lilies in the moon
wild behind an empty barn
safe from zealous hands
Poetry
Language as a Wall
I said “äiti,” which starts with a diphthong that sounds a bit
like a drunk friend’s hello and ends with a terse request for tea.
Knot
a beautiful gesture, saying both go and hello:
one knuckle, a faint bristle of a hand
Gush Etzion Settler Speaks
On this road, this blessed packed dirt under our feet,
you can walk straight into Jerusalem.
The Settler’s Son Is Leaving
Where’s your vest, your tzitzit?
Why do you come at me in jeans and a T-shirt you got
How to leave home
If you must leave,
then let it be on the most quiet night,
Story
This child, born of foam.
This child,
My Splendid Catch
is not the size of a hand
but is the size of shards flung in natural patterns
Enough
I don’t know her name. I don’t know
what she gathers of life
when she stands
in the morning
My Home
You see, a place is a home
when your heart is at peace and harmony with it.
The Tilted House
We lived in a tilted house
Where our bodies compensated for the uneven floors
native
All those rights I was taught about
never apply in airports.
leaving as a stranger, coming back as a son
It may take 963km & 39days of hiking
two countries
Refugee’s song
The size of this lounge
makes me feel dirty
Lay of the Land
I know that you felt stunted
in the landscape of your youth,
For Lydia
n blue floral dress, she
sighs. Hands, plump,
rest from their labor.
A Weary Pattern of Dissolved Shell
Where knees and kettles impress soapstone,
black and cracked and smooth, the fire’s heat
Red Flecks on a Veneer of Black
Sitting in traffic: slowly moving, the cars’
brake lights run rampant. Individually, we’re
Lost Habitat
He tallies the twenty dollars
he borrowed for his uncontested divorce.
Learning to Tell
His earliest childhood years were
in battles and refugee camps,
no rocking chairs or playgrounds.
By the Roadside
It comes upon you
as you draw
the curve.
Where the Waters Meet
Let the river
flow
into you.
homecoming
I am a settler of ancient ground
washed in the earth
City Sea Change
The minute you leave
I summon the sea,
Hideaway
I come from a place
where flowers are celebrated
by being crushed between
1/1/2018
it’s a white sheet
off white
maybe grey
Celery Street
I dream of the house often.
Square white with a large porch,
plain wooden floors.
Orange Snow
In a small town in Russia
the snow has turned orange.
It smells of rotting feet.
Life into Stone
I must move the stone, she says,
though it is a mountain with no footholds,
We Move Forward
The floor is sticky, the lights dim
A familiar Latin beat taps out the soundtrack
Municipal Pool
We could get away by ourselves when we turned twelve,
could necktie beach towels, corsage the octagonal badge, the
get-away made on flip-flops if we lived closed enough.
The Frequency of a Periodic Function
Silence won’t stand
for itself. It won’t
The Man Who Decided To See
And so he began. And for the first time saw
the boy whose bicycle sped by his porch,
then the yellowing leaf on the back step.
Separate Vacations
She’s away from home,
but won’t say for how
long. Her husband is out
Alive or Dead
You are either alive or dead
one or the other
there is a clear boundary
distinct like the River Styx
Wreck
in tender onyx,
under pressure,
cooking,
the sun spits
it’s splits onto
the ship that
peels like
a croissant.
Cosmological Sonnets
An impact of two black holes is said to produce more energy
than all of the suns in the universe. And we may observe
Mixing Your Legends
After the wedding, as bride
and groom depart, you muddle
your legends and turn yourself
into a pillar of salt. A glimpse
Six Days: A Creation Myth
The markings of the world:
disc of desert blur,
concentric sphere imagining itself
divided and conquered.
A man’s rusted compass,
a woman’s hint of blue shadow.
In the Kingdom of Perpetual Night
where all their lost, original songs
squeeze the bellows of death,
sing with mouths of sun & flint
such lullabies of dread
How The World Does Not Work
Isn’t this what we all do, sooner or later,
try to take back the mistakes, the words said
in anger, the sins that haunt our dreams?
Wild Parrots
They fly in flocks at dusk,
shrill caws of mourning
echoing through the still sky.
