for Aaron & Niesha
Help me sing my sorrows
into smallness.
Help me—
Turn me
into thee.
I shelter
& summon you.
I will dance
you also.
I have only these two lives
to meet you in.
This hand.
How long then.
This ring.
Answer anything—
Husband me
into heaven.
Belief our bouquet—
Wedding not what
we say, but do.
Almost there.
We’ll wife our way—
Meet me in the middle
of the air.
26 SEPTEMBER 2009
Life is a near
death experience.
You can go
to hell, I’m goin
to Texas. It costs
more than a penny
to make a penny.
A dollar for your
thoughts, & a dream.
People have to breathe
where they live.
A town big
as her hair.
Aren’t there more
worlds than three?
Texas is finally
free, but not its lunch.
Cleave can mean
to sunder
or to meet. The threat
must be imminent.
Look & see—
the daffodils, the rain sage
upright, the high
desert, fire warnings,
the scorched trees. Cloven,
clove, clave, cleavage,
cleft. Every day’s
a lottery. Hoods,
blood. The death
of the Canadian penny
means we all may need
to round up. Leaves,
left. Bereave,
bereft.
30 MARCH 2012
i.m. Jake Adam York
It is heavy,
a hog, you need
to stay
up all night, nursing
the fire like a beer—
or rise early
like we did, that first time
you taught me how
to drag December
awake into flame,
lighting pecan
& hickory passed
between cinder block
& ash. Do you dig
a pit? No—
we build one
last house
for the huge sow
who we know
rooted & ranged
the given ground.
Head on, scrubbed, split,
the pig’s skin
crackles, a communion
of it—no spit,
just shoveling coals
like a locomotive
engineer, boilerman,
rounder—
Casey Jones
mounted to his cabin
& he took his farewell
trip to the promised land—
the smoke everywhere
like a prayer, clinging
your clothes for days
we do not wish
to wash away. To share
the weight, to wear it—
to honor the creature
by devouring it
whole—we know she
would return
the favor. He looked
at his watch
& his watch
was slow. Steam rises sweet
among the maples
& bamboo. How
do you know
it is done? The hog
will tell you.
CHRISTMAS EVE DAY 2012
i.m. Lucille Clifton
1936–2010
Nothing on.
Only sequels now
you’ll never see—
though maybe that’s lucky—
or men wearing blades
on their feet, thin
as the ice they race
across. Once,
among your boxes, my hands
lifted most all
you wrote—saving
what you saved—sifting
while you fed letters
to the black
trash bag. We all
need rescue—
I learnt that from you—
your words
a life preserver
ringing you—
no halo. How
already I miss you.
No word
yet on the late news—
I should have known
only you
tonight would send south
such deep, bluish snow.
Out of nowhere, over-
night, my ceiling stained.
The fragments that fall.
The dogs & their bones
& barks busy the hall.
In the kitchen glasses break
barely touched.
What’s the rush?
Sleeping light, the sounds
I now know
are only my own.
It’s all too much—
the floorboards complain
when touched,
loud as my drunken
downstairs neighbor
shouting over
his arguing TV. Above,
I’ve grown silent
as wine. Careful
as the broken glass
I pick up slowly so’s
not to cut. My ceiling a dark
brown eye—water somewhere
enters, divining.
Like a syringe
the thermometers empty,
words turn to mercury—
break & leak.
We believe in our
breath because
cold now, we can see it.
What to
say now? A truck
beep-beep-beeps
backing up, covered
in salt & dirt pleading
WASH ME.
These are days to ignore
whatever covers us, making sure
winter won’t win.
Green beneath
the snow drifts. My hands
numb writing this.
If you can, fall.
If you can’t, call
& I’ll come. I’ll be the one
with the red
handkerchief spilling
from my hand.
This world I’ve found
is a farm
fresh egg—brown,
or green, bluish—
small & not all
it’s cracked up
to be. You knew this
world blooms
its twin yolks
into a clear bowl—
once opened
it must
become something else.
