Day and night, vise-like,
bookends to whatever this is.
A return? Or stalled momentum.
Pieces of salt, like stars,
stud the black ice.
This year drawn out
to its breaking point–
a twist of the champagne cork–
anticipation is such
a terrible ache.
And this cold
cuts to the bone. Waiting
for a word, a sign,
breath suspended
in the frigid air,
and fingers gone numb, only
hurting when they touch
something warm–
a loss is insensible,
memory determines its cost.
The high was still low.
In the shade the cold
was bitter, and when
the wind picked up–
Three arbors of grapes,
overgrown, neglected,
and some chipped
clipping shears.
What makes a return
prodigal?
A morass, deadwood, suckers,
shoots the color
of rust, dried blood,
arteries, and the ashen ghosts
of summer after summer.
Excise, and find
the form inherent.
To finish a thing, just one
thing, done
in its proper season
and sequence. A long time
coming. A bent knee in the snow.
It was the son, I know,
a muddled remembrance
and the low blue light
of a Northern winter day,
or barely not night. But the fruit
will set this coming year.
The vine will spring back,
the dormant sap, the roots below,
already there, I clear the air
so it can be filled anew.
The shortest day gives way
to the longest night.
Of course. The street,
this building, quieter
than usual, perhaps everyone
gone, travelling home,
or just asleep. The hour
is late, maybe the emptiness
woke me, that big, smooth zero,
like a rock of ice. You know
it would float.
That doesn’t make sense,
I know. Of course. But
that doesn’t make it wrong,
either. Harbingers, suddenly
listening to Tom Waits, craving
a racket. There are different
types of silence, some are blue
like holding your breath.
Like an open question,
it contains its own answer.
That broken voice howls out
silent, holy night, drowning
out the thing that is better not asked.
More North than home,
this morning-still forest–
dull today, awaiting
more snow, more sky, more
anything– a drowsy
forest, half-sleeping
under packed-down ice,
still dirt where the sun
breaks through, on some days,
but not this one, no more day now
than hours ago, barely more
than night, the sun somewhere
in its low arc, somewhere
under these insulating clouds,
very little moves, the lake
comes as a surprise, so silent
at its banks, even my breath
lingers a little too long
after I turn to return,
an offering to
the coming months,
more supplication than gift
Ungrateful returns. The wind batters
the gingko, a cardboard box sails by
six stories up. Absence grows familiar,
still, unpalatable. There’s a different
sort of beauty in these
geometric nights, so abstract,
divorced from messy life. A light
goes on, a light goes off. You wrote
from London, it’s nearly dawn there, now.
Or then. I still wake and wonder where
I am. This sky is toothless gray,
no stars for all the light
but still too dark to see,
and everywhere, and everyone, to be.
traffic sounding almost
like the tide
this night spent
early
a couple laughs so loudly
in the lobby
there is nothing
silence can’t magnify
particularly stillness
a pipe empties
from the loft above
even ears plugged
blood courses through
its vessels
Al pastor with big hunks
of piña, a raucous song
coming from a band
of young drunks,
is it Roma, Condesa?
These streets run
around and around
like a race track.
Cerveza at altitude. Joven,
cinco más por favor,
con todo. What warmth
and light at this hour
of night. And absolutely
nothing at right
angles, walls coming out
like full bellies,
pavement in riot,
this city sinking down
into the prior.
Poco que sé.
You were a child here,
and so are more lovable here,
or, I love more here—
innocence is fearless,
if indefensible.
Every wall a canvas,
alebrijes line the streets,
bronze marigolds, a hundred
altars for the dead,
flies in the eyes
of sugar skulls, endless
limes, vats of jamaica water,
it whets an appetite,
new words, tlalpeño,
can I eat it?
I could even be happy here.
I could ride a bike to the Zocálo
sip tamarindo and never
ever learn how to say doubt.
Look at the size of this sky,
this city that floats
in a sea of itself, and tell me
over midnight tacos
what is and isn’t possible.
Summer went out
like a light,
extinguished.
Rain now pools
on the roof, sounds
of passive movement,
the day cedes
more willingly.
Water splashes up
beneath a passing car, yes,
this city is more beautiful
when damp, saturated,
it carries more weight,
occupies more space.
Yes I booked the flights.
What hell to wait,
sometimes, to inhabit
every hour, each
a different room,
interminable.
Some hearts come
more even-keeled,
don’t yearn
while floating
through a night.
The wind picks up,
rain falls in torrents.
There is an art
to distance,
but I can’t learn it.
Rain, finally.
As if home
was returning
from battle–
the cold slick road
engulfed correctly
the familiar treachery
of a high mountain pass–
prodigal clouds
come back as if visitors.
Who knew this summer
could actually end?
A timely progression
of seasons, how strangely
normal. Still a headache
from yesterday’s smoke,
but seeing it, belief
and then such relief
despite white-knuckle
driving for hours after
It’s not pretty math
one saddled with the remainder
one the larger denominator
one always wanting more
This crescent moon is a quarter
this night is one third over
this silence a tense zero
some bad egg that might hatch
OPTIONAL POETRY 