and the perennial bulbs are hard underground.
Down here, my family is old enough for a boat ride now,
and this salty trip erodes many pains.
But in the ocean spray, I’m months away,
maybe days,
from someone realizing I’m a fraud.
Faker wife, infertile mom,
dramatic daughter
who can’t even cast my line far enough in calm waters.
But I carry on with all of these,
because pretending, trying, is still doing.
We have two daughters:
one looks like me, one looks like him.
And if they look up to me
then I’m authentic
and forgiven
enough.
Rebecca Irene
Woodpecker
Slit nostrils sense
what lies beneath.
This is what you live for—
sick wood giving way
beetle’s squirm
on long sticky tongue
the swallowing.
You leave behind tunnels
paradise for squirrels
nests for smaller birds.
How many holes
can a tree endure?
You recall your beloved
White Pine.
Her curved trunk at road’s bend
her thick sap weeping
every time you came a-calling.
Crow Raven
If you don’t know
the differences
between Crow and Raven
what good are you to me?
I find the secret of being
in nature’s details.
To you, they are a waste of time.
Crow marries for love.
Raven for money.
Crow gives any dying creature
water from her beak.
Raven pecks fading eyes out.
And if you had ever lain in forests
against tree trunks
felt bark press hard towards
your back’s thick skin
Crow would have watched
you with pity
Raven with menace.
Then as Raven shat on you in disgust
Crow would have offered you strength—
hair and bone
life and breath
fear and death
twig and stone—
of smaller creatures.
You would have recognized
that sweet saltiness in your mouth
my love.
For it is what you have been
feeding on for years.
Sitting Duck
All the others
sensed danger.
The dogs weren’t
even quiet
for God’s sake
and little Billy
shot off
his gun for fun
miles away.
All the others
knew to fly.
You were
mid-paddle
when steel
tore open
preened down.
Your last
dying wonder:
why red rainbows smothered you
as others touched blue of sky.
Humming Bird
I loved you when I was young
watched you sip sugar water
hover over my bright shirt.
There is no more sugar water now
or bright shirt
and I have aged terribly.
Poor trade for the genuine
is what I get.
Greta running nine miles
snorting nine lines
climaxing nine times
faster faster faster.
Greta starving
binging and barfing
chewing pills
thinner thinner thinner.
Greta drinking dancing
trying to sing.
No magic—
between monotony
and mayhem.
Summer Robin
How they search for her when the trees sigh for outer green.
How they smile for her when the stalks strain for sunny sheen.
How they supplicate for her when rains signal for spring clean.
Wonder, adoration, delight, give way to
pulling another worm—isn’t she fat enough?
Singing the same old song—hasn’t she said enough?
Springtime is so obviously over, my dear.
Really. A summer robin should have the good taste
to know when she ought to fly away.
Why, just last night I spotted one that caught my eye.
I almost lost my head until I saw her gray feathers
and wrinkles and wanting in the August sun.
Savannah Grant
And Not As Shame
I want to wear your memory
as a red overcoat
the one you tried to throw away
but I keep it anyway
even though it’s too big
(I shrunk it in the wash
but you hate it when
I do that)
July’s Herald
I wonder if the dog knew
you were drinking
weaving through piles
of mail and clothes
I remember the color
of that carpet at the top of the stairs
dirty tan lighter than I imagine
perhaps
the way I remember it is disorder
staring out a window
no line I can follow but
one jagged through the house
and in the doorway of your bedroom
I felt the tug away from you
a joint trying to dislocate
Unmention II
the first time you tried to lock me inside
was maybe the fourth time you decided to hit me
but the first time my head hit the wall
I learned how to block you
because you always aimed for the head
a long time ago you put a hole in my dad’s eardrum
he used to say it was from ear infections
On The Brink II
at 1:38am I read that you buried the dog
in the back yard
that’s what happens at the house
we bury dogs
I sent a pseudo-prayer from my bed tearless
said she was better off dead
but she had you to take care of her
while she lost her brain and her hips
to the floorboards and grey frigid March
she was nice to lie next to while I knew her
On Returning in June
two years and the cat’s still fat
the room’s no longer mine
the wallpaper’s gone and the desk
isn’t under the windows
I remember every thing
I ever lost there
in that basement
I always find new blankets and shirts
I forgot to take with me
I’m sure there are moments
that haven’t moved yet
the ghosted sound
of a wineglass set on a chest of drawers
a wasp’s nest in a railing
a day’s quiet
rupture
Michael Hugh Lythgoe
Titian Left No Paper Trail
No sonnets, nor letters like Michelangelo.
