"Show a little faith there's magic in the night."

Let's go, the sky is getting dark. Let's go
like streaks of lightning through fields
of Meadow Foxtail. Let's wrap our freckled
arms around Cassiopeia, let's greet her with a kiss.

Let's run to the Dancing Lawn, uncurl our fists
to the sky, yell until our throats crest, shrill,
push against the clouds. Let's tear the old skin from our backs.
Come on darling, let's cut out and meet Bruce

on Thunder Road, don't bother with your shoes.
Or let's clutch the 12:15 freight to Detroit
—the old Paris of America—
where any golden green's shriveled away by now.

Come on, I want to strike a match on my bare,
calloused heel and light you up and down
each block. Let's go—with no care where or how
or why—the sky is getting dark.

Charred Hamburger

Steven


Is this the naked best of you?
The craned arch in the foot, continually
denying gravity―the ghostly webs that stretch
from body to body, only seen in a fountaining
silhouette, rippling from your arms
like the rings of a tree. The only prejudice
is the truth you have written in your senses―
the tugging gut, last night's melody whimpered low―
the way back to clattering your teeth
in dandelion greens, to your hand-claps for the naked
best moon, the way of the unkempt, frilled intimacy―
these veins stretch out like the countless roots
of wild fig trees, clutching firmly in the rutty ground.
But here in the raisin-sun mornings like this one
where you sling your song to the streetlamp and leave it,
and swagger your derelict tongue to the road―
you are merely black hair and smoke.

Thou Shalt Not Mix Fibers

Indian Summer Prayer, 2008


Dear Lord, you are weightless
in the morning fog, you dropped
your shadow and called it good.

Thank you for your shifting moods,
reaching behind yourself, coaxing

Forgive me—I want to feel your
hand smearing the lamb on my forehead—
for all of the masturbation, intellectual or otherwise;

Please don't confuse my nerves
with vibrato as I fumble through the dresser
drawers where Mom and Dad used to tuck me
in for the night, asleep on a mattress
of polyester and wool.

I am sorry

Young Woman with Epilepsy, I Am Sorry


You are out in the ether. Your head thumps
the hospital pillow, your arms across the hospital tray.
Dust rises like snow in reverse. Dust:
all the pieces that have flaked away.

In the past the doctors would have consulted spirits
would have smeared goat's blood over your forehead.
Now they've brought you here to the fluorescent,
sterile room, laid you in this pneumatic bed,

pinned diodes to your temples—to observe you sweat
and shiver and moan, to watch you set fire to your spirit,
and eventually climb out.
But as they monitor you, you are out searching

in your tremor, full of the same vigor that makes thunder
open its throat, you are out there, passing through pools
of white light and white heat.
If only you could know how electric you are.

A Menthol Winter Passover/Hem and Haw

Two poems tonight. The first is an edit on an old piece of writing I stumbled upon and the next is something I just finished.

A Menthol Winter Passover [The typeset/formatting is different on this poem on the page, and Blogger doesn't like it, so it's all aligned wrong.]


My accordion body
shivers from bed to bathtub,
slipping into the water's ebbing topography,
reciting good graces to cold enamel, and under
the steaming water I am
grateful for every sleepy nerve
coaxed and flickering
to life
like a struck match.


Hem and Haw


From fog comes land, shape and shadow.
The croaking night births each morning ray,
some mother's little lambs full of romp,

the stratus pearling across the sky.
From rot so cross and scattered rise
dandelion clocks, small winged seeds of dream.

And the egret's plumage hides on the crook of her neck
waiting for its time to curl into a snowy bouquet.
All these ounces of joy are to be stuffed in the cracks

of the windowless schoolyard wall and left to sprout,
in between the slats of the soup kitchen floor to pillow and bloom.
There is no doubt one of us must sow them there.

And as for the moon, and its scoffing mouths all filled
with pull, rest your head head on my shoulder, darling,
watch as dawn crosses the windowsill.

AWP Intro Award

Sooooo, guess what? My poem "Archipelago" just won an AWP Intro Award. And they misspelled my name.

http://www.awpwriter.org/contests/intro01.htm