Certainly, the trick in transposition on alto sax, or improvision,
even flat-out difficulty, is remembering relationships,
for sharp-minded people even struggle to remember:
a minor third inversion is relative on its own scale –
One Nation
A country emptied by the fear of war.
from The Dream of Lee, Reynolds Price
WE sat together in a coffee bar,
sheltered from the gentle autumn wind,
streaming the speech of Russian subterfuge
an out-of-style wartime
dream, a shadow war played out
on social networks filled up by the fear
of truth.
How Soon the Sound
How soon the sound turns to gibberish, the
way form follows meaning into blind alleys. Listen:
I just got through playing Bach suites on
the wrong instrument for them, the wrong way,
most likely, but as it was it was meaningful,
as it was.
Written in response to a dVerse prompt: write a quadrille, using the word sound.
Sonnet: The View from the False Door
There is little to be
seen outside my door
which doesn’t open. I see
a shrub, wooden fence, and four
houses ranged close, paranoid
in their huddled, gap-toothed
yards with their backs avoid-
ing contact with me. Truth
to tell, we all avoid this backyard
meeting. Privacy fences are tall
sentries against each other’s hard
gazes from kitchen blinds that fall.
We meet each other in the way
we wave politely at the end of day.
Not my best effort, but it is an English sonnet, and I wrote it in response to this dVerse prompt.
140 leaves 137
140 leaves 137 A space is a line feed is a period and any of them could leave you with no time to say, or time to say too much. To go back
— Poetry Tech (@poetrytech) January 10, 2014
A response to a dVerse Prompt. Go make your own!
After a Year of Drought
We went to my friend’s lake house
hoping the water was still up to the dock.
It was, but mud ran alongside the pilings,
made it look like a construction site,
with bottles, cans, and one boot
of a sort fashionable among young girls
in 2003.
Or as if the land was creeping back
to reclaim its own, after
the Hydroelectric Act of 1939
or whatever thing the legislature enacted
between dime-cigar bets and happy girls
flooded the land between two counties
mocking that part of creation where
dry land divided the waters and it was good
but it was also good to get out
on a boat and see the pine trees whizz by
like a flooded out interstate,
or Venice writ large and southern-style.
My friend pointed out trees
hanging on to dry land
roots leached out of the water
like receding gums,
or an uprising.
written in response to a dVerse prompt.
The Dream of Tartness
Often after a trauma
there is the mundane revery
if I could only
mine was a dream of an unbearable tartness
in a drink of volcanic coldness
I sipped metallic hospital crushed ice water
tried not to vomit up the simplest of soups
normally there is the gift of not desiring
the smell of nausea clings to things
that can’t be kept down but
I conjured up something like limeade
as a nuclear bomb is something like a firecracker
while the tubes of lukewarm glucose, morphine
and hot piss kept me alive.
written in response to a dVerse prompt
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.
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.
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