This has turned into a sort of bout. Not a title fight but I’ve certainly gone the distance: 185 miles and several days; the best I could do at such short notice. Tomorrow I’ll work I say, I’ll right the ship, not write it; a pity for it to end this way, in a desert beside a thin lake but the water here is deeper than I imagined you couldn’t reach bottom if you tried. […]
But the only screams I hearare the jackass frat boys down the way, lighting themselves on fire. Still, I found the samestar, made a slightly different plea. Despitea rainstorm moving in I saw two planetsand two more stars, including Regulus, the lion’s heart, a slant-wise answerto a sideways desire.
Still going. The hills were plywood tonight, rolled in from offstage and heavy on pastels. The rain passed with alacrity; the clouds that were left were dumb sheep things. They say the coyote came as close as this deck, more brazen in winter, a prouder pariah. I’m not there yet, feeling little delight as a photographer shoots a wedding across the lake, flash after flash ricocheting from the water. In those hills are mountain lions, fewer now, […]
Kubler-Ross, I’m going out of order. Ended up in the weeds, under the grape arbor in the lightest of rain, pulling clumps of them out by hand, sending rocks hurtling to my dog’s great amusement. Although the kitchen metaphor is apt — so far under, I’m standing on the bottom; Metis a major oceanid, myself, feeling salty.
But if you think you can swallow me with grief, remember Metis: I too could start hammering. No stars tonight, not even that; I suppose we have our answers. I think it was Hephaestus who split Zeus’s head open, saving him from the headache of the woman he scorned. And thus Athena was born, goddess of wisdom. And war.
Still going. That brings us back to the stars and space-filling models. It’s one thing to fill a void, another entirely to feed a mouth: your absence is voracious.
Now the neighbor’s voice rises in an aria, a shaky tenor, I’m loathe to do work; at some point, everything has become tiring. A stick -brown lizard startles as the AC shudders to life, resurrected from its former frozen state, strange, ice forming in the heat of the day. I am half hoping for a similar result, pushing past all natural stopping points, tired of rambling towards trite collects, tired of resting, tired of tired — […]
The hawk falls and rights itself, proud it doesn’t even have to beat its wings, so high up it’s currents that bear its negligible weight; for all its presence still brittle-boned. A pair of quails flew over, barely maintaining altitude, gamey, their flight was audibly work, a heavy whirr bearing towards the safety of the tree, plumes bobbing in old-fashioned pageantry. The last holiday I was out here, I took the train back, was struck by the […]
Hickory smoke come in the window, spider webs in the bath — I’ll have to write my way out of this gray box.
An orange floatplane cuts the drabness of this morning. Perhaps when birds alight and tilt their head it’s not gauging us as a threat but wondering why we don’t fly. The cloud deck is low and so smellcarries, this acreage spiced, medicinal. I have a vision of the sagebrushunder rain, although today will be dry,I’ve seen them lashed, the landmade sea, this house in a floodplain. The finches sing their circular song.The floatplane lands. All this week it will be cooling […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 