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Below Freezing

Two stacks, two clouds of smoke above them like
a stop-gap photograph, frozen throughout
the hour I walk. Two teens down at the lake
are sharing a smoke, their dark cigarette
as vacant as their scowls, my own cold breath
more interesting. And then I spot the ice,
a rim around the lake, a ten-foot swath,
not strong enough to walk upon. Some ass
has tossed a crumpled can on it, as if
to prove it real, for ice like this just seems
another trick. This winter is no bluff:
two more hard freezes forecast. At such times
pollutants frame the distant power plant
while green agaves blacken from the front.

Ode to the L Scrabble Tile

Without you, I would get fat, not flat,
wide, not wild.
I could never be newfangled,
only newfanged.
I would eat fan, not flan,
yet however much I ate,
I would never be late,
could never loaf, just oaf,
could bend, but never blend.

Without you, my legs would be eggs,
my glasses would be gases,
my lair would be mere air.
And lo would be oh,
lye would be eye,
and a fling would just be a fing.
My feet could never be fleet.
My slick would just be sick.

I couldn't howl, only ask how.
Though lone would be one,
I would tire of of
and miss out on love.

Therefore

The silent water,
    green and sheer,
a white froth
    at her edge

that open like scrolls.
    Mottled frogs
shoulder in reeds,
    words gone thin

in an instant,
    then back,
    smooth bellies weedy
inthe bamboo.

tasting death
    at every shore,
the inverted world
    of egrets and legs,

of flames and such.
    A stranger
at her silky door,
    I ripple into liquid.

Three Billys, Accosted at The Bridge

Twink Billy shrieked
when the talons of Miss T
Burrowed into his arm.
He squealed again
when she slimed the back of his neck
with her raspy-as-a-cat tongue.
"Not so fast," bellowed the drag queen,
well past her sell-by date.
"I could eat you like an ice cream
sundae covered in hot nuts,"
her ess hissing like a punctured tire.
"I just want to gi in and dance,"
Twink Billy blubbered, "and there's
much sexier guys behind me--look!"

Metro Billy entered in a swirl
of designer cologne and duds,
each hair perfectly in place.
Miss T was on him in less time
than it takes to say "stilettos."
"Oh, baby," she cooed, "You
got something Momma needs,"
bending over to kiss his fly.
"Don't touch me, you freak--
these are $500 jeans!"
Aghast in glitter and foundation,
her mouth like a blow-up doll,
Miss T became a shark, aching for blood.
"The trash behind me is more
your style," pronounced Metro Billy
as he swished past into the club.

Indeed, Butch Billy, with his
black leather vest and assless chaps,
set her drooling like a baby.
She looped a lacquered nail
through his nipple ring, murmured,
"Now isn't this convenient?
I adore a man with hardware.
As Miss T grabbed for his junk,
the thick fist of Butch Billy
smashed into her jaw, wig
and false eyelashes flying,
a sprawled mess at his feet.
He growled, "Thought you liked it rough?"
Simpering on her knees to the street,
"I like it gruff, you goat!
I'll find another place to troll."
Miss T was never again seen at The Bridge.

Crepe Myrtles

Your trunks are smooth as shaven legs. I look
around before I run my hands up them--
can stroking trees, a little baby talk,
be all that wrong? So why this whiff of shame
when fingers rub your wooden bole, or when
my cheeks caress and nuzzle--well, you know
the spots. I close my eyes, clearly discern
a gentle moan--but should this be taboo?
Our love is hard, but I can't stay away,
for once my lips touched wood, I had no choice
but to succumb: I'm born to love on the sly.
The world may never sanction our embrace,
our honeyed, deciduous kind of kink.
Let's go further, out on a limb, toward pink.

My Zoo Story

My first thought: the man
on the park bench must be dead.
Head scrunched low into his chest,
shoulders curled into the comma
of his torso . . . but then a quiver,
the body language of deep sorrow.
I think of Jerry in The Zoo Story,
waiting for someone to help him
die. I fear I might be that someone.

