Thursday

I am the broad-necked
buffalo, the worm that
ate the fish.  I am an
untied ribbon, a cold bowl
made of porcelain.  I am
mails cut like half moons,
the concavity of the tongue,
a once and present star
in a constellation with no name.

Night in Chicago, May 2012

It is May in Chicago,
and we sleep with the
windows open.

I am on the east side
of the house; so, the
winds pull off Lake Michigan
and paint my
uncovered body blue.

I am cold, but if I
wear this heavy quilt,
I will surely burn.

Instead, I will lie still.

I will quit believing I
have a choice.  I will understand
that the wind is not a wind at all.

It is the world.

Chicago has packs of coyotes
that prowl the streets at night.

Cameras have caught them
on Jefferson, Ashland, and Kimball

loping through empty alleys,
looking for rats and discarded meat.

Researchers say that they are not
clustered in one part of the city,

they are as evenly distributed as
deep dish pizza or frozen yogurt.

But most have seen them
along the shoreline, near the waves.

I believe that coyotes pass on memories
like eye color or markings.

I can imagine what Chicago must
look like to them, the soft ground

a white concrete, the planetarium
some motionless animal in the dark.

The soft-skinned monsters in lycra,
running a hundred miles from the shore.

United 374

I always write a poem
when we are taking off,
when the flight attendants
are gossiping in the back,
when the pilots are
doing their penultimate job
of the day.

I always write a poem
when we are taking off,

so if this is the last flight
I ever take, I will
enter death in a kind of birth.

Eternity

Eternity is not grains of sand

o belles etoiles.  Ce n’est pas

leaves or ants or hydrogen atoms.

It is the unquantifiable quantity

l’asymtote de nos âmes.

The ways that water can pass

over a stone.

Les chemins des vents a travers le forêt.

For her

She is a piece of water

an unwashed apple, a

blue and spinning star,

a ribbon tied without

hands, a book with only one word.

She is a candle, an origami

flame, all white and red and

awake.  Heavy bread, burned

on every side.

She is a cup of sand,

a balloon, sewn into the stitch

of the horizon—

holding both sea and sky at once.

Auto-Blazon

my legs are broken pieces of winter

my arms the wooden echo of my penitent father

my eyes are my mother’s geometry

all lines and angles and unraised hands

my hands are unripened apricots and

my thoughts are a hungry bird

I am a seasonal color, quietly stitched

on the underside of gravestones

my blood is papal breath

my knees are the feet of my heart

I am an unpainted Picasso

monochromatic, three dimensional,

a bear, a wave, a phosphorescent dream.

Otoliths

In the blueblack waters of
South America, there is a fish
with a rock in its head.

The natives cut the heads
like oysters and with fish
hooks make jewelry out of

the small stones.  They fish
in local markets for dumb Americans
or pale Belgians that will buy
the wire and rock to decorate the heads
of their fat daughters.

The daughter, all blush and entitlement
puts the jewelry in a ballerina box.  The
native puts the money in coffee cans.

And both the native and the daughter forget
the rocks were put there for balance.

Why I am Writing a Dissertation

For my students, the ones

that click their pens like

a detonator

the ones that can’t fit

all of their life into my classroom

For the soldiers in unpronounceable places,

their ability to do

what I did not, could not

for the wind and the words

and the open mouthed earth,

for those that came home

to banners, balloons, babies

to an empty gate and a

lost bus ticket

for the day after the parade.

For the teachers who can’t teach them

for the schools that can’t fit them

for the students who were soldiers,

I am trying to open the windows.

I am trying to fill this place with light.

On Denzin (1989) Interpretive Biography

There is only fiction

only character and plots

redemption, revelation, and response

Only the stubborn oak

and its many branches

the acorn it drops

and the soil it finds.

Facts, facticities, truth, reality

are not as malleable as much as they are

multiple.

Even while I write this I am

writing a poem

writing a poem about truth

writing a poem about truth and hungry

These are not extended descriptions

of one man.  These are three men

All very much alive

All wrestling for the same black pen.