My kitchen is filled with men in black suits
I ask one of them to tell me the story of Batman,
as I know the outline, the bare facts found in comic books,
but not the deeper mythology.
Their spokesman listens patiently, says:
“We can only tell the true story of Bruce Wayne in plainsong.”
Memorial Day
I sat yesterday at the scene of a previous poem,
listening to a unctuous woman recite M. L.
Greenwood’s God Bless the USA,
cringing at how poorly she scanned it.
Poetry is often the refuge of people stuck
between an old truth and a new expression.
and I respect what they’re grasping for, and I’m proud
to be an American
So I played marches with the band,
sitting under a tent in a parking lot
and listened to a recording of I Am the Flag
the high school JROTC played through speakers
connected to someone’s iPhone, while they
passed a folded flag to anyone
who wanted to touch it.
The ritual would not have been diminished by
Quaker silence, an undeclared question.
He played taps again under the tree,
a sweet, sad, eternal bugle call.
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.
No Idea About My Past
I look at file dates and think
that was four years ago
and wonder what’s happening to my mind,
my perspective
what keeps happening
the accelerating rate
things keep changing
The Dream of my Father
One month to the day
is when I finally dream of him alive
not counting half-awake forgetfulness
I should tell Dad about
We are both in hospital sharing a room
perhaps it is another accident
my reasons are vague, the mild, hopeful complaints
of hospital dramas where the patient goes home
And I cannot remember our conversations
In the dream, I can’t remember how I got there
which sounds like something serious, actually
September 12
When I turned my iPhone back on as we taxied to the gate
preparing for a dash for my connecting flight
a voicemail had arrived:
The following is important information about your flight
which has been cancelled due to an earlier cancellation
due to weather in your area.
And this is how they told me I’d be emerging from the airport
an abstractly secure place with seemingly no connections
to the city around it
Novocaine
I only learned today that the local anesthetic
my dentist used for extracting part of a tooth
and building up a partial, stumpy bit
of composite resin
in preparation for a later, larger
extraction of cash for a crown
The Dream of An Office
…Ranks of books
On the sides — old Miltons, Tolstoys, Wuthering
Heights, Ackermann’s Oxford. A holograph
Copy of Keats’s “To Autumn”…— from The Dream of a House, Reynolds Price
I find myself in medias res
as one always does in dreams
in a small office, such as
an associate professor
at a branch campus
like the one I attended
would have.
The Same Earth
My sons march on the same earth
I practiced on a different century ago
but that was before I tried writing a novel
getting married, watching
Remains of the Day.
I can’t recognize the place
because the new band room
and a fence has been added on
and so much grass has grown
since then.
Booze and Jetlag
As shown in a movie like Lost in Translation
best experienced with headphones, the way
sounds of a strange city come at you wrong
out of phase
are what separate you from the self
that worries about the past and future, which
liberates you for a moment
which must nevertheless be saved up for,
and paid with interest.
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