A gust of wind scatters
crumpled leaves at his feet.
As if coming out of a trance,
he slowly lifts his head.
I see his face at last--
no pain, no tears.
A crooked grin and a wink.
His pants unzipped, he works
that thing like a knife.

May Day

This is the day the sunflowers awake,
their eager, yellow smiles reminding me
of you. This is the day a sudden trick
of light reveals a simple rosary-
sized cross--no Christ in agony--a plain
non-nonsense goodness. Yes, I think of you.
This is the day I find a sparrow's wing,
a crumpled thing once full of joy, like you.
And when I reach the lake, a hundred star-
shaped water lilies crinkle like Van Gogh's
majestic skies. It's you that I conjure--
that playful look, your eyes. A life outgrows
the living, carries on beyond the day.
This is the day when some will go, some stay.

One Night Hook-up

Afterwards, he couldn't remember why
but he knew there must be a reason for
crash-test dummies in her bedroom,
dressed in oversized sweatshirts sporting
Emerson and Princeton, their fleshy heads
flanked by black and yellow warning signs.
"Go!" they seemed to advise, but he couldn't
head out while she lay there snoring with all the
indifference of a slow-leaking inflatable raft
jackknifed on a naked beach, her left
knuckles grazing his chest, almost sweetly,
like she meant it. He tried to move,
motionlessly, toward the edge of the bed,
noticed jabs of discomfort at his back and near an
orifice that he preferred remain under
quarantine from foreign objects of any sort--
potato chips, crushed but still crunching, still
ridged, though he couldn't recall a late-night
snack--just lots of tequila--but he nonetheless
tasted one (barbecue-flavored), just as she
unburdened a fusty cloud of gas and
vocalized a grunt that sounded like "more."
Weighing his options and spotting the
X-rated array of chips festering on her
yoohoo (her term), he abandoned chivalry,
zipped from the bed, zippered out the door.

Looking for Water

Discarded mattresses slump over an abandoned dryer outside Mitchell's, a former gas station in the heart of a town where everything is formerly something, everything used or antique--farm equipment, buildings, guitars.

Creed Taylor, Texas Ranger, and wife Blanch remain immortalized in brick on a Holland Street sidewalk outside the Rail Road Park. Drought-tolerant fountains of cacti fade in sunlight. Empty and corroded letters prove the Alpine Lumber Company has been long-gone.

A train chugs behind Harry's Tinaja, its ditch as dry as the skulls that decorate it--no water at this watering hole--then a clang-clang-clang and Spriggs Boot & Saddle Shop, selling everything from biker gear to books, whatever it takes to stay in business. A horse trailer ambles by with more occupants than the many houses for sale--reduced.

A peeling red and white sign welcomes visitors to the Bien Venido, and a woman loads Deer Chow into her pick-up at the Exxon. Too early for Twin Peaks Liquor to be open, where no doubt they do have the best selection West of the Pecos. Outside another former gas station, now a woodwork shop--also for sale--a rock fountain with the thinnest dribble of rusty water.

   August edges in,
   pledges more dust,
   desert willows wither

Watching Glee with My Mother

Some things don't change.
The gay student is again
bashed into the lockers.
Slurs are all that's missing--
      faggot! cocksucker!--
but this is network television.
I wipe away tears, hearing
the reverberation of bone on metal.
"This," I tell my mother,
"is what high school was like for me."

This is the most I've said
to my mother about that dim period
since she took me
to have my stomach pumped
four decades ago.
She never once asked why.

Murder wasn't in me,
though I thought about it.
There is always
another tormenter in waiting.
I did not want to die.
I wanted flight.

She says, "I thought this
was supposed to be a comedy."
"It gets better," I reply,
and the next musical number begins.

Introduction to Want

What I remember of the bedroom:
planes proliferating in explosive
blockbusters, but mostly the loop
of relentless commercials. We tired
of condoms, Viagra on shelves
just out of reach, fat on the grill,
incontinence, beer-swilling
as the national verb, the latest
popstar bronze as American arms,
big ol' Rams black as burnt toast.