Still we feel the oblique motion, the atmospheric
colors of his martyred St. Lawrence, his Assumption;
landscapes with river valleys and Alpine peaks,
ancient Roman myths, a sumptuous nude goddess.
Dawn is uncertain, pagan, shadowy.
Sudanese killers and thieves
are poachers in Kenya, for tusks of ivory.
>
A mammoth bull elephant pushes trees
down, forages with body guards to survive.
The vulnerable fade like ivory magnolia blooms.
Everything is fragile. Whole forests burn.
Antarctica is the most stable continent.
Titian’s frescoes last. His late works show rough
loose brushwork: St. Jerome in a barren desert.
Art appears impotent to face down violence.
Marsyas played a double pipe but lost
his hide—flayed by a jealous Apollo,
King Midas watches. Ovid says so.
To study topography and meteorology,
is to feel baroque fault lines tremble at night.
Beside me in the dark my lover labors to breathe.
I listen to learn, labor to believe.
Titian expires during the plague. He paints allegories.
His self portrait does not look us in the eyes.
Buddha In Brass
A sleeping Buddha occupies my mind,
and half-obscures its whole religion
by mere presence, contemplative and blind,
the intolerable comedy goes on.
—Peter Levi, Water, Rock & Sand
Buddha did not come to me on the Silk
Road but in Saigon. A Chinese merchant
sold him to me. The war was still young.
I was young. Buddha is well-traveled, a veteran.
His figure fattens in meditation, brass zen.
He knows Indo-China, wars, the French,
now the Americans. Buddhists set themselves on fire.
We bleed; Vietnamese bleed; we leave brass shells,
bomb holes, poison in rice paddy, napalm on jungle.
Buddha waits in temples, reclines in Thailand. He shows
his teeth, forged, formed in a desperate foundry, weighed
down with lead & iron, polished shiny—like brass
army insignia, buckles, .45 caliber bullet casings
recycled for art, joss sticks, a zen garden, a vet’s
bookshelf. Tibetan monks light themselves ablaze
in China. If Buddha is happy, rub his ample belly
for good luck. I pray to God. Buddha
is no god. He was a rich prince
who gave up his soft life to roam and beg.
Burmese Buddhists visit violence on Muslims.
Buddha & I have a history. We each have
a war or two to wear like a hairshirt. We each
seek peace. We sit & stare in the study.
I feel like Buddha, contemplative & blind.
White Dove In The Desert
Nine miles from Tucson, some Pilgrims
find the Church; it stands alone: White
Dove of Sonoran Desert. The rez
is a troubled home for the tribe living on the border,
on both sides. The Papago met Fr. Kino, who rode
in Jesuit robes, on a mission: prayer.
The missionary made a space for prayer,
in a dry place not far from Tucson, for pilgrims.
Franciscans followed the Jesuits, who rode
away leaving order in prickly pear paste, adobe white
walls old as suffering saguaro cacti. The border
is bone-dry; Rio Santa Cruz, on the rez,
runs dry. Illegals pass through the Papago Rez,
flee mayhem and madness to trade terror
for peaceful prayer in the White Dove. The border
is brutal, metal sculptures, homage for pilgrims:
the Nogales side in Mexico is hung with white
crosses, migrants killed crossing. Mormons once rode
by in a historic brigade. Franciscans rode,
with knots on cords, around robes, around Papago rez.
The cool White Dove, walled in white
wears a cord in the facade. Pray no predator. No terror.
No beheadings, Mules, Coyotes, cartels. Pilgrims
eat fry bread at taco stands near the border.
Feel the heat: afterburners above the border;
patrols with night scopes. Where blackrobes rode,
ICE finds torched holes in the fence. Pilgrims
pack prayers; smugglers pack weed, pass the rez;
illegals on the run are prey; the predator is terror.
Prey seeks prayers, under clouds dove-white.
The Pima Air Museum preserves war planes white-
hot, bone-dry; A-10 Thunderbolt pilots train. Border
in infrared sights—dehydrated souls journey in terror.
Migrants die with empty water bottles. A blackrobe rode
to bless St. Xavier del Bac, Arizona icon, on the rez.
The landscape is trashed with plastic. Pilgrims
revere a statue in glass sarcophagus, a blackrobe,
uncorrupted saint in his grave. White church on border
thirsty, contrails over rez; pilgrims pray, flee terror.
