birdpoems

This town

for didi, she doesn't get enough thanks, and I'm still writing poems (crummy ones, but poems nonetheless) because she makes me think about writing them, about the unusual ways words can hopscotch, about why that's even necessary.

This town

The alley next to my house
changes shape each evening.

Tonight she is a triangle

awake
suspended
equilateral

and she forces me to consider
the hypotenuse
the sum of my sides
the square of my experience
the three o'clock church gong
calling all good Catholics to confession.

I told the priest I wanted out.
I told him about my dead middle finger,
how it did the work of six strong women
dimpling wing tips in some old shoe co-op.

The alley trips me,
slips bent wire and styrofoam cups
beneath my bare feet,
swallows them whole,
spits out a callous,
a scar from childhood.

Triangles spell trouble
minus a "g" for gravity,
the alley's "a"
and of course my own "i"
which sees nothing but nightfall.

Tonight this town
makes me walk three lines,
two the length of my arms,
the final a tangent.

The stillness outside town

The road to Trujillo passes nothing
but pistol-pitted speed signs.
Asphalt twists
in deference to property line,
a rancher in crusted boots
stands bored sentinel.

I drive slower than the limit,
the sun slides
from ears to shoulder
in the rear view mirror.
Only an occasional juniper
and piñon break into shadow.

I am a small peregrine,
dumbstruck over quiet scrub.
I hover, I am restless.
I carry the hope of a next meal.

The land spreads in lumps,
some places covered in flat-ringed lichen,
layered in gold and black sand
underneath the constant wave of dry grass.

These plains don't care about me.
They wait for something,
a meteor to escape the skies,
a bulldozer to level small dips,
turn them free.

Sleeping beneath our infamous goodbyes

Night sky's inlaid beads
unlock enigma,
spinning slivers and panoramic lies.

I want to be achingly normal,
so high up on the curve
that I melt with the sky
and fade to the color of the clouds.

You come to me in storm,
in catapult,
errant drops of rain,
the fog;
unpenatrable, dim, swirling, cool and damp.

If I wait,
let a little mist settle
around my shoulders,
I capture your evidence
mixed with my sweat.

Mercury slouches

Let the calendar fall to the ground
while I roam in bell darkness.

I feel the slick and pull
of rich coiled earth grab my ankles.
I want the sloe-eyed sleep of Rumplestiltskin.

I am ruptured disk,
captured boomerang,
a piece of god's eruption,
blunt end of suspended trestle,

flavors of moon -
death black and citrus -
the miles a satellite
falls in prayer.

A treatise on my cowardice

I start with one woman crying.
She carries a barbed wire egg basket in each swollen hand.
I place her in the Rio Gallinas,
make her force skirt against ice shelf.

Walk, lady, walk,
walk chicken river.

I start with nuns. They raise habit.
They chant Isaiah, rise ay ah.
They chant for the river for the woman for the eggs.
A tear collects in St. Jude's right eye.
The protector will not help.

Help.

Chant, women, chant,
chant chicken river dry.

I start with one woman crying.
She is me.
I race river, shuttle egg,
egg drops,
crack against chicken memory.

My memory.

I am chicken, a chicken, a river nun.
The yolk colors the river yellow, scared, coward.

I am a river nun.
I chant chickens across,
the barbed wire eggs
decorated with careful drops of type A blood.
Virgin of Rio Gallinas blood let blood.
I am a river nun, an action virgin,
the only spheroid egg I still hold.

It is not broken.

I start with winter,
the ice, frozen eggs,
encapsulated potential.

I start with a donkey.
He waits on the west bank.
Stubborn donkey, stubborn,
back legs fixed in frozen soil,
mud solid through with chicken shit,
unholy mole.

Walk, lady, walk.

I walk.
I press against the ice.

It yields.

Gary Cooper as Leet Hax0r

Cooper coded Windows during lulls on set.
He labored inside a mahogany saloon
enveloped in photonic rage, tock
hair hidden by ten gallons of testosterone - tick.

He liked the lazy takes by dry river wash
when his horse scraped liquid beads from crushed agave
and camera wind whispered secret combinations -
Shift-Esc-7 for a glimpse of Jurado's knickers,
F4-del-enter to manifest the widescreen of death.

Cooper pwned it,
security kept Gates, Jobs, Quaker
corralled, sequestered, sunburnt,
let Coop scoop code that fell from shot glass,
tipped above chiseled chin.

Heavy Water

I pushed my bathtub 180 degrees from its resting spot.

Soap-stained tiles snapped from the enclosure
as I labored. They hit
me in my left eye,
in the split center of my groin.

I pushed my bathtub this morning, the day
before the change of calendar,

a year I know will require
one bath a day
one bath each evening;

rinse that energy
rinse that energy
rinse it, sunshine, moonshine, morphine, soap queen.

I pushed my bath-rub
pushed my back, track, back track, rubicon,
pushed it perpendicular to every wall I ever met -

the square ones
unsquare ones
ones catered and mated and baited, venerated.

I told the damn thing to stay put, stay 180,
freak of creature
destitute portal,
told it to keep my water, hold it, hold it, hold it

tightwad.

Don't know what it did.

Everything evaporates.

just like vitamins

one
a
day

my resolution

not to quit
breathing
taking
swollen
air
into forgotten
lungs

not to dance
or write,
exercise,
think,
calculate time
or money,

not to finish
that damn
stack
of thank you
notes.

none of that.

none

of

that.

my resolution:

one

fucking

poem

a

day

Prepare the fatted calf. Again.

I have been the prodigal daughter
exactly twenty-five times,
once a year since my belly
expelled stolen merlot.

Bring me the echo
I lost in grade school,

sixth, I think,

when my mother cut my hair
from waist to chin.
I want those cast strands
to knit into a book
I can read at midnight
when I fear I won't return.

I have been the prodigal daughter
exactly twenty-five times,
including two stints in choir

now that's cheap rehab

where I sung alto
to chipped cement saints,
let the communion wafers
cleave to my palate
like chunky peanut butter.

Give me my voice,
the timbre I dropped
in a box canyon
layered with insult,
a sandstone parfait.

I have been the prodigal daughter
exactly twenty-five times,
like the twenty-five pounds
I gained between the deaths of my parents.

I offer God a pound today
a pound a week,
flesh to swap for forgiveness.

Welcome to the new Birdpoems

I used to keep a poetry site at birdpoems.blogspot.com. I am now posting my poetry here.

I made a resolution on January 1st to write and post one poem a day. I'm gonna do it, too.