How we compromised, picking
our sacrifices, always testing--
takeout or delivery? paper or
plastic? extra cheese?--
staring at papered walls before
the weekends were through,
my words in orbit around
his giant screen and tiny speakers.
He introduced me to want--
of something . . . I don't remember.

And now, breakfast at two,
nude in my own garage,
I'm lost on Memorial Day.
I see him or someone like him
in fusty towns across Texas.
I seem to remember in circles.

Woman with the Half-Inch Memory

Then erodes like a sand dune
spilling into the abyss of a lake.
Still, what can you do to hold back
the tumbling cascade of grains?

An apple a day won't help.
Plump memories thin to a whistle,
the tinny sound of time's dry breath.
You worry. You used to have

tricks, but now the shell game
turns up empty, empty, empty.
You used to be sharp. Puzzles?
No challenge. New ideas stuck

like fence posts lining a pasture.
The whole fat world awaited--
then left you in its dust, speeding up
while you slowed down, shrinking,

an ice cube in warm water.
You swallow cocktails of pills
to stave off deterioration,
but the grains are slipping faster

than medical progress. Your greens
are transforming into bronze.
You clench the best days deep in your fist,
your irrepressible grip already relaxing.

At Michael Reese

I sit on a slatted hospital bench,
legs so short they stick out like icicles,
body bundled for a long, hard winter.
I am alone in the waiting room,
staring blankly through plate-glass
at a Chicago sky as gray as smoke.
I am three, which makes my brother
one. He is the reason I'm here.

I sit for hours, time like a train
with no stops, yet I barely move.
I am Daddy's perfect little Marine.
I hear crying, not my silent brother,
who's under a thick plastic tent in a room
where I am not allowed to go.

I sit, much later, on a second-hand sofa
in our cold third-floor tenement
as we view the family slides:
Mark in the hospital crib,
before and after the tracheotomy,
as sickly pink as a vinyl doll.
Magnified on a sheet on the wall,
one disconcerting slide after another
appears through cigarette clouds,
projected memories I can't imagine
anyone would want to keep.

Yes, a sestina!

Limbo

You wait
for the eyes of light
to open, the dark to leave
and revisit its home.
Will you then face
the day and the need

to do something, a need
that drags a somber weight?
You slap your face
to snap to the light
easing into the orderly home.
You don't want to leave

the bed.
October leaves
shadow the blind need
for movement, like home
movies without sound. Wait
as the room floods with light
and the clock's face

glares, but you'll have to face
it sometime: everyone leaves,
unburdens, lightens,
accepts the body's needs
and the long wait
for home.

It takes effort to home
in on the forlorn face
in the mirror, the weight
more leaden, refusing to leave.
This hour of need,
this time of light,

when dark and light
are both a way home,
and all you really need
is hidden in lines in your face--
soon, soon you can leave.
But now you must wait,

face the need
for light, for home,
for leaving. Wait.

This is one of nine

of my poems that appears

in this issue of Assaracus

--a personal best.

Stand-Off

We went to bed like boars, but now
we wake without the strength to fight.
How we lose our passions, and how
the day shades with echoes of night.

Still we brood from hostile corners,
hold on to thoughts of wrong or right
like burnished martyrs, lost mourners--
the day shades with echoes of night.

Lights are dimmed. Love is kept in tow.
We, as polar as black and white,
speak with silence, watch the hours go.
The day shades with echoes of night.

Also includes my sonnet

"A New Year."

"Drag" is a bouts-rimés.

What a Drag It Is Getting Old

He spent his days in reverie, a June
of climbing trees, exploring creeks, when stress
occurred as frequently as a blue moon.
Then innocence dissolved--he began to obsess.
Adolescence slithered in, the snake
of sexuality. Resistance was moot.
A sparkly tube of lipstick, some gloss, a cake
of foundation--tricks to turn him into a beaut,
those raging dreams of Harlow, Hayworth, Garbo.
A different kind of dress-up, not quite the play
of children--an Indian today, a hobo
tomorrow--Halloween became every day.
With wig on tight, he squeezes into a rhinestone
gown. Presenting Chanel--name, not cologne.