Aleppo Looks Like Hell
Rubble & ruins: a bottomless well.
Well, reports of the here-after
are here—heaven appeared to a doctor;
he was in a coma. Aleppo is hell.
Hell is a war with cluster bombs.
Keep your eye on the balls, lethal.
Not toys. Mortars fall over borders. Ask us.
St. Paul had a fit on the road to Damascus.
A ten-year old girl was murdered in Colorado.
There was a killing in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The Taliban just shot a school girl. Terror
on a school bus in the Swat Valley. Refugees
come & go talking of Aleppo. The wounded
girl is also in a coma. What does she see?
Drones have a Gorgon Stare.
It is presidential to order a kill, pick
the hit list. In Revelation, horses breathe fire.
Seven seals. Like helicopters in Abbottabad.
Getaway? Up a ladder? Angels are utility workers.
The ancients used ladders to climb closer
to heaven, up levels of adobes, Canyon De Chelly.
Mud roofs. Artists like to sit on roofs. So do snipers.
They paint the stars to stare in minds’ eyes.
Or, sight a human heart in their cross-hairs,
or, roll barrel bombs down on Kurds & Christians.
A priest told us the special machine
outside of church could lift us to heaven.
It was a joke. We knew it was to lift
workers up to the rose window, to fix
the stained glass, part of the Bible’s
parables to elevate all souls to heaven.
What of Evil in Aleppo? Does the Devil do
the killing? No. It is human gunmen. Who helps
the wounded? Who buries the dead? Who kills,
who cares, who executes, who shoots on a bus?
Is it us? Is Damascus full of men & women like us?
How do we get away from here? In wind and fire.
Pick & choose. Win or lose. Be bulletproof. Wear Kevlar.
Ascend in a hot air balloon fiesta, above Albuquerque.
Sheba’s Trees Bleed For The Magi
A scent of Sheba’s fragrance lingers in the souk: incense.
The lines in the sand are drawn by caravans.
Arabia & Yemen share a jihadi desert waste.
Once the Queen of Sheba grew thirsty.
Water is more prized than gold, seek an oasis.
Caravans move phallic blades & bombs from Yemen
besieged by jihadis in uncivil wars between Yemeni
tribes, in Sheba’s kingdom; she gifted incense
to King Solomon in his wise oasis.
Sheba ruled a kingdom of caravans.
Her scraggly trees
in the desert thirst.
Thorny myrrh trees endure in desert waste,
The Magi follow stars they do not waste.
Today jihadis learn explosives in Yemen.
A reddish-brown antiseptic mummies those dead to thirst.
Herodotus wrote it is hard to harvest frankincense
from bushes guarded by tiny winged snakes; caravans
pass seeking to trade & rest at an oasis.
Predator drones prey on jihadis lurking in an oasis.
Thorny myrrh trees bleed when cut in desert waste.
Tribesmen trade ivory, African cargo, arms, in caravans.
Ramadan moon, with a Jambia dagger’s curve, hangs over Yemen.
A dagger smith creates blades to bleed out incense
trees—”yellow tears”—near the Red Sea; thirsty
goats eat seedlings near empty wells, thirsty.
Black flags fly for a new caliphate, no Islamic oasis.
Sap hardens to rocks scrapped into baskets—incense
traders travel on dromedaries, burdens over waste;
myrrh rides in leather bags to a souk in Sana, Yemen,
trades like RPGs in Djibouti, or coffee in caravans.
Trucks & camels round the African Horn in caravans.
Muslims wash in mosques, kneel facing Mecca, thirst
for holy war, behead the infidel in Syria, Yemen,
Iraq. Sheba first, then Silk Road trader, a Prophet in an oasis—
all breathed in incense; the more cuts the sweeter the scent, waste
not sacred smoke for monks in holy places; rituals require incense.
If jambias with old rhino horn handles bleed out incense trees
near thirsty Gulf of Aden in dry Yemen,
who will caravan like the Magi, pilgrims in the waste?
Martin Conte
We’re Not There
For Janet and her daughters
An injured spirit lingered in our town
last night.
The air was thick—
He cast a cold pallor
over our ground.
The next morning,
we woke
to our first hard frost.
No one noticed the silver puddles of blood
that he left
except for our third graders,
who went splashing through them in rubber boots,
screaming.
He took with him
our town clerk