I live today in a whore tricked
out for Saturday early
evening sauntering in rain
under shiny black water
proof plastic twitching seductively for
cheap boys driving by slowly
slowly, windows down, laps
wet, blushing alone or full of face
with a mate to cover
gaffes and brag of conquest with tomorrow
drinking coffee black in the
office, muffled in faded rose
carpet and partners too old to
fuck me now.
upstairs old couples are dancing,
twitching the ceiling.
those old muscles are raggedly
waltzing across my heart
squeezed between ceiling joists,
listening.
their feet have run earth.
bound in plastic now they step, step,
step, knocking on wood.
Smoke gathers hard up
against the bald Santa Rosas,
blue veil the fine lace
of her burning hem.
The barn rafters were hand-carved
and fitted. We stood three feet apart
in snow to admire them and
shuffled our feet against cold,
considering, wary of where we put
our eyes, our shy words
And I noticed grown pigs snuffled
through their own warm feces
on new cement outside while
a tractor idled nearby,
rattling winter.
Inside the barn, piglets
climbed walls with their screams.
When you knelt they were silenced,
your hand held out, catching their fear.
I looked down at you and
you looked up at me and
six years climbed the walls,
perched on the rafters,
just vermin.
My brother and I would crouch
like India indians on our heels, empty
porcelain banks, counting with
precision, the avidity of pirates
flickering around our blue eyes and
famous fingers.
When all the coins
passed, we fished
from blue chairs, hungry
over a carpet
striped like bass.
Today we talk through
improbable wires about nothing,
lost between the branches
of flight and imagination,
believing ourselves secure
on oceans of lawn furniture,
cats caught in trees.
I keep breaking out
and he keeps digging in.
We drift further and
further apart.
maybe it was not the jacketed metal
that killed soldiers, not the compressed air
in a vacant pocket of explosion.
maybe those projectiles only
spring through the gauntlet of wandering attention–
the blistered foot, the scratched raw palm chafing
on the salty stock of a worn rifle.
maybe in the window of rainwater
fresh on green-drunk jungle, in the heart-stopping
din orchestra of birdsong falling
on morning’s delicate daylight, swinging
grass flowing like wind-water
gold as a lit evening in illinois . . .
perhaps it is not precisely the trigger pulled that kills
but the moment between, that of an eyelid flickering,
side trip to a stop frame of living
that takes each soldier’s life,
stolen with calcified indifference
from that blade width of inattention
between the effort of vigilance
and the infinite sensation
of a hunger for beauty.
he blows the moon off its path.
he’ll say he didn’t do
much of anything last night.
she turns cars into magnets
rushing to lock.
she’ll say she
walked to the post office.
someone says boo.
they blush.
wild animals,
those farm boys
and ranch-broke girls.
they are all the time so shy.
A bad bone doesn’t stalk
when the sun is walking straight on a clear sky
through grandmothers and sisters.
He beats her when
the moon is pulling him up.
In small ways he beats her
when graves are sucking him down,
winds are shoving him around.
He beats her when rains
stomp around, vibrating dirt,
shaking tangles out of tall grass.
Still she stays.
Maybe she knows that
he is between everything substantial.
She knows how old the day can be and
how young he is between hunts.
She can see the stars between bad bones
even when night skies cloud black,
dense as ironwood branches
washed down the arroyo in spring
because she loves him.
slow autumn silence
descends, settles
to root loneliness.
old hearts pause, aching
in the spacious silence,
stones, even,
waiting for a whole season
to exhale,
finish.
I spread myself now
across the taut surface
of earth’s thin skin
bone bliss of that little death
after such long dying.
orphan poems 