My entire crown of sonnets,

"Days Too Close,"

appears in this issue.

This is the last sonnet in the crown.

Sunday

Tomorrow bears the weight. A new regime
of exercise? Of vitamins and bran?
Despite the years of shrinks, your self-esteem
is still a broken yolk in life's hot pan.
It's burning, bottom-sticking. Something's got
to change. Return to therapy? Increase
the meds? Or quit the job, the coffee pot?
Your life's consumed in quiet flames, and piece
by piece it peels away. You need new blood.
The phone won't ring, and even mother shuns
her Sunday call. You hear that gasping thud,
the siege of self imploding toward undone?
Another week dissolves like that--a flash.
The days have grown too close, all dun and ash.

Work Boots

Did you know, Dad,
that I still own those dirty
hand-me-down boots
you gave me forty years ago?
They've survived a dozen moves,
numerous workouts, and
several purges, though they've
been relegated to the pauper's
cemetery of a closet floor.

I pulled the boots out today
for the first time in a decade,
dust so thick the paint stains
on the leather can barely be seen.
Soil still cakes their soles.
Their mouths have been on
a subsistence diet of cobwebs;
spider eggs rest on their blistered
tongues. Down the caves
of their throats are darkness
and desiccated things
no one should have to touch.
I know I'll never again
put my feet in those shoes.

Yet I return those crusty old
boots to their provisional plot,
watch the dust settle, wash
my hands. Somehow it's easier,
Dad, than burying the dead.

Also includes my poem,

"Fidelity"

Deception

An egret's at the lower falls, his neck
a long, white vine. His eyes look lazy, blind
to water, sky, and me--but it's a trick,
just like the lotus blossom body and,
the two thin stilts that anchor it. I know
a closer step will set him off: the limbs
will wrinkle into pleats, the neck will yaw
into its hold, the unseen wings will prime

Morning Glories

    for Bob Lindeman

The native morning glories twine their way
through thatch and grass along the traveled trail,
up posts and young bur oaks, up huisache,
'round thorns like razored needles. They prevail,
insistent as gallos, their bugles blue
as dawn, their notes both high and clear. They've half
a day to make the most and bloom into
themselves before they write their epitaph.

We've much to learn from them: the stretch, the climb,
the brief blast of a horn, the feeble hold
to any higher thing. There's never time,
there's never time: how quick from young to old.
With each daybreak, as blue spreads out its rhyme,
remember morning glories' open folds.

A terza rima sonnet!

Spirit

So startling, the sudden flash of wings
above the water, white and wide--a gasp
unloosed, a husky breath escaped my lungs.

I hadn't seen the egret on the cusp
of flight, but when he flew I felt that time
had stopped, that this would be the perfect way

for any life to end. I followed him,
this holy gift, in search of clarity
as luminous as his great wings--and then

he landed, looked at me: a bird, no more,
no less. The neck, a crooked ess again;
the bill, a yellow stitch. And yet the air

was charged, for I'd been touched as though a god
appeared from high--and I'd been purified.

Seven-Year Itch

No one would mistake us for newlyweds.
We stopped honing the blade years ago,
started assuming the other
would whet it when necessary.
It's not that we no longer care;
it's that we stopped caring to work so hard
to keep the edges keen.

There was a time we might have
lanced our palms with significant X's
and smeared our life-lines together.
Have we reached the dagger's edge,
the point of proceeding or severing,
only to find it's not as sharp as it should be?

We settled in the silence of cozy detachment,
but years require we deepen incisions,
scratch and scrape till we hit bone,
grind our hands till the blood cements.
To pull them apart, we'd need to feel pain--
or something.

Another ekphrastic poem!

