Below
me men
& women swim up
Sutter Street
These ones will die
so their spawn had better take
Lather rinse repeat
I am joined here by six
or seven others . . . cormorants drying our wings before
setting out over
the sea stretching before
us each
A short-cropped gray-haired citizen bends over
the Sporting Green like a pathologist deducing what led to
the swoon this June that killed the Giant’s chances
Below me is a man
or the facsimile of
one lying athwart
a step whose feet long ago forgot the inside of
a pair of
but whose mad mats of
hair offer a pillow for
his head
& so on
In
this moment I would like to believe in
many things including how well the cold sun shines off
my white shirt
& my tightly tied shoes
& my clean-shaven face
Q: Who am I kidding?
A: ________________.
Two years back now
& I still wonder which country is overseas
Nothing is as it should be
I can hardly breathe
because of too much oxygen in
the air
or nitrogen
or something else
Nothing feels right nothing looks right nothing sounds right
It’s all been switched around
Mirrors hang backwards forcing me read my face right to
left
Clean sheets are sandpaper against
my skin
so I sleep
w/out
Those 2:00 am vigils stretch ’til
dawn
as I listen for
movements of
any soul enemy
or friend
But then the man looks up from
his newspaper
& swivels his head
as do all the other guys
& so on even the drifter
which could only mean one thing
so I monkey the men
& my eyes fill
w/a billowy blue skirt
& olive-skin legs
& a fury of
red hair
A woman walking westward t r a v e l l i n g s l o w m o t i o n
though not like on
TV
but deliberate motion instead
Fluid graceful
& strong all shoulders
& hips propelling her body forward
even as she sustains herself in
place in
time in
mind each movement telegraphing her intent to
the earth
so the planet may shift
& so benefit from
the blessings of
each
fall
of
each
foot
There is also this blond @
her side a woman
w/the kind of
looks that were she to walk into
a bar alone she’d just cold-stop all talk on
the spot
but today hers is a mere rivulet of
prettiness swept away by
the flood of
beauty flowing from
the woman in
blue
I start moving from
my position
& when I reach street level
her eyes lock onto
mine
& mine to
hers
It’s this instantaneous thing electric + mutual + raw
Then the blond says something that makes her laugh
She laughs
& laughs
& laughs
& as she laughs she folds @
the waist then upright like a fountain of
water then she folds again
as the mirthful hem of
her skirt bounces @
her knees
& her breasts sway under
the fall of
the fabric of
her blouse
She laughs like today is the only day
She passes on by
as I watch her backside retreat like a beacon inviting
& denying me an ember growing small
& cold.
Ing
What a popsicle-sucking fan-waving shade-hogging hog-hauling arse-ogling tongue-parching donkey-stopping feet-perspirating cheese-racing Sata/n-sitting fig-gnawing grape-seed-sucking cigar-chomping chad-hanging milk-carton-reading iceberg-melting answer-machining little-girl-fondling nail-biting carpet-bombing Hitler-longing cuck-olding Lord’s-name-in-vane-taking totally-tripping brown-nosing pencil-nibbling knee-jerking water-wasting loose-tooth-wiggling whore-whispering autoerotic-asphyxiating chain-smoking blister-peeling chin-chinning social-networking mother-stabbing father-fearing tumor-palpating granma-fleecing gas-lighting Berlin-lifting baby-dangling water-boarding Treasury-raiding pressure-cooking turkey-plucking love-handle-grabbing cleavage-leering hem-pulling leaf-blowing pig-sticking scrotum-scalding nipple-twisting beluga-bludgeoning harp seal-strumming level-heading nasal-excavating global-weirding needle-pointing nit-picking likker-slurping tea-partying craptastic-poetry-generating slow-dancing three-times-heel-tapping dog-snatching cat-scratching snatch-dogging hardly loafing time.
The sea is always the color of your last lost love’s eyes
I spot San Diego wedged into
the lower left-hand corner like a secret
as the remaining nation fans north
& east
I am told my main problem is never remembering clichés
& the sea is always the color of
your last lost love’s eyes
That’s why I occupy these dunes above
the beach
as the sun above bakes my back each morning
& the crown of
my head by
noon before
finally blinding me @
the blue end of
day
I spend the final afternoon peeling layers away to nothing
but desire for
the astringent sea
I sprint across
the beach
& dive into
the face of
a towering wave
& rise to
the surface beyond
the breakers where an otter bobs in
a hidden kelp forest the
to crest
I join in up then
as each new swell draws us down
the
After an hour other
it gets cold side
so I ride the surf into
shore bathing in
forces beyond
ken
& control
Sand up
my nose
Water in
my mouth
Astonished
& alive
The final colors dribble down
the sky
covering for
the night
that steals light from
the undone day
A promise never made
I shake off the sea
& cross the beach to
a pier where I pass a burly black man who wears snow gear in
summer
& plays space music on
his synthesizer
w/a sign that says Jesus Is A Fisher of
Men
& there’s also this Vietnamese guy casting
& casting his bait upon
the waters
& a pair of
lovers loving one another against
the wooden railing
w/half-empty soda cans dangling from
their still-free hands
The further out I go the fewer people I meet
until it’s just me
& the slivered silver moon hanging
like an open palm just beyond my reach
Jesus had it easy he wasn’t fishing for
the moon.
Tim Hawkins
Northern Idyll
Flushed and fevered, appalled by the city,
you crept through nightfall over shards of glass
back to the Northern forest, whence you’d come;
An upland preserve of bear wallow and fattening deer
where tannic alder and maple-soaked rivers cool
like a tonic the color of tea or bourbon,
depending on your need.
