The Body
3
Category Archives: Poems
Blue-Grey Place
BLUE-GREY PLACE
every morning the same morning the same squawk of
the ironing board unfolding the clink of spoon against
bowl his oatmeal like tar sugarless the same
voices spilling over it midwestern dialects most bland
therefore most pleasing to that secret place where
proximity stands for comfort repetition the golden
status quo of Good Morning America a car bomb
rocked North Ireland overnight but first how to fold your
linen napkins into swans of origami and lying in bed
as the water ran the swish of steam his hand pressing
hard into Dockers he’d complain to no one about the
pleats about a woman’s work the silence of the
house what he wouldn’t give for a blowjob and a bagel
right now or just a day off his feet and down the
hall in my dark room under comic book sheets
call it the shadow of his second-hand solitude call it
prescience or longing call it letting go or grabbing
on to patriarchy his villainy stripped away with my
presence but for the first time and every time I
wanted to be him in forty years I wanted his grey hair
and grunting acceptance I wanted every day to begin
and end just like it did: bright morning on the yellow
walls warm steam from an iron the day’s news a
garbled redundancy on a small screen of black and white
Advice
ADVICE
Think buckshot:
Not the rifle,
but the musket.
Ear-horn of
powder, arm-
deep in black
soot. Think
flint lock
and flash pan.
Muzzle blast.
Hollow point.
Don’t paint
the rounds,
don’t ready
the bayonet.
No aim
is necessary;
nothing is true.
Think percussion
cap. Any metal
as shrapnel.
Any spark as
lightning;
be bottled.
Hiking Alone
HIKING ALONE
I shimmy out on sandstone and slate rock,
past the soft ledges where the last shrubs
grow. I’ve got my camera, unshuttered and
silent, ready to take back with me whatever
I’ve come here for—sore arms and a sunburn,
blue sky like something new. At the floor
of the canyon far below a stream flows from
nowhere to nothing, from one unseen cavern
to the next. I could think of a fish gazing up
at that quick flash of sky as it passes through
the white froth of the rapids, the silky silver
where the water pools. Oh, I am grey, I could
have him say, personified—moved, even
full of emotion. Oh, my scales are golden-
green—I could give him color just as easily
in the kind God of my imagination before
plunging him back into his comfortable
dark, this eyelet the only opening for miles.
How easy it is to paint epiphany, I think, like
the gaudy sunset now settling above the tree-
line I could call a bruise or a blush, windburn
on a woman’s cheek, though it’s only the
scattering of dust in low light, what one shakes
from a shoe, combs out of stiffened hair.
How easy, too, it would be to slip off this ledge,
to get lost out here, fall asleep on this rock and
let the cold night wake me. I could hold out
on figs and freshwater; I could chew the fibrous
bark off a Joshua tree. I could love the moon
like a mountain lion, stalk shadows, sharpen
sticks. Come morning I’d find the dirt road
and then my car at the end of it. Brush the dust
off my pants. Buckle myself back into habit
with a metal click like the sound of my one hand
clapping for joy—however briefly—at all we
ever wanted: a little darkness to climb out of.
–from American Fractal
first appeared in Confrontation
The Sense of Being Looked At
THE SENSE OF BEING LOOKED AT
Around the corner, footsteps. A heel
clicking stone. The slosh of loose gravel
and then the no-sound itself conspicuous—
even the crickets hold their breath, hush
their rough legs while deep inside houses
women reading bedtime stories pause
to change their endings, one good wish
at a time. A car sails by with its lights off,
but Elvis on the radio still crooning after all
these years, still young—like nothing’s gone
wrong. When you turn, the trees spring back,
defensive. They point to each other all at once,
a dozen limbs like the Scarecrow’s saying,
He went that way. No, no, he went that way.
–from American Fractal
first published in Cranky