Sixfold Poetry Winter 2014

  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