round and around a clay track or Odysseus laying his infant son
down in the furrows before the bronze plow and the rebar of iron ropes
twisted in bold and fantastical shapes, into hearts, crucifixes and
writhing snakes flung from the talons of bald eagles, he having vanished to
vapor and atoms.
How shall we plaster the hole in the sky where the
towers once stood, shall we paper the hole that the man with his briefcase in
hand while the wind was on fire with the swirl of our contracts and folders and
pages of blank actuary reports fell so casually through because
Troy never mattered?
Michael Eaton
Silence Is Quiet
When I attended
the poetry reading
at William Blake’s
coffee house, no one
showed up; drinking
my caffe latte,
I rehearsed, under my breath,
reading magnificently
to a wilted white daisy
in a dirty green glass vase.
However lonely,
there were certain benefits:
no one to critique
or blow raspberries,
no anxieties, no stuttering,
no misreadings and
starting all over again;
imagining twenty appreciative
listeners, applauding loudly,
(no, make that fifty),
the music of one hundred
hands clapping, one hundred
trees falling in the desert
with no one to hear.
Uncentered
I’ve always felt a bit off-kilter;
not in the same world as others.
A child trying to seesaw with himself
while the others played on swings.
Afraid to go to church because
the congregation prayed for
the final Rapture of death.
I believed that prayers came true.
I always felt my nose was larger, that
I had on different colors of socks,
the right one brown and the left one blue;
as if the rear of my pants was torn,
as if my DNA came from alien worlds.
Perhaps I was a foundling
brought in from the forest,
having been raised by animals.
My thoughts stroll on different paths
than ones where others are jogging.
My hot air balloon is blown out to sea;
the rescue ship has sprung a leak.
I am locked in a space capsule when
it explodes, seeing only
blue sky, flames, and angels.
I should sneak off and hide somewhere,
before they realize there is a wolf
loose in their holy places.
Remembrances
They only exist in the
corners of the room now,
like repossessed spider webs,
the tenants gone,
unable to make rent;
dusty strands of silk,
fading threads of memory,
offering only glimpses here
and there, sneak reviews
of life already past, or recollections
of that bare sight of thigh
above a woman’s stocking,
before she lowers her dress.
All things you do
become memories and
attach like mistletoe,
needing a host,
slowly draining you,
sprouting white berries;
lovely to kiss underneath,
but dangerous to eat.
Or, perhaps they are like
the wispy ends of dreams
as you awaken,
not telling the whole story,
but letting you remember
just enough to keep you
from going back to sleep.
Naked in Dreams
Poetry is just too damned embarrassingly personal;
airing your own dirty laundry in public,
or writing unpleasant truths about your friends,
praying they won’t see themselves in the poem,
hoping they will see themselves in the poem,
trusting they won’t kill the messenger.
Reading a poem aloud is like
coming out of the closet to your parents,
like standing red-faced in the bathroom
with your pants around your ankles,
like loudly breaking wind in the middle
of your onstage plie’.
Poetry doesn’t always smell like roses.
The audience stares with blank gazes,
yelling, “Take it off. Take it all off.”
looking for their money’s worth,
wanting to see the poet’s naked soul,
even when they know that souls are invisible,
even when the poet thought
he had it lit in flashing neon.
Poets will continue to be caught and embarrassed
putting their hands down unbuttoned blouses,
sneaking back in their windows late at night,
slipping the magazines under the mattresses,
trading quick kisses with other men’s wives,
walking naked in dreams while others are dressed.
But, poets go on with their singing—
eccentrics in their own home towns—
with stains on their shirtfronts
and their flies unzipped,
wishing their voices carried better,
wishing for the silver tongues of gods,
reading poems with pebbles still in their mouths.
How to Start a Fire
Looking at you ignites
lust; you are dry kindling,
during a drought,
stacked underneath the wood
pile, carelessly left unguarded,
your incendiary qualities
quite forgotten by your
husband, a negligence
that allows homes
to burn to the ground,
destroying families inside,
batteries dead in their alarms
with no advance warnings
of the coming conflagration.
Fire burns in your hair
and flames play between
your slender fingers.
If we take the next step,
and lie in the next bed we find,
the mattress will alight
without a dropped cigarette.
Neighbors will flee the condos
in pajamas and bare feet,
as a blaze of red trucks,
bringing water and hoses,
siren their banshee wails
through the dark wet streets.
They will be too late.
There will be nothing left
but glowing red ashes,
the woody smell of smoke,
and exposed, scorched plumbing.
The inspectors will suspect arson;
they will pinpoint the flash point
of ignition, will discover the
images of two smiles melted
into the blackened sheets.
Lawrence Hayes
After a Ten Minute Silence for John Lennon, Snow
Just as the silence
in Central Park ended,
just as the heavens began
quilting our sighs—
rare moment of presence
on this nervous
bastard earth—
just then
from the sky
an empty silent sifting,
the kiss of a quiet
angel
who pities us our prayers,
white tears
setting down
on the cool bruised
cheek of the earth.
Walking the Earth
1.
A path curving
Into deep woods.
A silence so thick and ancient
it swallows trees as I go.
2.
The path twists
And thickens,
two-hundred year
hemlocks surround me,
a stand of native
beech saplings shiver.
In the darkest of these woods
I empty myself of seasons, turn
to the mute quivering lives
each silent step divides,
knowing myself neither
shunned nor needed here,
here in the depths
of a presence so strong
my breath is but a dampness
it takes back and gives,
a flower unfolding
each finger of grief,
unfurling in the mist
of whatever hush there was
before the earth knew itself
in my name,
before I walked these woods
carving myself in the wounds of an ancient tree,
relieved when finally the new healing
wood came to curl
over each slow
darkening letter,
knowing somehow it was
better this way,
wordless, covered,
walking the earth without a name.
