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Balancing Act

Back then , you could see roses
only if you went around
to the other side of the wood fence,

where canes like herons' legs
held up a smattering of blooms.
Even then you thought them beautiful.

A decade later, a sea of roses
laps over the fence, spills
in cascades of yellow, rising

a foot or more over pickets--
all this effusive exuberance
crowding in arcs from beyond!

You know it won't be long
before they crumble to brown,
fade like every fleeting season.

The Interview Date

Where are you from?

   What I wanted
   was to watch you speak,
   see the pink raft of tongue
   lap at your lips,
   the beacon of Adam's apple
   beckon up and down.

How long have you lived here?

   What I wanted
   was to watch you lean in,
   observe the swells of hair
   eddying from your shirt,
   the surge of nipples,
   hard as a rocky coast.

Where did you go to school?

   What I wanted
   was to watch you stand,
   gauge the strain of your anchor,
   note the cove of buttocks,
   lean as the Strait of Gibraltar,
   a tight figure-eight.

What to you do for fun?

   What I wanted
   was to leave the coffeeshop,
   shuck you like an oyster,
   raise your mast,
   unfurl your sails,
   fide you into the night--

but that would wait
till the second date.

A bilingual anthology

from the Virtual Artists

Collective with all poems

in English and Chinese!

Also includes my poems

"In Celebration of Gray,"

"September," and

"West of Fort Worth."

October Revival in Texas

Swaying Like a gospel choir,
their robes outstretched,
leaves swish overhead,
lifting spirits unseen for months
with sounds of celebration.

All that heat and humidity
swept away in soulful swoops,
long fanfares of gusts.
The dizzying roar of a norther
gives wings to gulps of pure joy.

The whoosh of the canopy--
like listening to a waterfall
from a grotto tucked behind it--
a sound so baptismal
you want to dive into the sky.

The only poem

in this year's edition!

Dead On

We open up veins
and spill guts,
blood-letting as an art.

We whittle words
to razor-sharp points--
and learn to use them
mercilessly.

We make numerous stabs
at pounding out rhythms
and nailing metaphors
to the page.

When all goes well, we grab
unsuspecting victims
with hooks
or killer lines.

When it doesn't,
we smother meaning,
drown it in a sea of words,
or bury our intentions alive.

We usually massacre drafts,
butchering them in a carnage
of bloody pieces,
our fingers stained
indelibly red.

Writing can be murder.

A fabulous new

anthology of Texas poetry!

May

It is the month of bark,
the yard under the sycamore
a shipwreck of shavings
scattered randomly
against the shore of the deck;

the month of exfoliation,
strips of skin sloughed
to the ground in dried-up curls,
when the great tree
becomes blinding white again;

the month when death,
strewn about so beautifully,
can no longer ignore life,
leafing its secrets among the jumble,
the flotsam of mottled browns

and mossy greens,
the former brilliance in shades of gray,
textured with gnarls and knots,
layered like contour maps,
the wild and woody rinds at my feet.

Astronomy Project

I removed the moon and stars today,
a couple of comets, a dozen
indeterminate celestial bodies.

I scraped the stubborn pieces of cosmos
under my nails, where they pricked
and splintered with an uncanny life-force.

I emptied the ceiling of heavenly hosts,
whitewashed space to one great void,
leaving only infinity above me.

Also includes my poem,

"The Interview Date"

Abortion Run

She never told her husband,
but like a semiannual sale
the day would arrive,
and we'd get the call
for a ride to the clinic.

As a means of birth control,
it was extravagant.
We didn't question,
needed no reasons,
but wondered why she relied
on two gay men
to minister as her taxi.

We always assumed
the fetus wasn't Ed's,
and he never asked
why she was glagued again
with "female troubles."
Perhaps her husband wasn't
as foolish as we often believed.

When the silent women
and frightened girls
peeked at us from their furtive shells,
puzzled over which was the father,
we both winked back in unison.

We relished the role of co-conspirators.
She was our ringleader,
our fetish, our Wild Turkey,
bouncing back each time
as though she'd lost nothing more
than a mole.

How to Cook a Wolf

The opportunistic hunter who saved us
whisked away the pelt in no time,
leaving the bloody carcass for us to clean up.
For me, I should say, as Grandma was too sick to help,
the reason I was here in the first place.
I'd have thrown out all that gristle and bone,
but Grandma, frugal as a shaded garden,
claimed we couldn't let the wolf go to waste.

With a cleaver, I hacked off the head--
those eyes, those ears, those frightening teeth--
a tiny revenge for earlier being swallowed.
I told Grandma I was getting wood for the fire,
but I snuck the head out with the entrails
and buried them at the forest's edge.
Then I got down to work. I chopped off
the four legs, dropped them into a stock pot
simmering with most of the organs
(but the liver I fried up as a special treat for Grandma,
who clearly needed more iron in her diet).
The body I severed into three sections--
basically, shoulder, ribs, and rump--
more meat than I'd expected
from such a scrawny creature.
I placed each cut in a roasting pan,
and happily shoved the pans into the oven.

Before I cleaned up, I removed my red cap--
the very one Grandma had given me--
and placed in it the wolf's knotted heart,
wrapped the bundle in the bright red cloth,
and stuck it in the bottom of my basket.
I didn't know why, but it was mine now.
My own heart said I'd earned it.

Surrender

She squats in the muck
at the water’s edge
as she has for a week,
fixed to the spot
like a lighthouse

sinking.
Her weary eyes stare down
the cinnamon-colored sea,
as if willpower alone
could control its roil,

force it to return
the child she could not
cling to, cannot beacon—
or sweep the urge
from under her feet.

