Bossy
Bossy as a limp.
He's a cover hog.
I'm cold over here
but he seems warm.
He's made me believe
I like it in Alaska.
He blows on things
to cool them.
He blows on things
to heat them.
The purse
of his lips
is always the same.
Sirens and pox
coming over the bridge
but his breeze carries
infection far away.
He wrote me a poison
haiku. 19 syllables
of cyanide. About
v-less geese. The
importance of the flock.
The need for a leader.
He led me south.
I marched to
his soothing rhythm.
WarHorse
It took 1000 men
to kill the last destrier.
They died under its hooves.
The horse had flanks like walls
and sincere murderous teeth.
It had been unsaddled
when the army was triumphant.
It was rendered obsolete by victory
and considered malignant.
The deaths might have been incidental--
water off a spiraling dog--but its
wide muddy eyes gave events
the look of calm intention: a coincidence
of wind and leaves.
And a continent away
its rider: rheumy eyed
and with a slack mustache.
He'd sat proud and tall
aboard his mount--
fashioned for
riding and fighting.
Good only for war.
He wants to say momentous things:
He's seen men falling from the sky
as though they'd cut the branches
from beneath themselves, the long
thorns impaling them as
they struck the dirt.
There had been a stone angel:
a concrete shepherdess
who arranged ambushes.
He's witnessed what lurks just
beside the normal electricity of
living and knows that's the secret
for cursing one another.
He's palpated the shape just outside
people's skins where seizures
and cancers and suicides seep in.
He tries to write but his hand is
too damp and tremulous to hold a pen.
The people thank him for his service
and bow as though to someone wise.
He longs only for his horse.
the luxury of sadness
my stoic wife is weeping about our dead calico.
mauled by the neighbor dog it dragged itself
up the steps onto the porch. I replay
the scenario from the perspective of the cat.
that's how I make myself sad.
I ask how old was she? nine amanda says.
we found her when I was pregnant with Lu.
(amanda was crouched
as though holding a basket
enticing something
from beneath the shed
wriggling
her fingers
and speaking
sweetly)
I go back to my old superstitions
and wonder about cause and effect
as it relates to bubka the calico cat:
she almost hung herself dead in
a closet and was saved by
by the length of her dew claw--
that was in the room that's now lu's.
I think of curses
and then reject them.
stories of orphans.
blunt stupid demons.
there's hope for the
coincidence of proximity
followed by an impulse to
name the most inconsequential
and least travelled bridge.
she was found near the garden
I explain uselessly to lucia
as heart shaped
tomatoes tumbled from
vine to palm.
Adopted
The world will belong
to the adopted.
Everything there
a product of revelation.
Not the false
piety of the admonished
or the inert arrogance
of the firstborn but the
fish instructed in swimming
or the bird taught late to fly.
Domesticated and returned
to the wilderness.
A link between dog and wolf.
Suckled in the forest and in the town.
Their domicile a house
of fur and feathers.
A porch for orphans and widows.
The adopted rule the world
from the third floor
of that home sitting
in a crow's nest not
concerned with finding land.
Because there everything is the sea.
Land is a dream people have.
People with one mother
no knowledge of the waves
and what it is to be
above the salt
and just beneath the sky.
Love letter: epidemic
he went back for his sister.
he'd thought to leave her but
could not.
she rocked in her chair.
she put her hand
to her mouth and cawed like a
crow.
he thought he finally
understood her.
the caw wasn't a call for help
or a laugh or a comment.
it was the sound of the
last person on earth enjoying
the vibration of her voice
against her hand.
he said 'you're not alone.
I'm here with you.
let's go to school.'
even though there'd be no
school.
there were no more teachers
and there were no more students.
but it was one of the words
that got her to move.
'take my hand,
walk with me out the door.'
'caw' she said.
or didn't say but
placed into her cupped palm.
caw.
where are all the birds he
thought.
the cawing birds dusting the
ground clean with their wings.
'caw' he said
and she arose.
