February 9, 2009

Absolution

is best served

after their legs

stop shaking.

February 8, 2009

Today I told my students

that anything could be used

in a love poem.

It may have been bold,

but I gingerly stand by my claim.

To explore its truth I'll use

the following four items

to tell you that I love you:

A garden hose

A rotten plum

A medical dictionary

The chinese character for grass.

It was your garden hose

I wrapped at seventeen

around the humerus and 

carpal catch-all of  my

laffy taffy limbs.

It was your plum

I took from Wallace Stevens

icebox after the insufficiently 

tasty ones were stolen.

It was your spleen and appendix,

your snake of an esophagus and your

little trapdoor of an epiglottis

I saw as I thumbed through

my father's medical dictionary.

And it was your poem I 

was writing when the 

accidental marks on the

top left corner of my page

managed to form a familiar

Chinese character.

I would have chosen hose

or plum or dictionary for you.

But as I sit on this sunny hill

A thousand moments from you,

it only seems appropriate that

instead of your name, with a hand

I can't hold, I've written grass.

February 7, 2009

The following poem was a scaffolding project using Billy Collins' "Walking across the Atlantic."

Eating a Pomegranate

I wait for the grocer to turn his back

before slipping it into my pocket.

Soon I am eating a pomegranate

thinking about India

looking for scarves, Shiva.

I feel the seeds pop like rain.

Tonight I will sleep in its hollow peel.

But for now I try to imagine what

this must look like to the grocer,

these exotic fruits appearing, disappearing.

February 6, 2009

If I were 7 and you were 5,
I would not hesitate to
push you and your pink
hair ribbon in the sand.

If I were an elephant and
you were a beetle, I would
crush you with my 40 gallon feet
in a swift step-ball-change.

If I were Uganda and you
were Liechtenstein, I would
never let you forget how you sit
so forgettably below the Bavarian belt.

If I were you and you were
this poem, I wouldn't let
you get away with this.

February 5, 2009

An Open Letter to Emily Raboteau

I heard you this evening

in a mixed media art

exhibit on the ground floor

of my university student center.

You began by speaking of Zion.

Heavy with the first fingers 

of the Pentateuch, you spoke

of Moses and Joshua and how

every slave story is an

Israelite's story.

We started by counting Egypts.

And you said this was not

the promised land, and that

was not the promised land,

and you said that you were 

still looking for that unspoiled 

milk and bee-less honey.

But I think I see it bubbling

up inside your quiet eyes.

I think I see it rolling around

the sharp bones of your ankles.

I think I see it in the colors filed

between the palm and back of 

your right and left hands.

I think I see it in the words

that fall like sand or broken

shells on the unswept floor

of your museum mouth.

I heard you this evening

in a mixed media art

exhibit on the ground floor

of my university student center.

You began by speaking.

February 4, 2009

If I were to give you something

to remember me by, it would

be an orange popsicle.

Slightly melted and falling off

its birdcage stick, I would crush it 

into the palm of your open hand.

I would hold it until it burned.

When it finished dripping onto

the Halloween street, I 

would kiss you, one hand

behind your neck, one hand

at the saddle of your jaw.

As I walked away I would

hope that when you finally 

looked down at your numb hand

you would let the words: cold,

orange, popsicle, and pain

staple me in your life forever.

February 3, 2009

I've said cerulean before,

aquamarine and burnt sienna.

I've claimed daffodil and lilac,

both puce and char truce.

But the shirts I wear are blue

and the curtains that hold

my windless room are blue, and the 

marble of the kitchen and the

marbles of her eyes are blue.

A perfect, full, unaided blue.

And if I were to be honest and

stop trying so hard to be different,

I would probably say

tangerine infused with a 

milky topaz.  Like some people

are into music, I guess I'm

just really into colors.

February 2, 2009

4,893, 322, 402 people probably wouldn't

care if I died tomorrow, wouldn't read it in

the paper or hear it from a  friend.

They wouldn't send flowers or light a 

candle.  They wouldn't call my parents or 

friends and tell them about the great sense

of loss they didn't feel and how God 

does and doesn't work in mysterious ways.

If I had a list of them I think I would find them

in their cramped apartments and beachside

condos.  I would introduce myself, careful to 

pronounce my first and last names with an

unfolding clarity.  Sure that they could recite

both first and last with linguistic dexterity,

I would beat them without mercy.  Blood

fisted and unyielding I would continue to scream

my name. As I walked away I would shout it

again over my shoulder, just to make sure.

I'm sure when they hear I've passed, they will be 

consumed with a great sense of joy. and then, of course,

there will only be 4,893,322, 401.

February 1, 2009

Don't worry about me,
they say I'm a fighter.

I've got big blood
pumping in these syringe
signed veins and vines
that twist up and out
of my arms like ivy.

My father put me chin
first into a 1963 Thunderbird
when I was 13.
It was the first car
I stole after he died.

My mother never looked
me in the eye, always bent-
necked with my father
pulling down her chin.

Now that he's gone,
I keep one hand on
her back and the other
on her chin.

I hope she understands
that I do it because
I'm a fighter, because
I've got this big blood,
because if I didn't,
I wouldn't know where
to put my father's
sandpaper hands.