Fortunes
“Her fortunes rise and fall, / ebb like Ohio River tides.”
The widow of a handsome Greek
stands in the kitchen
of her brick home.
A cigarette burns between
slim fingers,
smoke dancing up to the ceiling.
The dogs she loves in place of children
linger at her feet,
quiet and content.
Free hand on her hip,
she leans against a counter,
listening to her baseball team
give up a run.
She saw them win a World Series, once,
a long time ago,
and she sat in the stands
draped in golden regalia,
hair too coifed to
entertain a cap,
and she screamed and cheered
despite herself, until
her throat went raw.
Her fortunes rise and fall,
ebb like Ohio River tides.
Right now,
as the sun dips below an Appalachian foothill,
she knows they are going,
going,
gone.
Love is something of a jackalope
“an amalgamation of nature, / a thing which should not be.”
It lives in a wood-lined burrow,
collecting gum wrappers
and aluminum foil.
It hangs its trophies on the walls,
makes sculptures of the tin.
Rabbit body, stag antler,
tiny, careful hands;
an amalgamation of nature,
a thing which should not be.
Yet, I see it there before me,
gathering glass shards
and fishing line, crafting
chandeliers to illuminate forest
homes, refracting light
for jackalope families to see by.
On birthdays, its search expands.
Perfect bits of cloth,
discarded sewing needles, buttons,
the bows from Communion shoes,
and it labors into the night.
Many-faced inventor,
seasoned animancer,
come morning it bears a gift.
Presents it to the wife,
the husband, the child.
And I’ve watched this happen
from the periphery of it all,
a ghost in the eaves
of a life which can never be mine.
I, too, am a creature
which should un-be.
Am the hand and eye which are not.
Nothing will ever be
quite so perfect.
Harbor
“The sentinel of the age / births the harbinger of the next”
The sentinel of the age
births the harbinger of the next,
and the contractions of place
and time shake the root
of the world.
Soon, the ocean will swell,
will carry the embryo out;
it will writhe and bleat and
thrash itself, if only to escape
the preordained return.
After, songs of silver and fairy-tongue
shall soothe its fraying mind, shall
breathe wind into lung once more.
But, for now,
the sentinel cradles its daughter,
tracing familiar lines
on a new face — already playing the oracle.
Already weeping for the
coming whirlpools.
Quarantine, or How to Change the World From Home
“The water can change the rock”
The water can change the rock,
touch it gently,
manipulate its shape like love
in the heat of evening.
You are the rock;
I am the evening.
Our movement is stalactite dripping.
Together, we shrink
as lingering dew,
blisters forming on the soles of our feet.
You cave, you bend, you
shake and whimper
in time with the mid-March breeze.
I can only watch,
sunset lingering in the
crevices above.
Soul-song
“The wind batters us / but all you see is an angel.”
The wind batters us
and all you can see is an angel.
You speak mercy
and it smacks of death.
Relief to you is the tolling bell,
the bronze and brass of seraph horns.
Never the healer in white.
Never the pupil in black.
The wing stings our eyes
but your gaze only falls from halos —
light and glory honed dagger-sharp.
You keep your blade pointed low.
It gathers no blood until it falls.
There is no name for women like her
“In the depths of a mineral mountain / there is a mother”
In the depths of a mineral mountain
there is a mother with
blood on her hands
and a stone casket upon a daiis,
under the moon of a virgin queen.
Under the scar of failing flesh,
she buries the missing pieces
of a child she loved like silk.
Satin blindfolds rub the temples
of the magic-blood goddess, her
feral, gnashing teeth hidden
behind the ruby lips of temperance.
Somewhere on the other side
of a raging blue-green ocean,
the gushing of her son’s jugular vein
left a stain the size of womb-water
on the cobblestones of a foreign city.
Temperance is toeing the spider-thread line
between walking into the ocean
with millstones around your wrists
and climbing to the top of an
obsidian mountain, soles sliding
through the igneous ash.
Under the lightscreen,
under the scrying pool,
under the moonlight screams,
a child sleeps forever
in a sanctum of mourning,
watching with glass-blown eyes
as the children of other mothers
walk barefoot into the sea.
On violence
“This is the eye of a needle”
And I think there is a way
we lose grip on the slippery slope
of violence;
we thread the eye of the smallest needle,
plunge the point into our palms
say: see, this is pain,
this error of veins and pulses.
This is the way our houses burn down;
this is the ash falling snow-form
on the lawns of all our neighbors
while they pull their curtains tighter
with ice-white knuckles;
this is the tangerine glow
of engulfment;
this is the darkness of blood on cement.
Our pins could never spill so much
from us and our clutched pearls.
This is the eye of a needle,
a space so small
breath does not pass through,
and we, like moons, orbit around this place,
never turning our face to the sun.
This is the ember
that settles in our hands,
smoking hell-sent bud,
like a seed if seeds grew death,
like a morning if dawning stars could die,
like an ocean wave as it seals off the sky
from the eyes of the landlocked man.
Jack is the English name for everyone
“Doesn’t it feel so eolian?”
To sow the seeds of
laughter, tossing jokes like
seeds out the office window.
I hope I awake to a
beanstalk. Something towering
and full of footholds.
To climb through vapor
and reach an enormous place,
full of sweet golden harps.
Doesn’t it feel so eolian?
To let the wind pour out
of your throat, to trust
the music like you trust
the soil.
I hope the smell of my blood
reminds you of here.
I hope these echoes from
a computer screen
find root when the spring
petals fall.
And he chased her until dawn broke
“The moon was new last night”
The moon was new last night
as it crested over Ohio,
and I thought I saw the echo
of Tsukuyomi, up there
between the parting clouds.
His mistake was wanting beauty
when there was none to be had;
food and art combined like
winter and sun. Now, we are
waxing—moving closer to becoming
full again.