Love Potion
Deep fried everything, buttered biscuits, hot grits with syrup,
black-eyed peas, corn bread,
bacon drippings collected in coffee cans
D.S. al coda
Love is a melody
that in the silence
Primrose Hill
as they link in
70s raincoat logic
Fortune Cookies
Here’s a woman hired to write proverbs
Must be creative, inspired, concise
he who climbs a ladder begins at the first step
Pruning
The storm didn’t knock out our power,
but left twigs and leaves scattered.
Simile
When I kissed
your clavicle, gooseflesh
popped like tiny
naked chicks peeping
Exhumation
“Take your father home,”
says the gravedigger, holding out
a sack of bones. In Mexico City
Native Shapes
The tree detritus falls,
dry and oblique, into piles
on the road that from a distance
look like armadillos, possums, feral cats,
When
coyote, Cooper’s hawk, flattened feathers
lifting in the breeze. But now, just ahead
in a loud gale of traffic at next tight turn,
In the Dunkin Donuts Where the Virgin Mary Appeared on an Apple Fritter
Every day since that report,
I’ve ordered a fritter
and sat by the window
Robot Prom
The kids nowadays spend twelve hundred easy
dressing their robots for the senior prom.
All May and June, ballrooms shake as these lumbering
robots dance and cavort, flirt, sneak booze, and,
Relative
Do we really need
another Liam, Noah, or Mason?
Emma, Charlotte, or Harper?
(I could go on…)
I Was in the Shower When the Rapture Happened
I stepped out, dripping wet in my fist-
cinched towel, and everybody was gone.
Opened the window: silent streets, cars
idling at stoplights, lonely blowing breeze.
All Day Protection
My deodorant boasts
“all day protection”
but it can’t halt a bullet,
What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?
Young misfortunes won’t sustain the narrative
of history. The why of it doesn’t matter,
just the waking up with clothes torn,
blood drying like heavy paint on legs, palms,
A Daylight Nocturnal
The day’s deep midnight only this tick of clock
ghosted, then fast forgotten, so fast
Squiggles and Me
I think I got her now.
I bring over colored felt tip markers, non-toxic, washable–
only they don’t wash too good.
Honeymoon
Laughter flings itself on the walls
of a derelict Spanish village.
Sunday
Sitting in the hoped-for warmth of a spring eve,
unseen jays screech from neighbouring garden trees.
SAT Sestina
The students’ attention span is 3 feet,
a narrow beam 3 feet less than their dreams.
Black Box
evening fare to paris this poem departed years ago nosed
north over rio#s dark lagoon leaving home and coming home
The Hosta
Rain after five months’ drought –
some gesture of amends –
swells the roots of the hosta,
June 27, 1970
We drove a 68 Buick Skylark
until its wheels no longer turned;
A Mother’s Hope
My hero will return
to bear hugs,
to warm kisses.
Retirement
The sun came up
silver and cold
like a dime
in the palm
of the ominous
November sky.
Visitor
I was trying, once again,
to read St. Augustine
when the door buzzer buzzed
Blur
All weather is local, they say,
just like politics.
Hanging Gardens
I write about Iraq
when her skin was
carmine, perfumed with
freshly picked celosias
Bomb Lake
Two Taliban brothers huddle in a hand-scraped trench. They fire pot shots
at a passing convoy of eight trucks, plated and squat armadillos. The bullets
leaving empty
Two Buddhas once stood like giants
in the Afghan province of Bamiyan
until the Taliban blasted them down.
Arlington West in Santa Barbara
Sunday morning
light glides
beneath hem of fog
Iraq Reflection
WMDs? No but
RPGs, bullets,
Co-ed Infantry
Not conscripted or coerced
all willing players in a nation’s force.
I Am Nothing and Neither
I am brittle when the day springs.
My anchored tongue of aged iron
tastes of brown rust. It rests
Closure
It is not about the stars
nor the sadness
in a constellation.
The Long Struggle
The terrible and restless quiet
that preceded the thick wild smoke
and the toppling Jenga tower.
Non-Combat Related Incidents and Other Lies
There was no ballad
for you in Balad, no
eulogy tending your ears
Flashback
I see tractor-trailer tires rumbling
over the khaki-tan carcass of a deer—
From the Cradle
Eighteen years old and off to war;
my mother broke in the idea
Special Forces
We walked together into the darkness
Of an undisclosed location.
It Went On
It went on, they said.
The road to Baghdad,
The one you saw on the news
With the abandoned cars.
Meditations of a Sniper
They sent me up this tower three days ago,
Just my rifle, rations, and a radio.