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Donut Shop Moment
nothing can ever taste
as good as the smell
pavlovian anticipation
of red flashing neon
green glass
and white counters
Handwritten
for M.B.
A handwritten note I found
that had nothing to do with me
and wasn’t particularly wrenching
or well-enjambed
still startled me
because the handwriting,
the blue lines and charcoal grey
reminded me of days in school
when you would write to me
thinking about me instead of
world geography.
The faint smell of your wrists
and the sweetness of paper itself
I imagine it in
a handwritten note I found
that had nothing to do with me.
My wife and I exchanged letters
by the mail across hundreds of miles
before we were married, and still
write things in cards three times
a year – but mostly we text, and
keep our grocery list synched.
She sends me an emoticon kiss.
It’s love like I hope you have
with your husband now.
I believe it in
a handwritten note I found
that had nothing to do with me.
Somewhat after the style of Leonard Cohen; Tedious explanation of what I’m up to after the cut. Read more…
Sestina: Wile E. Coyote
Permit me to introduce myself. Wile E. Coyote, genius.
I first see the roadrunner
on a sepia-painted morning in the desert.
Some might see an odd bird; I think he is the perfect
prey – in a land of shifting sand, a rock.
When I see him, I learn hunger.
I start by exploiting his hunger.
It is a stroke of genius;
At dawn, I hang a rock
over some seed I set out for the roadrunner.
He falls for it; the timing of the trap is perfect.
I cut the rope. Blackness covers the desert.
When I come to under the desert
sun, my accordion-like breath drowns my hunger.
I now see how to perfect
my trap. It is a stroke of genius.
I will lure the roadrunner
into a tunnel, actually a painted rock
with darkness painted on. He runs into the rock
and disappears. How could my wits desert
me? I follow after the roadrunner
and flatten my thin form on the sheer face. My hunger
doesn’t drive me anymore. It is a frustrated genius
that beckons me to build the perfect
mouse trap for a bird. The perfect
snare for him is speed, I realize. Make him rocket
to oblivion. The genius
of it is how he will run out of desert
at the end, falling, falling, falling. It is a soul hunger
I will feed: there will be little left of the roadrunner.
I am not thinking of the roadrunner
as I make a perfect
arc off the cliff. What kind of hunger
was that again? I wonder as I strike a rock
and take it with me. I will hit the desert
floor first; après mois, the stone. Sheer genius.
The roadrunner is pecking at something as I crawl from beneath the rock.
Such a waste, a perfect chance. My arms and legs desert
me for the moment. I will go now; feed my hunger with my genius.
A Term of Art of War at an Organ Recital
The phrase has pleasing (even pious)
Connotations, like Arbeit Macht Frei,
“Molotov Cocktail,” and Enola Gay.
- From Formal Application, Donald W. Baker (1923-2002)
Deep in meditation by the end of an hour of organ music
in an old church pockmarked by manhole-size plaques
To the Glory of God commemorating rich men’s sons
blown into the next life on the winds of war,
I note the last piece:
Carillion-Sortie – Henri Mulet (1878-1967)
I know the term sortie as a term of art of war.
More generally it means to go out, leave
in the Middle French word sortir
and learned its meaning of
deployment from a strongpoint
by associating with other tough romance words:
salient
petard
enfilade
and
carronade
the last of which sounds pleasantly like a musical term
but which was a short-barreled gun
of the late 18th and 19th centuries
that fired large shot at short range and
was used especially on warships.
Tracking
The new UPS driver looks like he’s been working his way down the corporate ladder.
I think he looks too old for a package car and he looks like he’s about my age
and finally: I’ve seen him looking younger.
It was 1982.
He hung an offensive nickname on me
that spoke of something I’d never even seen, much less done,
and I wore it like the proverbial badge marked Chicken Inspector
or I Felta Thi. How mightily
we called it out when pinching female freshmen’s bottoms.
What cards we were. What utter shits.
In the synapse it takes for me to remember all this,
he has called me by that name again, laughing as
he clicks a touchscreen to note the exact time and place
the package was delivered.
I turn around to make sure my staff hasn’t heard it
and he laughs again. Hey, add me on Facebook!
The Dream of My Grandfather’s Return
My grandfather at the dinner table of his son-in-law’s farmhouse:
Saltines, sardines, turkey sandwiches, potato salad, jello molds.
The progressive potluck of his hardtack life, coming as it did
toward something like luxury.
The luxury was to sit down – all of his sons and daughters
under the roof, everyone getting along. My father telling
a story about the 1950s that everyone there
except the grandchildren lived through. Laughter.
Even in my dream I am the little man
who has to point out the obvious.
Whispering to him, so as not to upset everyone:
“Granddaddy, you’re dead.”
He gave me a disappointed look,
which I at first took for embarrassment.
We were suddenly in a field.
It could have been Egypt, but it followed the contours
of my uncle’s pasture. A sunset of the deepest indigo,
a cross in the distance.
Not the cross at the top of the church,
nor an old rugged cartoon rendition,
but two perfect lines of darkness
intersecting above the crest of the hill.
Neither one of us spoke a word.
I have never dreamed of him since.
Insomnia
Insomnia, while it lasts, is like flying
downhill on a bike. We would love it
were it not for the denouement.
We do love it
under different names at different times:
the holiday weekend, cram sessions,
all the be-now-pay-later moments.
Names like focus, party mode,
and the Big Lie: wired. The promise,
never kept, that tomorrow will not
claim our time with interest, the loan
we didn’t ask for when we lie awake
spinning down mental slopes.
Pantoum: Mass Transit
The sun was starting to get a little low
when I parked the car in a parking deck
in Jacksonville where I took Southwest to Oakland
We stopped somewhere in Nevada Read more…