Cousin Steve in Vietnam
for Steve Melnick
1.
When the full dressed
soldier showed up
at your mother Mary’s
door that day
she lost God
in half a minute,
collapsed into
a grief so deep
the family priest didn’t dare
meet her eyes.
2.
After the brutal burial,
after the empty echoes
of the gunshots
in the graveyard,
we reconvened at the house
where things quickly spun apart,
there being no center
to hold,
your girl bent
screaming in the kitchen,
animal anguish
so naked and pure
it stunned
everything into silence.
3.
At 22 you’d left
the States
like many your age,
never to return.
The sniper’s bullet
took you
a week before
your tour was done.
In the only picture
we have of you from that place
you’re grinning lightly in full camouflage gear,
a small monkey chattering on your shoulder.
4.
The black granite wall
in Washington holds your name now,
one among many
in the too long list of the dead.
Chiseled by human hands
your names will endure
perhaps a couple centuries
in the rain.
In the rain
another aunt, Eleanor, said
it looked as if the stone itself
was weeping.
Birth Song for Iris
1.
In the face
of such stark naked miracle
Your folks
must have choked
on the utter
wonder of it all
That moment
they first saw
you crowning
from your mother’s womb.
The midwives
must have gasped
and danced in tandem
to your perfect beauty
that hour you first emerged
bloody and bawling
ultimate gift of the gods
themselves astounded
by all that pink
grasping flesh of yours
new blood-rich being
swimming startled into warm arms
Iris wet and welcome
Juniper there beaming in her own skin
2.
The cold hard world
can be set aside tonight
that old bitter Dylan
put on hold forever.
Instead from his tower
Leonard’s calm hallelujahs
jai on endless repeat
your mama’s sweet milk
spilling on your tongue.
3.
This morning you are the only
being here on earth
Your father’s loveliest poem
dreamt at last into flesh
baby borne swaddled
in soft arms forever
your memory that song
your mother hummed you to sleep
in the womb all those nights
you tossed on your inner seas
your old dog Sophie finally settling now
with a grunty sigh on the front mat
her long watch finally done.
Melancholy
Autumn, of course
is its season, dusk
its time of day.
Anything fleet
and vanishing,
footprints
the red fox
etched an hour ago
in the morning dew.
It ripens into
the darkest of grapes,
into the deepest merlot,
sweet tears spilling
on the banks of regret,
that blessing you forgot
to give or receive.
Nectar of the poets,
empty nest still warm
in love leaving,
night train headed
through our bones in the dark.
Thumbnail moon
against a cobalt sky,
distant buoys tilting
to a foghorn out at sea.
All we love
or have loved in this life
tugging its sweet sad saxophone,
each riff a play
on time past
and time passing.
Late Prayer
Sometimes late at night,
lying wide awake
with you on the far edge of sleep,
all at once I feel your whole body
shudder, shifting through the slipping
transmission of dream,
as if something
deep inside of you
were breaking.
At times I get suddenly
frightened, pull myself
to you a little tighter,
wishing somehow
I could wake you
or pray,
or that, closing my eyes,
I might open some secret
other eye.
Sometimes that day in the rain
returns, and I remember thinking how
this should be enough—
the matted leaves shining on stone,
our history a small black cat
that shivers and settles between us.
Tonight, after work,
let’s talk to each other,
huddled in the dirty afghan.
In the dim light let’s close
the tired book between us,
imagine a new kinder ending
we’ll work on tomorrow.
Daniel Sinderson
Glued Together then Burst Apart, the Pain Between Our Teeth
We wake together and see ourselves
as fractions, infinite geometries
boiled into ratios of space and time—
locked eyes, dawn-warmed sky,
i-love-yous from phlegm-choked throats—like a simplified bit of crystal
where we hope to find a me and you and
us,
but we know that somewhere else along this surface
a living dog is eating a dead one,
and somewhere else is our microwave
or uncountable stars choking on iron.
Even outside of time we are stuck here with everything else.
Even considering questions like ‘who is happier?’ and ‘what is true?’
living an examined life seems like a wash.
How can I live with you and love you and want you
while feeling dissolved—like Cantor’s Set or a sugar cube
drowned in black coffee. We wake together and see
how we become us
choking and in love
with a few bright slivers
and another clogged holy book paged with floods.
Snapshot Under Vesuvius
Chinese takeout half eaten.
Cat’s head half inside the box
behind us. Bed sheets
crushed and messy. Fingers gripped
and cast in ash.
Our clothes tossed off as the sun cracked.
Lost for a moment. Then scorched.
Cracking Open, I think of Dido;
Using My Flesh as Surface
to Bind some Sense of Me
as Mine in this
I saw it again, the drowning
everywhere. Inside, we are not one thing,
but an endless ascension of ever more total
disasters. We stay for
the show—the cheers the tears the bets—
like it’s not our ribcage in this dream
between the sphinxes teeth. A few years
between psychotic breaks and counting. I hear
those words too loudly sometimes—echoed through the theater
until my ears grow claws, until I want to eat the world away and into me
except I am already full and leaking and finished
with all those hallelujahs from the back row.
Imagine that you and I are alone
like everything else. Imagine that the water is high
above our heads in a wave. Imagine everything
is a shrieking mouth, a light, a blade, a perspective