Living Room Scene

The light pouring through the picture window's so bright
that I can't see out, so how the hell . . . ? Yeah, right,
I'm sure they're lining up to see a middle-aged man
in all his naked glory. Oh, wait! Is that the Cohen's van
slowing down? "Howdy, neighbors, good to see
you!" I'll wave if I want to, Irma. Let it be--
there's no one there and no one who cares. What?
I will not step away from the window. My butt
or my gut? Which is my better side? After all
these years, you should know. No? Well, call
the neighbors. I'll turn around we can take a poll.
You used to laugh till you peed, Irma. It is funny--butt
or gut? Butt or--oops!--gut? I will not shut
up! And if they can't see me, then how the hell
would they see a glass in my hand? Don't yell!
I don't care if it's only nine a.m. It's my house
and nobody else's business, including yours. Grouse
all you want--just fill our goddamn glasses, all right?
It's the butt, isn't it? C'mon, step into the light.

The "all-ekphrastic" issue!

Included in my new book, Presence!

Also includes my review of Robert Wynne's Museum of Parallel Art

Synecdoche

Skin is a layer that's ever so slight,
a bounty of pigment, sometimes a dearth,
though never pitch black and never pure white.

Some skin recedes like the sun into night,
its coral horizon pink as a birth,
lit like falling stars, but ever so slight.

Some skin is almost an absence of light,
a deeply dug soil the umbers of earth,
but never pitch black. Nor ever pure white,

but flushed as a flock of cardinals in flight,
or beige as a beach, ashen as a hearth,
the skin's a coating that's ever so slight.

And would we sense if we did not have sight
the differing shades that drive a wide berth
on a scale between pitch black and pure white?

Beneath our facades, where colors unite
in muscle and tissue equal in worth,
skin's just a veneer that's ever so slight.
It's never pitch black and never pure white.

Included in my new book, Presence!

A wonderful "little" journal!

Two White Moths

A single blue star quivers
at an acute distance.

Two white moths batter
the bleak patio light.

I shut the blinds and retire
to a blanketless bed.

Words like tiny caskets lie
on the nightstand, reminders

of what's been started
and what's not finished,

ink already fading
into an obscure universe.

Would faith be less desolate
if the heavens were attainable,

if those moths
could beat the light?

One of a series of poems

based on the human chromosomes!

Chromosome 14: Black History Moment

Henrietta Lacks was 31 in 1951,
the year she died of cervical cancer.
Half a century later, her cells live on.

Even under controlled conditions,
blood cells die within a few weeks,
but not the cells of Henrietta Lacks,
which miraculously multiplied
like Biblical loaves and fishes.
Every day an entire new generation
of Henrietta's cells reproduced.
They flourished, mushroomed,
leapt from test tubes
like carbonated bubbles.

With a new name, HeLa genes
were soon packaged in containers
with instructions for feeding,
like sourdough starters passed
from neighbor to neighbor.
Beyond the confines of Henrietta's world,
they made their way
to England, Russia, Chile, Japan,
to outer space aboard the shuttle.

The unsung hero of the polio vaccine
was not a doctor or scientist,
but an unwitting wife and mother
with cancer cells out of control.
Henrietta Lacks never imagined
the thousands of pounds of cells
she would bear through the years,
her genetic largesse, her legacy.

Also includes my poem,

"My Generation"

Lessons to Learn

A hand extends. Another hand, like leaf
to sun, ascends, accepts, and fingers clasp
for warmth against the cold. But like a thief,
one slips away as cars approach, the grasp
dissolved before the yell of faggot wrecks
the walk. A hand, another hand, that's all:
no look, no kiss, no hint of any sex.

The public touch of man to man, though small,
is never innocent to those who feel
a threat of impudence. So curses spew
and fists come out--worse, a glint of steel.
A bloodied couple learns to fear anew,
to stash their hands in pockets deep, to shove
into the dark those signs of outward love.

Playing GI Joes

My GI Joe didn't care for camouflage,
that dreary melange of green and khaki.
He preferred the minimal clothes that I created
with a pair of scissors and poor sewing skills:
hot little loincloths attached with a pin,
paisley ponchos that required only a hole,
a strip of red velvet for a headband or belt.