Also includes my poem,

"Striptease"

Release

She hears gargled whispers,
not the ahs of an open throat:
something’s caught there.

She hears it again,
ka-ka-ka-ka,
a small bird lodged in her larynx:
cancer.

She curls in a nest,
not a womb,
but a briar of fear.

Hidden within the sinew,
among the muscle’s twigs and branches,
in the bone’s gray shadows,

a snake closes about her,
its thick black rope
twisting, severing.

She rasps for release,
for the ah, ah, ah of life,
but gurgles the word amen.

Wedding Poem

Suppose Plato was right:
that we are only half a whole,
a left shoe useless without a right,
a negative stammering through life
in search of its elusive positive.

Suppose our search is innate,
a desire so strong, so primitive,
that without that other half
we ache from constant hunger.
No matter how satisfied our appetites,
we seem always to starve for more.

Suppose we find that other half
and slide hard into love’s spell,
our unfulfilled yearning as intense
as our need to eat or breathe.
As mysterious as levitation,
our lives are bound together,
though we never know exactly why.

Suppose Plato was right,
that love is the pursuit of the whole,
the fulfillment of an ancient need,
two halves becoming one soul,
melding one into the other,
the end of endless questioning,
the beginning of true union.

Also includes my poems

"Asparagus," "Size Queen,"

and "Coming Out"

Birthday

You just called
to say happy birthday
and to remind me
that you're not
speaking to me.

Still desire
prickles up my stomach
for no one
doesn't speak to me
like you do.

Being Human

When I hold you,
it's not to make
a political statement.
When my hand rests
warmly in yours,
it's not to prove
a point to the world.
The world fades
far in the background,
fizzles to white noise
when I'm with you.
My kisses have
no hidden agenda.
I am just
a man in love
with another
human being,
who happens
to be a man.

Snow

I lived in the coffin
known as Sonny White
for almost twenty years.

Long before wearing them,
I dreamed of sequined gowns,
thick mascara, debutante upsweeps.

When Mother caught me in her camisole,
she booted me from home,
like she had Father years earlier:

she couldn’t abide prettier men.
To make ends meet, I took to drag.
As Snow, I was a natural:

paper-white skin accentuated
by hair black as olives
and cheeks bright as blood.

Hormones came later,
and—not unlike Cher—
finally, the surgery.

When I glance at a mirror,
I often catch you, Mother—
only better.

Also includes my poem,

"A Week in the Life"

The Weather Inside

Clouds amassed for weeks
where old ones failed to leave,

till gray skies glutted
and light was crushed in their blotter.

With air too black to breathe
and rumbles echoing down streets,

the storm ached deep in his bones.
It felt like a coming heartbreak.

Also includes my poems

"Presence" and "Archaeology"

Adolescence

(for Tracy)

Her index finger shadows
the coarse hair of his forearms,
connects the dots, freckle by freckle.

Her hair smells of moon and mist,
untroubled by combs or discipline.
Her eyes are kaleidoscopes,

laughing one minute, crying the next,
daring him to discover her secrets.
Her tiny smile hints at confusion.

Pink fragility pouts on her lips.
She will stand in a downpour
with no thought of umbrellas,

rain giving shape to curves
as pretty and useless as tulips.
Like an abandoned puppy whimpers

for someone to take her home,
in her thinnest voice she solicits a hug,
nestles to his chest, and waits.

Shape-Shifter

You waste no time. I’ll give you that.
While grandmother’s hull folds in on itself,
shrivels with tumors and chemicals,
I await the call to fly off to her funeral.

But you couldn’t wait for another victim.
You crawled in bed with my youngest brother,
unfurled yourself while he lay dreaming,
and spread your shadow over his esophagus.
They say the way to a man is through his stomach,
but you’ve perfected every technique;
no organ is exempt from your dark embrace.

When your fingers clasped my mother’s throat,
her voice immediately dropped several registers.
Teams of doctors loosened your grasp.
She didn’t end up with an artificial voice box,
but I hear your echo when she speaks.

I was the next to escape your clutches,
and you let me off rather painlessly,
a bite on the leg, black as a horsefly.
Not that I haven’t taken your visit seriously.
I check my skin with the diligence of a curator;
like you, I’m forced to stay in the shade.

With my father, you attacked the prostate,
spread your scaly fingers up his dark cavity
and pushed down like a rusty piston.
A buckshot of radioactive pellets chased you off;
yet you lurk in the air like a scavenger.
Circling my family in a restless gyration,
you’ll be gorging again too soon.

Scarecrow

(for Matthew Shepard, 1976-1998)

To pull the trigger would have been too kind.
They broke your nose, crushed your brain stem,
battered your flesh till it grafted to bone;
left you burned, lashed to Laramie split-pine,
spread-eagled, barefoot, a bloodied gay totem.
The night froze black around a scarecrow alone.

A day later your body was discovered,
limp as the straw of a weathered bale.
You never came out of the coma; I pray
you slipped into it early in the night, hovered
at heaven’s thin edge, unburdened and pale,
before hate spilled over to the light of day.

You wake to sighs and groans,
the creaking of long spines.

You can't sleep,
so you stare at the timbers overhead.
They've had a tough life:
scars and fractures,
knots like ancient bruises;
splits you could fit fingers into;
cracks riven in crooked lines
like a river canyon
marked with imperfections.

And if you lie long enough,
you understand
they are bending to the wind,
releasing cries and whispers
as if they were yet trees.

    from the 2006 di-verse-city