights cold near the ocean
whispers reclusive invitations
Chautauqua, Chautauqua
Andrew Bird’s Q-tip acoustic fills the ears
the long voice pizzicato plucks cluck pluck
scratching, say, the sand munching feet,
the seashells and their blue-moon breath
breathe into your ears the eternal secret
of the ocean, quiet all these sleepy years
How do you leave the wet sand after that?
(originally published in Loveliest – Issue #1)
Rob Delaney
Hi, I am Rob Delaney.
I am not Rob Delaney
and he would never begin a five-minute set like that,
but before California dangled blackberries
above my granite mouth,
Rob showed us the way and the truth and the life
(John fourteen-six by the score of silent thumbs)
god, twitter fame was the only thing
that could bring us nearer gods we do not believe in
this big bang of a perpetually expanding following
we cannot fully understand
by choice I never listened to robins
conducting high-frequency symphonies
(but I did read Last Call of the Passenger Pigeon
by Daniel A. Hoyt that summer
and could form the parentheses of a whistle
enough to calculate the slow kettle of tea)
my father would sit on a pig stump
(an oak whose life he ended himself)
and watch birds fly the superhighway,
clouds like rush hour in L.A.
like some hippie saint claiming
all that is God
is not man-made
I always thought of bird-watching as a way
for the elderly to augment their loneliness
now all the young men I know
fetishize loneliness in themselves
(originally published in LEVELER – Summer 2015)
Clinton, Ohio
Where I lived was a quiet crescendo
of snow six months of the year
& mosquito summers wearing shorts
into the sweating night
Where I lived had piano thunderstorm concertos
jolting the elderly house’s bones
with frenetic fingers, ivory paint,
red bricks
Where I lived was a lonesome walking trail
where morning chirps of blue jays went unnoticed.
Beds of acorns lined the autumn grass,
a kind of fallout for the process of aging
and the act of leaving
Always, now, in thought, it is a shoebox
of dandelions that writhe when I pet the cold cardboard–
hello, you are home, tonsils– my heart
can’t handle the hand-shaped imprints
from so far away
(originally published in Rubbertop Review – Volume VII, 2015)
Mineshaft Clouds & Foggy Mornings
Blizzard
wind like a taiko
along the crown of palm
I shiver with the window
(originally published in Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Issue #14)
Catholic School, 2:55 PM
shoes grind
gravel
motors burn
oil
i think of god as spat
bubblegum clinging
to the cycles
of our soles
(originally published in First Class Literary Magazine – March 30, 2015)
Aketeko
soft purchased lumber. even though
inside I rub my hand along the surface
and feel the splinter
and wait
for a worm, for a prayer,
for modesty beyond a simple thanks.
underground is four thousand miles deep.
i walk afloat at zero
and wait for your wails
to wake me up
(originally published in Oxford Magazine, March 2015)