My GI Joe craved reconnaissance missions.
He would sneak about my sister's room
raiding Barbie's boutique for fashion ideas,
trying on faux fur and elastic-banded skirts,
tube tops and a white-beaded bridal veil--
forays which seldom produced good fits
but occasionally spawned fantastic accessories.

My GI Joe was a gung-ho exhibitionist.
He'd rip off his Army fatigue jacket,
metal snaps rat-a-tatting like an M-1 rifle;
he'd strut that smooth plastic chest
as if his twelve-inch stature controlled the barracks;
then he'd drop his pants around the ankles,
displaying buttocks as solid as rocks--
an audacious tease for one without a penis.

My GI Joe learned to take a lot of pain.
He'd volunteer to cross into enemy terrain,
where he'd be captured without a struggle,
stripped like a go-go boy, and thrown into a cell.
Tied-up, disciplined, tortured into a frenzy,
he was a master of man-to-man endurance,
revealing only name, rank, and serial number
as a sly grin edged toward the scar on his cheek,
a mark that covered so many of our secrets.

Marinara

The mellow oil spreads
to the edges of your belly,
heating like pistons.
An aroma of olives
charges from your flesh.
Your skin sizzles
with onion and garlic;
their pungent spike
radiates from your navel.
Soon your torso's a bay
of ripe Roma tomatoes,
flecked by boats of basil,
and quays of black pepper.
You simmer to perfection,
and I stir, I stir.

Then I pour you over
the steamy strands of my limbs,
toss you in my arms, my legs,
coat my tongue and neck with you.
We twirl, we slurp, we meld.
flecked by boats of basil,
Together we cook so good,
you saucy thing, so damn good.

My Chagall

The sun rises like an old man's last breath.
David floats over St. Petersburg.
Tourists with bulbous fingers point

at the sky, a soft quilt smelling
of baby powder, so delicate you can
almost taste cotton candy,

endlessly white, horizon to horizon,
a test pattern of whining repetition,
utterly without echoes.

Here the sun sets at midnight,
slow as arthritis, bright as a pigeon.
David tries to sleep, but can't,

the buttery ink of his pen scribbling
across his secret notebook:
Gravity keeps us grounded.

Outside his room, he hears odd languages.
The thin door whispers,
"Raskolnikov! Raskolnikov!"

If we become ungrounded, is Russia
or gravity to blame?

Included in my new book, Presence!

He weaves fiber and fur,
acorn-colored sheaves of bark,
feathers retrieved from crooks of trees,
shoots and tendrils, tawny filaments.

He glues together bits of shell
with albumen and tempera's yolk,
constructs an egg-shaped hull,
a mosaic of porous fragments.

Ecru walls rise about him
like petals closing for the night.
He seals the last piece in place.
Almost translucent, his fragile cocoon
is warm, not dark; safe, not lonely.

May I never stop
losing my breath
at the sudden patina
of spring,

the fresh unfolding
of eager leaves
or prompt appearance
of thirsty tulips,

ivy's precipitous climb
or roses' awkward reach,
billions of green kisses
reviving a landscape

only yesterday
so numb and dull,
today as startling
as birth.

Anorexia

Beef was the first to be given the boot,
followed in short order by meat of any color.

Birds were then declared off-limits.
Within a year, fish were added to her list.

Dairy was the next to go--no milk or eggs--
nothing stolen from sentient beings.

Vegetables were fine for awhile, but soon
she heard the cry of each beet pulled from the earth,

of each leaf ripped from a bunch of spinach.
So she turned to what nature gave freely:

nuts that trees released to the ground,
berries shaken free by birds, wild grasses.

When winter came and her bounty was buried,
she stuffed snow in her mouth, crunched it

like she once did bacon, the thought of which
made her vomit. Her body was found

deep in the woods, bones licked clean,
rid at last of all excessive fat.

In the belly of the night
words are swallows,
flying from my lips
into fitful darkness.

