And here we are, snow come and melted, the same cool gray as ever. This damp feels like the smell of home after a time away, familiar become new, for just a moment, novel, known. And here we are, the year dwindling, eternal northern nights. Breath like a cloud. It isn’t sadness yet, but something more rare. We had a true blizzard once, trees felled by ice. Numbering the days: what was, what will. Turning […]
Cold coming over the pass, cold rain, the steep drop, the silent lake, couldn’t see a thing. And the lights of those first few towns, so warm at a distance– another arrival, and what then? A stone, no other word. Unmoved and unmovable, aloof. Knit a nest for it, feather the den, dust off the snow– or don’t.
Motion doesn’t always lead to rest. An impression of earning, but the statement doesn’t lie. Derivation of softness, clemency. First declension: Feminine nouns only, and pirate, farmer, poet, and charioteer– from the Greek: I do, I lead, I drive. It must be the tether, the bridle, the ties that bind. The statelessness. Whose earth is this? It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s. James Brown. Epecticus: It is neither wrong nor right to carve the night sky into […]
The dawn keeps on dawning. What was it that I thought I saw? Quickly forget the taste of lime and salt, warmth that lingers like an honest embrace. Cold rain. The gingko piebald, a tree at half-mast. What is love and what is loveable? The vacant building has a gray façade. A gray car passes in the slick gray street, the fallen leaves too damp to lift. A heavy act, to turn away, withholding. Mark […]
Election night, and sick as a dog. Something I ate. Easy to tell when a thing has gone rancid, but hard to tell when it hides what it is. Take the medicine, stay hydrated, wake up to see what’s become of the world, if it has returned to what was great, for some, who could afford it, and looked just right. And then those dumb appetizers, shit on a platter, too seasoned with hate, too […]
Lost in some forest north of the city, the driver returns the wedding guests home, some somewhat drunk, a song rises up, hoarse, flamenco– staccato clapping, the rutted road, headlights bathing the night fog in gold. There is no place to be now, the wedding guests are returning home, with newly-softened gazes, reminded again of love, the road turning in on itself, laughter, fake despair. The wedding over, the driver drives the wedding guests somewhere, […]
Querétaro state by bus, a ripe sunset, pastel trucks, corn fields and sun-bleached rocks. No country has the exact same color of dust. This is already a new life, new eyes. The old highway winds through high desert, fat-paddled cacti, unknown birds, a dark cloud to the North feathering out, the night, halcón, the wistful sky, lindo, listo, ready to take flight
torrents of rain the hour before departure jewel-tone leaves against a wash of gray the sky gives no hint of time or day leaving I am already a little gone already the cobalt jay catches my eye a promise of color color y calor
After a fall the margins of a bruise, lilac, ugliness is only contextual. How quickly a state changes, at full speed and then fallen, been befelled, complanate, decumbent, laughing at the slick night, no pain, yet, just awareness, again, of sublimation– run, ran, running– of location relative to the hard dark plane of sky.
If you had stayed until after dawn you would have seen the strangest sky, all white, fog roiling like smoke, dampness obscuring the sun yet compounding it, blindingly diffuse. How could the words come as a surprise? But loss cannot be anticipated entirely, yesterday was one side and this is the other. One less.
OPTIONAL POETRY 