Am meisten gelesen ▸
Dave Bonta
having lost the off-
spring in your step
you stare mutely back
at whatever comes
on a gorgeous morning
on an old woods road
that is itself lost
disappearing into the forest
finding again
that old quarry
where a chipmunk
has sunk a shaft
and a giant millipede writhes
her road-self
coiling and uncoiling
it’s cold
“la volonté de tristesse”—drawing by Alejandra Pizarnik (from The Galloping Hour: French Poems)
one ought to remain at least
partially buried at all times
let lost pieces of oneself
get eaten by opossums
one must learn to read the paper
upside-down and backwards
give names to the flies
but not to the joyful spider
and when one is invited to dance
one must not cling as if drowning
one who is oneself
a sort of small salt lake
one must follow decorum
as one follows the weather
everything one knows about rhythm
spiderlings before we were dust
how we crawled
while you watched the sunset
i watched darkness climb the trees
though the sky never
really gets dark any more
i began growing a hump
as a form of protest
and now it looms invisibly
over my every croak and cry
i call it O for Oblivion
as well as the Obvious
what i thought were spiderlings
was the detritus of their eggs
in the right light
anything can look promising
invasive slug
the wood pewee bending
his one note
cool morning
the sun catches a spider
patching holes
It’s not every year we get snow in dogwood season. This particular year, the wild weather simply adds to the impression that the world is completely out of whack.
spiderweb
catching snowflakes
their little spikes
Marooned in our homes, tempers fray. We wonder how long this will go on, worry about finances and food shortages. I watch a pair of scarlet tanagers—treetop birds—reduced to feeding near the ground and foraging for invertebrates in the creek.
redder
than our open mouths
tanager
But spring is always a puzzle: the innumerable ways that spikiness blossoms and leaves us.
off-trail in the woods
in spiderweb season
walking mindfully
a loop of grapevine
rising from the horsebalm patch
the scent of lemons
fall warbler
I pish as if fluent
in bird mysteries
all its offspring
on the other side of the deer fence
the big pine
they must love the milk
that makes them so bad-tasting
milkweed bugs
memorial bench
all the young trees
it shelters now
the fog still lingers
in a funnel spider’s web
deertongue grass
the “creep” in “creeper”
battened to a locust trunk
by a thousand tentacles
in the purple-stemmed
jungle of pokeweed
last year’s skeletons
goldenrod meadow
forty acres and a wren
the somewhere else
that is also here
ridge after ridge
too big to hide
the spider draws in her legs
and turns to gemstone
By the prison gate
lone brown napkin somersaults
forward in the breeze
Man in the wheelchair
needs his umbrella back...
sweat bulbs in my sleeves
Twilight-tinged window
scent of cooking liver
three hours to Sunday
"O, no one loves me!"
a game for my mind
woolly countless eons
One shoe, a tin cup
spoiled celery for breakfast
shadow of the church
Madman screams again
A wheel, broken
but not so you would notice
dazzles travelers
Pullman porter
sits open-handed and still
his eyes, twin spirals
Solitary breath
in the fetid men’s room
stink doctors long gone
A branch’s shadow
wavers at 3 am
over the dead lamp
The politician
says it isn’t either/or
as I hide from the storm
One dead movie star’s
My bathroom is a secure place
With a little window to the world.
A two-way window, to look out
And to look within.
Water runs, chuckling,
Washing away dirt; sins too.
The resident spider sprints
With a cockroach in its mouth.
A gecko peers, scrambling
As I sprinkle a little water at him.
A stage
To enact my fantasies
To practice a speech
To sing a song
To talk to my love
Or imagine making love.
In the claustrophobic cubicle
(the reason none other dare use it)
That is my exclusive toilet,
At the stroke of midnight
We engage in a silent conversation.
I sit on the seat, hardly a foot away from her.
Twisting myself awkwardly, I strain to focus.
in the dim light, her eyes twinkle
As the light of the headlamp lights her up.
I have known her ( or her ancestors) for long.
Very polite, seemingly embarrassed
Having to witness my nocturnal
Passage of the bowels, she pretends
To be busy with cleaning herself up.
Observing her through the camera
I am reminded of the many lonely nights