I watch them line up
on telephone wires,
arrange them like notes,
harmonious on a stave.

To my drowsy ear
they sound flawless.
So I chant their song,
whisper it over, over.

Come morning, the swallows
have flown--never to return.

Included in my new book, Presence!

Also includes my poem,

"Red Mist"

This hotel bed is a sea,
a wide swath of quiet
where we float

like distant islands,
almost out of sight.

Waves of white
billow between us;
your breathing

barely reaches my shore.
I long to return home

where we surge,
touch and tumble,
in the brine

of our own small bed.

Included in my new book, Presence!

Berryman’s Last Dream Song

Brusque Henry huffed briskly onward
as though late for an important appointment.
Below the Washington Bridge, the frozen
Mississippi beckoned like a bottomless bar drink,
Henry’s demons everywhere.
Time to clean things up, he said.

Henry hauled himself onto the rail,
sat and listened to the chime of the bells
from the University—nine times,
a countdown to blast-off. The flesh
of the palms, the seat of the pants, stuck
to the icy rails, not quite ready to give up.

The drop was swift, like that fateful bullet,
his father’s maddening legacy.
Some thought he was waving goodbye,
but Henry, his white beard parting like a soul
from its body, was greeting Mr. Bones
and all those acquaintances, pale and old.

Included in my new book, Presence!

Chimayo

I ate dirt yesterday.
Cathy would be proud.

The santuario has stood
for almost two hundred years.
Who knows over that time
how many have made the pilgrimage
to taste of its healing dirt?

If you stop at the wood-carved altar,
fail to wander through two low side-doors,
you might miss the discarded crutches,
the hole in the floor, the dirt,
the scoop perched in it.

I sifted and pinched the dirt
between my fingers,
dropped it in my mouth
like chewing tobacco.
Cathy would have taken a handful,
but she’s a walker of holy pilgrimages,
a believer.

All I know is that I still
have that pain in my side,
and even after brushing,
I’m biting down on grit
between my teeth.

Included in my new book, Presence!

Also includes my poem,

"Backyard Sycamore"

Reading Atwood at 30,000 Feet

Azure expanses offer no clarity,
only more distance.
I could just as well be over Canada,
Siberia, someplace cold,
as over the American Southwest.
From here, everything is remote:
cities, oceans, failure.

My spine in an upright position,
I removed myself from attendants’ orders
and the hiss of artificial air
even before takeoff.
Strapped in an aisle seat,
I rigidly continue to read.

A glance out the window reveals
what is to be expected
when the world as we know it
has been relinquished:
emptiness, nothing.

I take no comfort in knowing
that seats can be used as flotation devices,
as if any body of water
exists between Austin and Albuquerque.

But I do dream of surfacing,
rising out of a ghostly lake;
of gulping air, pungent and pure,
and shimmering like light on water.

Included in my new book, Presence!

Also includes my poem,

"Ways of Leaving"

The Chosen

i.
As the gray waters rose
and the sun disappeared for weeks,
depression descended upon the animals.

Penguins missed the sparkle of ice,
monkeys grew claustrophobic without trees,
groundhogs ached to dig in the earth.

Ants withdrew without busy colonies,
owls couldn't tell when to sleep, when to wake,
Angora goats started losing their hair.

Wolverines fought like schoolyard children,
the female beetle thought menopause hit early,
the male elephant harbored thoughts of suicide.

Sex, too, proved susceptible to boredom.
Soon the cobras claimed headaches;
even the rabbits agreed to separate berths.

Why, they asked in therapy sessions,
were we, of all our species, selected to be saved?
Why were we singled out for this stinking ark?

ii.
Fish, on the other hand, flourished
with rain and water everywhere,
their world an aquarium of new adventures.

Cod lost their fear of fishermen's nets;
salmon, their need to run upstream.
Fish multiplied like loaves of Biblical bread,

until the lonely dove returned
with a soggy olive branch,
proof that the waters were abating.

