Tag Archives: poetry

107. my aunts

.

my aunts look like my

mother as they age, lovely

eyes and smiles that blow

.

all the fuses. their blood

pulses coal and tin, mining stock

and a ranch’s stench of branding.

weaned on books, canning, breaking 

.

colts and madness, social 

justice shot a rich seam 

through the bedrock of young

.

minds – young with shame, resentment

laid down to either side, thin

but persistent lodes

.

through each sister.

how alive two are yet, how 

men stunted them all,

.

the girls. now they fade.

they stare out across dry lawns,

all the colts broken

.

and we cousins sigh,

softly and half lost like the ranch

left fallow for our

winter.

106. war dead

.

today i found your phone

message and one envelope

that you had sent to

me last year before 

you became just one more dead 

man that I know. 

.

you had sent a photo

that i saved. i won’t hold it 

against my heart 

.

or against you. 

.

I for one know the cost of no

interior rest and 

i’d not have lasted

as long, whiskey and gun as

backboard or not.

.

well i did save it 

just not as a sacrament

more like a scar that

can still raise a smile.

its there in a flat tin, now

second drawer down

.

where the accidents

are filed. Let’s assume you could

not have saved yourself

.

since no one else could

save you. Let’s assume 

you’re now comfortable,

warm

loved.

.

105. long memory

.

just under the prairie

grass are my people, dry and

quiet now, dreaming up

.

all the buffalo 

hoofprints of ancestors

long slaughtered.

.

just under the grasses are my

own handprints set in the stone

heart of earth, well buried.

.

this body … so different

now only the clouds might

recognize me. 

only the 

clouds might remember me

and they don’t sing out. 

.

103. drought

.

most clouds were

smeared across the sky, dug in 

to the blues like bruised

.

implants and yet it did

not rain on my house. 

it did not rain again, clouds

.

hoarding their moisture

as if punishing my small 

swath of desert for

.

some muttered insult

that I never did

voice aloud – never –

.

even if I thought it

just briefly in secret, days 

ago out of passing

.

anger, frustration –

perhaps understandable.

the clouds had sailed on past.

.

the clouds keep sailing

right on past:

​rabbits longing,

​​deer parched, 

trees gasping …

.

102. that rabbit

.

after two months silence

one rabbit ran wildly through

the headlight’s pool, crazed

.

by the thrill of light

in these dark winter days, crazed

by the sound of my 

.

truck after months of 

soft skitters, just 

dry branches clicking.

.

I’ve missed the raucous

presence of animals, wild

and separately

.

alive outside of my

cluttered hands’ obsession 

to control: one 

.

reminder that i

remain small to the world,

yet present.

.

which i

believe promises that we could

meet again. 

why not.

101. in my dreams

.

last night i picked up

the phone but you were still dead.

you keep calling me

.

though it’s hard to hear

your words this way, hard to trade

old photos of our

.

heroes, your new collage,

my aimlessly wandering  

with found objects and

.

tribal members. your

brother is angry and P 

is angry with me

.

which is easier. 

i’m fine. i’ve seen your face on

strangers in philly

.

and once in DC … you

winked at me, no less – nice touch

and every time

.

i inscribe three dots

on the bottom of a clay 

pot i smile for you 

.

now untouchable.

it’s always nice to hear from 

you. it’s just hard to

.

hear dead men over the phone.

i’ve reserved a place for you 

in my dreams tonight.

99. he died

.

saturday stretched

across decades, snapping in

around memories

better left dormant,

one hour as long as

the drawn gun lifting

to point, the sigh and quickly

missed lunge. 

some thoughts own

every space left

between seconds, claiming a self

well lost, inviting

redemptive desire –

that impossible movement

of forgiveness, yet 

never granting that

which be so desperately

needed. 

.

​​what a day –

drinking tea at the 

table, windblown snow rising

outside the glass.

98. unborn children

.

yesterday watching ducks placid

on the pond i thought

of my unborn children,

.

the odd tilt poised

for a smile in one boy’s green eye,

.

the blowsy woman in the port 

terminal whom I 

gave my little girl to,

.

all well pleased though I 

did wonder: quite a different

landscape than my casual

.

broken fingernails

and work boots, D’s carelessly

owned competence. 

.

i thought about the way

the second boy and i spoke

without speaking.

.

how I miss him. 

.

I often sit alone now

near water, feeding 

the placid ducks

crumbs.