In the story of my childhood I am
usually elsewhere, a thin presence to myself,
mumbling from a script of my own devising.
It never occurs to me to wonder
how my opposite number the hero
might really feel: Hey, it’s hot up here!
I’m tired of coming to the rescue of girls
you’re too scared to say one word to.
And how can you call yourself a pacifist
& expect me to avenge all wrongs
with my infallible fists?
Of unscripted moments, I remember few.
I wreck every kite I ever try to fly
in the mountaintop’s sideways wind.
Late summer of my 40th year, I catch
an echo of my childhood in the nightly
too hot
to wear anything
the wonder
in a drop of wine
full of daylight after
her husband is dead
summer is dead
i found her green leaf body
at the foot of an oak
in the first snow
blanketing the valley
the smell of diesel
100 feet downridge
there’s a fallen nest
woven from strips of wild
gravevine bark
the trees are becoming
more and more vacant
though they shriek
and moan in the wind
i remember what jesus
said about new wine
morning smells like a burning hymnal
now that it’s afternoon
like a vast excavation
by archaeologists of the present
a blend of fresh earth and mildew
ozone and the blood of cut roots
if i were a dancer i would
know what to do
with this wild scent turning
into end-of-summer heat
as it is there are sun-drunk leaves
insects and vagrant warblers
and they seem to have
things under control
while i sit and try to be
a better place holder
in one summer how many
generations of aphids
chicory blueing the roadside
where a drive-in used to be
and the spindly trees
that stand in for angels
their green blades
for carving up the sun
so much more than we know
grows in a summer
sporangia like eyestalks
seedpods like space ships
and the mountaintop bleeds orange
where coal was stripped out
but we climb with
our mouths open
the same moon
in everyone’s phone
fireflies
Like varicose veins
in the thinning snow, the dark
tunnels of the voles.
My garbage is nothing
but coffee grounds, each morning
wrapped in its filter-shroud.
I miss summer:
those small millipedes that glide
across the bathroom floor.
Your were like ice in the summer;
Your body was warm,
Hot even,
Burning, tingling at touch.
Keeping me warm too.
Your heart was cold,
Alone in the dark,
Frozen still.
Cracking like ice.
You were like fresh waves crashing on hot sand,
Refreshing but not new.
You weren't ice cream melting in the sun,
Not annoying.
You were ice in the summer,
Common, regular, but different.
Needed and wanted.
I wrote you a note
And now I'm waiting to hear back.
People don't talk about how scary this is enough.
Maybe I'm just scared because I always start them,
But I never finish the relationship.
My first love told me
She had the wrong sexuality-
Our whole thing was a lie.
My second love was a mistake,
i was willing to give more than I had,
And they wanted more than I could offer.
My family ended that one.
My third love was a cute boy named Joey.
We had everything in common,
But it was just a summer fling.
As you can see,
Summer sets…
stuffed red wagon
left at the curb
Summer sets…
toddlers churn
through the wading pool
Summer sets…
sweat on my left wrist dries
faster than my right
Summer sets…
fire truck howls
like a hollow tooth
From a sunken throne,
potentate breathes
in bubbles
Reticence
First of July…
rain sounds but no rain,
back of the bus
That tree
thinks about what the wind
might do next
Third of July,
ice blocks the pitcher’s spout…
corkscrewed Diet Coke
tanka:
Projector:
Ticks
of the uptake reel
spinning alone…
story’s end wears thin
A quiet heat…
Sweat collecting on
the heel of my right hand
dampens the denim
I remind myself
not to expect friendship
there, that’s better.
Bellevue bus banner
“8 restaurants to choose from”
the pigeon pecks crumbs
The Fourth of July
means nothing to me this year
but thick, rolling booms.
One table, one man
eating a bean from a plate
outside, history
The fire station flag