Then the big boat anchored on Ararat
with nary a fanfare or cheer—
depression had turned to apprehension.

Kangaroos were alarmed at sinking into the ooze,
centipedes were unsure of their footing,
turtles feared to leave their homey shells.

The weak and weary animals felt
the terrible burden of procreation
weigh on them like God’s heavy hands.

Knowing their best was all washed up,
each species looked at its mate, warily.
It was time to learn to love all over.

Included in my new book, Presence!

Also includes my poem,

"Fear of Heights"

On Turning Fifty

No longer able to see them,
we talk around our range of dreams.
They float like clouds, we suspect,
among the peaks, up there somewhere,
like that legendary guru divining wisdom.

We long ago surrendered the means
to climb such lofty pinnacles,
ropes and harnesses tossed in the trash
or sold for pennies at garage sales.
Leave scaling mountains to the young,
who continue to believe they’ll be rock stars
or write the Great American novel.
They can fall from great heights—
and still get up. We sympathize,
yet have to laugh at their folly.

While they look up, we look straight ahead,
or down, grounded by bifocals and arthritis.
Dreams are too distant, abstract as math,
so we focus on what we see before us:
no could be’s or could have been’s,
no switchbacks or regrets.

As we start the inevitable downward slope,
our paths have never been clearer.
Let others talk into the face of mountains.

Mattress

Our crooked bodies curl like cats
in a knot in the center of the bed.
I like that beneath us is a mattress
on which no one but us has slept,
a strong, hard mattress,
made for middle-aged backs,
for stomachs unreigned in the night,
for necks that slope into folds.

Deep creases clothe your nape,
shadows that coil into the pillow.
Neck hairs bristle in scraps of moonlight,
glimpses of glistening silver.

A drudging engine,
your heavy breath fills the room
with fifty-year nasal laments.
I listen till my own lungs
match your respiration,
and I lull toward repose.

Included in my new book, Presence!

Dogma

In a school full of Marys and Stevens,
Gregorys and Margarets—
everyone named after saints, popes,
or much-touted martyrs—
I stuck out like a Muslim,
the only one without a patron saint.
Even then I suspected it was a sign.

Perhaps it was early defiance
that kept me from being an altar boy.
When the Johns and Michaels
busied themselves in surplices
at the front of the church,
I sat in a pew, waiting for a calling,
with the Lauras and Rachels. None of us
would ever touch a sepulcher.

Friday mornings, we left our themoses
and tuna sandwiches on our desks,
made a pilgrimage to that mysterious black box
imbued with incense and sweat, the confessional.
I waited my turn with the Davids and Dianes,
their fingers wrapped around rosaries.
The tips of my fingers were
bloodied from nail-biting,
as if I had sins as thick as bark to unburden.
Every week it was the same thing,
whether or not I had anything to confess:
I disobeyed my parents,
I missed Mass, etc.
I rejoined the other penitents,
dressed alike in gray and navy blue,
and folded my hands in the steeple position.

Friends’ homes were rife
with crosses, relics, and holy water,
fronds of palms that had been blessed;
the only thing religious in my house,
buried in the hi-fi, was a family Bible,
kept solely for records and tradition.
I secretly gloated, for when the Communists came—
as we’d been assured by nuns they would—
I knew I would be spared,
for my home had no proof of Christianity.
I knew I would deny and renounce,
life more important than faith.

I excelled at Confirmation for I could
memorize pools of appropriate responses,
phrases as sterile as an operating room.
The Catherines and Raymonds
were filled with renewed spirit,
clutching like parachute cords
their scapulars and medals of St. Christopher.
I never wore anything around my neck.

In church I gazed at stained glass,
more interested in luminescent colors
than anything the priest had to say,
even when the Latin switched over to English.
I fainted one day during Mass.
Several parishioners carried me out.
Gasping for air, I awoke to rays of sunlight.
This was my moment of rapture,
the sign that I’d been seeking—
space, air, a God of skies and clarity;
my body outside the doors of Catholicism
as my mind had always been.