You had planned to wade their timeless eddies,
to meander in their cloudy back currents,
to imagine lost loves and idylls
and absent friends,
until the night I arrived at your door
with furrowed brow and frown as tight
as my clenched and trembling fist
to solve the latter once and for all,
and to bring word from the late city
with its campaign slogans and broken bottles,
scorched pavement and red-rimmed,
downcast eyes,
word of the woman and child denied
this leafy province of despair.
The Leap
I hold your small hand in mine
while salmon lunge
and hurt themselves
on the rocks beneath us,
chasing death,
immortality
and a dim and watery notion
of home.
In the not-too-distant past,
folks from the east side of town
arrived in horse carts and carriages
on this bluff above the river,
hailing one another
in the cool of evening
as they gaped at the bounding rapids
and the bears
who fished below.
With a promise of ice cream in hand,
we make our way to the car
parked on the bluff—
now a park
surrounded by hospitals,
apartments
and schools.
One day you will return without me
and you will understand
like the generations of salmon and men,
that though the bears and horse carts
may be gone,
the poorly understood migrations
and countless wet dreams
remain.
The Gallery
My wife was born in a tropical climate
where trees flourish through sun and rain
and the four seasons are a myth passed down
and diluted like generations of conquistador blood.
Here, in Michigan, she is fascinated by the falling leaves,
how some nights they swirl and dance across the road
seeming to perform for our oncoming headlights,
and she chides me for failing to notice such beauty.
Thanks to her insistence I now have another experience
to reconsider, another image to call to mind
in the cold and austere days that will come
soon enough, in the long, white gallery of winter.
A Rain
A sudden chilling autumn rain
blows through darkening fields and towns,
drums on moss and weakens stones,
moistens eyes and dampens skin;
shrouds the bleak and withered hedge,
snaps the slender wavering branch,
floods a narrow wooden bridge,
and gathers battened skiffs to launch;
takes no heed of wall or fence
nor burnished plaque to mark the deed,
seeks the least resistant path,
deaf to human remonstrance
and blind to monuments of their dead.
The Archives
After the stabbing light of the sun
has dimmed to a wintery ache in the eye,
one grows accustomed to stark interiors,
intimate with corridors
and their convolutions
of gun-metal gray.
After a certain period of adjustment
amid the superficial scrape and glint
of marble halls and their distorted
echoes of coughing like laughter
in the rarefied air,
after the clatter of metal slamming
and footsteps marching away in lockstep,
then fading along the corridor,
something rare that we are gifted
and burdened to name
is bred in the silence that follows
and filed away.
There is a veneer of winter solitude
that can linger then, briefly,
like snowfall melting on clothing
or that can remain for a longer term
like wintering in some forest hollow,
marking a more remote frontier,
a knife’s claim on ragged bone
bounded by a feverish wind.
Perhaps that is the end of it, after all,
a sudden shiver, an abrupt decision
followed by the tinkling of ice
and a return to the sunny port
of conviviality.
Or perhaps, after numerous seasons,
after window-less years spent
locked in dutiful chambers
by turns airless or drafty,
idly tracing the torn and faded map
of one’s veins,
from some half-remembered story
rescued from the false bottom
of memory
one hears apocryphal footsteps
creeping away
along the chilly corridor
among the snowy drifts—
a second self
cloaked in the terrible
gift or burden
of a second skin.
One imagines archival landscapes,
even the frozen scar of a frown
so like a familiar horizon.
Abigail F. Taylor
On the Pillow Where
You Lie
Pause. Pluck the moon into memory
before the sun cracks open the yolk of dawn.
Sorrow weak and gone in reverie
of heaven’s breast bone; the wild blue rambling on.
In this now, I am not watching you die.
You are whole and fit to me as you were
once, when we were new. And foolish.
We, Tom and Huck, aged hard this year.
I won’t be ready for your rye
departure, your stone-wrought name slurred
in clipped grass. I am too selfish
to let you go. With death so near
I mourn the living you, but it’s not dark
yet. Soon the moon will cradle its mouth between
the burden of sky. You and I, marked
by fate, thrust into an idle god’s routine.
The Older One
I do not have a fairy-tale sister.
Not the sort with twisted fingers
and charred spirit. She is the winter
between seasons. She is only a whisper;
the gladness of fresh snow and honey lemon tea.
What we are is not a Hollywood marquee.
We do not gossip or share ice cream.
We are ships in the night.
Blood strangers.
Once in the morning light
we built stick houses for The Green Folk.
Begonias ruined and laid by the stream
to garnish crowns as we sang “Da Luan, Da Mart.”
All for a moment.
I am as unsure of her as I am of that day.
Small clean memories are too few to be forgotten.
Sisters, we are told, have a bond that is uncommon.
Not so. Sometimes sisters struggle to obey
the path. We fall apart. Unaware of the dangers.
Young Australian
We lay in the summer bed
having never slept together
but for the steady breath
and the quiet warmth
of our arms pressed as one.
A Threesome with Liquor
Ah yes! Music is the fool of love
but not as forgiving as rusted brandy
shattered like the melody.
Reach for that tender woman in the bottle
then tell me you adore me.
But goodness falls short of
this. You, unable to hold promises, scanty
in bockety hands, are still astoundingly
beautiful.
We often cherish the difficult things.
They glue together small pleasures.
You sleeping while I read.