albatross and the dove

night grows longer and sky foreshortens
around his full, eleven foot spread.
worthy, gallant, crowned. he welcomes
his next, thousand-mile traverse.

point after point precision shots
ring in echoes at his hind. dark handshakes
and thunderous deeds fall short. sorrow,
this soldier’s soulmate, is left
to shoulder
the untucked children
balancing on feathered tips.

bleached horizon frames
her silent peace. she proposes truce,
beak with bone, clear with storm.
a marriage in tandem flight,
mass destruction with living reprieve.

written in response to Victoria @ dversepoets.com and in honor of memorial day 

basic anthropology

did you keep your eyes open
the first time, even as he eyed
the chandelier’s pull chain
in your basement apartment?
he brought yellow alstromerias,
two plastic champagne flutes, and
Andre Extra Dry. stretching
evening’s canvas across
the next hour. one little wish,
the one he said he’d been wishing for days.
thing is, you didn’t really like
his shoes. shined and ready.
the shoes wanted crystal,
stemware at the very least.
this bothered you. the way
one easy wish might be granted, quickly
as blowing out birthday candles
or holding your breath for the distance
across the pool in the deep end,
eyes clamped tightly shut.

remedy

Mama drew it inside this morning
after last night’s thunderstorm.
a dot-dash curtain of silver. pulled it
into the house with her two bare hands.
slid it down the hall to his old bedroom,
sky’s water on bare oak floorboards.
concentric circles multiplying
in their own puddles.

she paused every so often
to wipe damp, salt sweat with her wrist
from a forehead wrinkled with things to solve.
then took it up again,
the immeasurable drizzle.

dust on Emery’s twin comforter,
unworn sneakers, and plastic bottle collection
had become a flatbed of heavy.
she wanted to corner the unremembered:
“He licked his owies to taste the blood,
kept scabs and dead flies
in a box under his nightstand.”
she wanted to rinse it all down,
refresh it to clear snapshots of happy
and had brought in the soft,
steady rain to assist her.

for Marie

freshly skimming the lake
over sculpin
and stickleback. slicing
through hoists of urban drawbridges.
rimpling clover and dew, northerly
to my open window.
how long did it toss its carriage
at the sill, watching
my nostrils rise and fall?
what dream threads
did its supple oration replace
at my next breath?
like a newborn babe, closed-eyed
knowing her mother’s skin,
I felt for scent and in it
found recollection
of earth’s first orbit.

red

flouncy, pink prints
and wild magentas are excess
in the face of stone-mouthed cabernets.
ripened with passion and pride,
old red’s story
is thicker than sheep’s wool.
wiser than a poly-blend. red
pulses to hemorrhage,
holds nothing back.
flows with such certainty
that when you die,
you won’t think to question
whether to be buried in the cool,
sage green with honeyed, rayon sheen
or choose, with expert frequency,
a red. to effuse your afterlife,
threaten pale sapling ghosts,
and pour fat syrups
of your ancestral veins
for those who have yet to arrive.

woods

ancient fern’s
hallelujah
fans her wholesome amphitheater.
gangly roots
tighten to her slopes.
bunchy salal, clavicle-high stinging nettles
lean. above the soft under-pawings
of mole pilings.

chee-eeps surround
strike
after strike
of golden, vapored light.
and her steep, stretching hums
wind
along the one
continuous spine of earth
she has formed
so kindly
beneath our feet.

casual guidance

admit you felt me there,

in the cotton candy, mourning dove breath

next to your cool pillow. and I’ll admit
to seeing your face in the bottom
of my Las Vegas Casino shot glass. staring back.
hot teeth, behemoth belching
“who dares?”

a wrap

gauzy cotton cloth- white in the middle,
slightly yellowed on the edges- if you look closely.
crisscrossed under my armpits and over my
shoulders. i want to tear at it, rip it off.
i want to swing upside down in a skirt, on the lichened limb
over by the soccer play field. i want to wriggle in warm mud.
alone. i want to be bigger, rounder, open-mouthed.

Running 10 miles on a trail in the woods will bring relief.
60 minutes of hot yoga. a short headstand.
times i don’t want it to relax, i want to name it
this other-worldly force that wraps me
in consonant free whispers
and milk chocolate covered arpeggios.
it is torrid and semi-sweet,
a bit humiliating. this song, or want
for one.

single space (ll)

“It’s nice in here,”
he says, pointing towards his feet.
both sneakers, laces rubbed raw
from intimate contact
with the pavement he sleeps on,
are surrounded by a geometrical area
sunnier than the sidewalk.

pant cuffs slinging in the wind,
he regularly returns
grocery carts to their racks
and sells Real Change newspapers for $1
outside the market on 15th St.
above him, bellies of clouds hang,
smudged. no break in their layers.
no obvious pathway through, for the
shapely lightform he stands in.

I move closer.
his round, wire rimmed glasses
are polished, clear.
“in here, you stay warm.” he gestures
with the limp stack of papers,
inviting me into his body length,
scalene triangle of light.

“they build those so tall now,
so close together,”
he jerks his chin skyward,
laughing at the buildings
while his coat nods up and down
on his narrow shoulders,
“you gotta look real hard
for a place like this.”

yesterday

suppose i leave you
on the other side of my front door,
your jagged bangs and blunt-cut coat fringe
making ellipses in the windy dusk.
suppose I send you packing
with Juice Newton’s angel and
leopard print jackets.

then, what place would there be for histrionics in my spare bedroom?
who would re-read your inked dates in my day-planner?

shredded tights and big hair,
like collapsed parachutes, abandon
might and muscle
as I place you, folded
into the aqua blue suitcase. tied
with wizened pursestrings. blown
from my marble-tiled threshold
into timeless dimensions
more welcoming.