Bossy as a limp.
He's a cover hog.
I'm cold over here
but he seems warm.
He's made me believe
I like it in Alaska.
He blows on things
to cool them.
He blows on things
to heat them.
The purse
of his lips
is always the same.
Sirens and pox
coming over the bridge
but his breeze carries
infection far away.
He wrote me a poison
haiku. 19 syllables
of cyanide. About
v-less geese. The
importance of the flock.
The need for a leader.
He led me south.
I marched to
his soothing rhythm.
WarHorse
It took 1000 men
to kill the last destrier.
They died under its hooves.
The horse had flanks like walls
and sincere murderous teeth.
It had been unsaddled
when the army was triumphant.
It was rendered obsolete by victory
and considered malignant.
The deaths might have been incidental--
water off a spiraling dog--but its
wide muddy eyes gave events
the look of calm intention: a coincidence
of wind and leaves.
And a continent away
its rider: rheumy eyed
and with a slack mustache.
He'd sat proud and tall
aboard his mount--
fashioned for
riding and fighting.
Good only for war.
He wants to say momentous things:
He's seen men falling from the sky
as though they'd cut the branches
from beneath themselves, the long
thorns impaling them as
they struck the dirt.
There had been a stone angel:
a concrete shepherdess
who arranged ambushes.
He's witnessed what lurks just
beside the normal electricity of
living and knows that's the secret
for cursing one another.
He's palpated the shape just outside
people's skins where seizures
and cancers and suicides seep in.
He tries to write but his hand is
too damp and tremulous to hold a pen.
The people thank him for his service
and bow as though to someone wise.
He longs only for his horse.
the luxury of sadness
my stoic wife is weeping about our dead calico.
mauled by the neighbor dog it dragged itself
up the steps onto the porch. I replay
the scenario from the perspective of the cat.
that's how I make myself sad.
I ask how old was she? nine amanda says.
we found her when I was pregnant with Lu.
(amanda was crouched
as though holding a basket
enticing something
from beneath the shed
wriggling
her fingers
and speaking
sweetly)
I go back to my old superstitions
and wonder about cause and effect
as it relates to bubka the calico cat:
she almost hung herself dead in
a closet and was saved by
by the length of her dew claw--
that was in the room that's now lu's.
I think of curses
and then reject them.
stories of orphans.
blunt stupid demons.
there's hope for the
coincidence of proximity
followed by an impulse to
name the most inconsequential
and least travelled bridge.
she was found near the garden
I explain uselessly to lucia
as heart shaped
tomatoes tumbled from
vine to palm.
Adopted
The world will belong
to the adopted.
Everything there
a product of revelation.
Not the false
piety of the admonished
or the inert arrogance
of the firstborn but the
fish instructed in swimming
or the bird taught late to fly.
Domesticated and returned
to the wilderness.
A link between dog and wolf.
Suckled in the forest and in the town.
Their domicile a house
of fur and feathers.
A porch for orphans and widows.
The adopted rule the world
from the third floor
of that home sitting
in a crow's nest not
concerned with finding land.
Because there everything is the sea.
Land is a dream people have.
People with one mother
no knowledge of the waves
and what it is to be
above the salt
and just beneath the sky.
Love letter: epidemic
he went back for his sister.
he'd thought to leave her but
could not.
she rocked in her chair.
she put her hand
to her mouth and cawed like a
crow.
he thought he finally
understood her.
the caw wasn't a call for help
or a laugh or a comment.
it was the sound of the
last person on earth enjoying
the vibration of her voice
against her hand.
he said 'you're not alone.
I'm here with you.
let's go to school.'
even though there'd be no
school.
there were no more teachers
and there were no more students.
but it was one of the words
that got her to move.
'take my hand,
walk with me out the door.'
'caw' she said.
or didn't say but
placed into her cupped palm.
caw.
where are all the birds he
thought.
the cawing birds dusting the
ground clean with their wings.
'caw' he said
and she arose.