Winter, even here.
For you I won’t
observe no moment
of silence, my tongue
a polite
riot, a flock
of teeth like frost
spidering the panes.
This voice, yours, holds
the sound of plenty ice
thawing all
at once. The twang
of things shouted
lowercase. Today,
walking without
a hat, looking to find
where the cold
comes from, I saw
instead this rebuttal
scrawled along
a wall: Nope.
The sound of snow—slipping
from the brown embrace
of the trees—meets
the hush below.
i.m. Seamus Heaney 1939–2013
Your voice in my ear
like the sea. I heard
your last words—
in Latin no less—
were Do not fear.
(I keep wanting
to write are.)
I hear Noli timere
everywhere—eyes, nose,
summoned lungs.
You knew many
untied tongues—
even some dead ones—
that you bid sing.
What’s left now
to praise? Everything.
In your class we began
with the Seven Stages
of Man, or Woman, or even
us students, green,
yet that was the point—
Write a poem of infans,
you said. Without speech
it means & mine the next week
had a slave child, hid,
who didn’t know just how
old he was. It wasn’t
bad, the poem, as might be—
me eighteen—& I still recall
not exactly what you said
but how it sent me
away thinking maybe
one day, I too,
might speak. What
we think we don’t
always thank
but you strove to—
a nod, a lean,
sideburns blazing. Even
your ears had wings.
All my favorite poets
are dead, I said,
meaning you
& her & him
whom I was lucky
I once knew. And still
maybe I do—
though like most
almost orphans,
I know how
alone we all
must learn to sing.
This the way
the world begins—
with a word,
with a light
hand, like you had,
a head sometime
heavy & some verb
& verve to write—
a ship to right.
On your back you sailed.
Across this earth to which
our feet are nailed.
SEPTEMBER 2013
for Cole & Julie
Before we
had children, we thought
we understood
the world—now that
I do
I understand
the earth. Today
is another birth.
21 SEPTEMBER 2013
Don’t dream it’s over you don’t
know what’s it’s like it’s like that
& that’s the way it be near me be near
close to you crazy for you got the look
what you done done a do run run
run away run away she was lying
in the grass & she was it something
I said I know what boys like a prayer
a virgin girls just wanna boys
don’t cry don’t don’t you
want me don’t fall on me O
what a feelin’ more than keep
feeling fascination hush hush
voices carry too shy too shy close
to me & you don’t you
forget about hold me now don’t try
to live your life in one day it’s my
life nobody walks in LA woman
every breath you take you take
my breath away there’s always
something in the water
does not compute no new
tale to tell me if you still care
computer love went to her house
to bust a move & had to leave
real early tell me tell me
how to be you & me when I’m alone
in my room sometimes I stare at where
are you calling from call me
tell me fall on me let me be your time
will reveal won’t give me time I’ll
stop the world shut your mouth
on mine I can’t I can’t I can’t
stand losing cause this
is thriller thriller night fine
young pretty young thing is ooh
I like it sends chills up you gots
to chill party up you got to let
me know nobody loves you I am
only human & need you back
in love again bring on
the dancing let’s dance let’s
stay together & dance this mess
around dance dance dance
see how we are family I got
all I need to get by your side
to side back & forth word up for
the down stroke me everybody
wants you let’s go crazy let’s pretend
we’re married let’s wait awhile
again spin me right round baby
I’m a star under the milky way
tonight.
2013
I want to be awake
when the world ends.
I want to be my friend
who rose to an empty
house, even his grandmother
& her worn cross gone
& thought it was the rapture,
that he hadn’t crossed over.
Let me rip my shirt
as he did & tear into the street
hollering. Let me hear
only my blood beat this morning
in the rain before the dawn—
no one on the line.
Later, when they return,
let those I love who left
have only gone to the store,
running errands, this errant
unebbing life. After,
let what I’ve torn—
the myself I mourn—
be mended & start
over, like a scar,
or star.