Copernican Moments

The sun, fragile and cinnamon, 
pushes fingers of fog apart, 
offering rare stereopticon 
glimpse of garden—
the unconcerned sticks 
of dark roses,
the overachieving narcissus, 
hollow-bellied 
with urgency, struggling 
through cold soil. 
I pour a second cup, 
stir, lick the sugared spoon, 
and stare at a pristine page hoping 
for a frenetic genesis 
in the frozen clay of my brain—
as if the stirring of digestion 
and desire could make
ink pour thick and rich 
like coffee, and words could 
grope and grow 
like the fleshy purslane 
beginning to crack the sidewalk 
or the mint that thrust—
all winter—
its thin yellow fingers 
through the stone 
into my empty basement 
only to dangle limp, pale 
and blind with fatigue, to die 
above the washer, as brittle 
as sun-bleached bones 
lined up toward an oasis 
in distant untroubled sands.

This poem originally appeared in Juice, Issue 1: Spring 2008.

Horse Returning Mountain

This poem was originally published in Vibrant Gray Issue 3.1 2008.

Horse Returning Mountain

There are no horses here, only goat boys
fishing with string nets, a woman washing clothes,
brown murk of the Yangtze soaking into
her blue trousers, and a few unconcerned goats
snatching ferns from the cliff face.
Three red characters painted on rock name this place:
horse, return, and mountain.
No horses, though. Just a row of sampans
on a gravelly beach. No roads, no trails. Not like
Emerald Gorge where holes in the granite walls recall
huge beams that held ancient walkways, wide enough
for wagons and whole teams.
A horse might wander from up there.
Leave his master stranded in Double Dragon town
where he stopped for a cup of tea and some
little potatoes grilled on bamboo skewers,
the ones women still sell
to tourists at the water’s edge.
A horse could go down, looking for tender ferns
and long grass, down to the river
where the goats play with the garbage
washed up to catch on brush.
And maybe some fishing boy would find that horse
among his goats. Ride him back to town, get a string
of coins for his trouble. Square-holed Imperial coins
his children's children's child would swap someday,
on the riverbank, for three American dollars.
Maybe he painted the three red characters there.
On the mountainside, just above where goats graze.
Goats are never lost. They know their boy will come
to chivy them back up the path, crowding the tourists
who tromp toward mountaintop temples to stare
at the hundred Bodhisattvas of white jade, and gilded wood,
and paper mâche.

I am not for Wisconsin

I should have loved Wisconsin more—

should have been one with the cows, tried to

understand the zen of grass and grazing,

the mantra of milk, the cow-pies sprinkled

in the chicory like approving punctuation.

When the long summer of sheep took me I

should not have pulled away from

the smell of wet wool, or the lambs,

or the grinding of sausage.  But I am not

for Wisconsin, nor could I marry

Michigan—with its maple syrup, 

and tie-dyed autumns, its forests

sliced open by six-lane highways

always delivering you to the souvenir shop

and the carved cedar toilet paper holders

of Tahquamenon Falls. 

A Dakota once grabbed me, but

it was only a passing fancy brought on

by an appreciation of dinosaurs in the distance

and the golden hair of the Corn Princess

in her Corn Palace.

I had a brief fling with Virginia, too,

but all we did was argue—

she had a way of turning every single sunset

into a political rant.  Now I see her only

briefly, passing through smoky parties

on the way to someone else’s mountains.

You may think I am for Ohio—after all,

we have lived comfortably in these

separate rooms for twenty years or more,

but I tell you it is never settled—

tomorrow I may go to Arizona.  Just

pack my things, plant the Amish buggies

in the Queen Anne’s Lace,

and like a stripped out steel mill, empty 

all my aspirations

into the Cuyahoga.

This poem was originally published in Georgetown Review, Spring 2007.

Crows Again

This poem first appeared in Poetry Midwest Issue 17, Fall 2006.

Crows Again

Come down Sunday morning and the crows are back,
hitchcocking in the front yard, stark on the
powdered sugaring of snow.
Feather robed Jesuits, cawing in conclave, they argue
the finer points of bagel versus stale bread, eyeing me
judgmentally through the glass.
The Irish say doors to the netherwold open
where crows gather. I believe them.
Else why all this weird? Not even the squirrel cold cuts,
last night’s leavings from a moonlit tabby songfest,
can explain this invasion.
One for sorrow, two for mirth.
This gathering is more like hysterical laughter,
but whose is the joke?

Cream City Bricks

The grade school on 18th Street

had the same hard black brick

as all the others, charcoal outside,

soft and yellow inside.

The hallway walls wore

crayon meanderings, up

the warm, wooden stair to the third

grade, where Miss Schneider

read us stories—gave out

gold stars I coveted

in neat lines next to my name

on her clean white chart.

I didn't know about the

buttery insides of bricks till David,

the kid with buckteeth,

who died driving drunk

somewhere in Saigon,

threw stones at me and missed,

taking golden chips

out of the dark façade.

The year they sand-blasted the courthouse

we went downtown on the bus

every Saturday

to see the next installment of gold appear,

like sunrise slowly crawling

over that domed horizon.

Even South Division High,

where I left my illusions,

came clean under the harsh interrogation

of sand and steam.

But always, in a year or so,

the dark effects of weathering

crept back,

smeared over the brick

like a scum of dirt and straw that

floats on new milk in the pail.

In the dairies, my uncles

skimmed milk, turned cream

into pale Wisconsin butter,

then came home to complain of cows,

low wages, and hippies

in the old neighborhood bars.

I loved those East-side bars—

biker bars squeezed between

the headshops and Watertower Park,

where you could get three good hits of

white-cross for two bucks,

or strawberry mescaline on Sunday,

where we learned to stay away from

crazy Pete’s weed laced with dust.

By graduation I knew three dead boys,

David and Pete and Michael.

Michael, all light and music,

danced his motorcycle

off the 16th Street viaduct.

My dad, who’d never liked long hair,

chanted a new lyric about

murdercycles.

But I remember the vibration

between my thighs

on one forbidden ride

and the heat

of pale, creamy skin

under black leather.

Originally published in Penguin Review, Spring 2006

Dangerous Women

Dangerous Women

We knew them when we saw them,

the ones our mothers

warned us about,

sauntering down our

bare suburban afternoons,

their Marilyn skirts drifting upwards,

lifted by the

light-fingered breeze.

Oh for breasts that touched the sky

at those impossible angles!

If you’d pull two pins, their hair

would tumble down in waves enough

to drown a man’s resolve

and leave him

abandoned

to all the saltier commandments.

(In our mirrors we postured, practicing,

while the grandmothers clucked their tongues.)

When they passed, we sucked in the

hot scents of Opium

and Taboo—and watched

the boys we wanted to know

watching.

Originally published in Penguin Review, Spring 2006

The Woman and the Wool

for Linda, who asked why, in the long list of those who must not

work on the Sabbath, wives were never mentioned.

I have never made a rug.

Never pushed steel hook through reluctant canvas,

or punched in patterns of ancient roses,

water-deep greens and honeyed yellow.

I have not cut yarn into finger lengths of black

for the final fringe.

I did not know the sheep, nor the shearer.

Did not watch the fleece fall

in waves from the knife, or see the lamb leap

free and naked in the early grass. 

But I do know what it is to drop the burden

of heavy locks that weigh down the head,

of a hair-shirt worn too long,

of my feminine sins.

When the time came to the wash wool, I was not there.

Other hands brushed and combed, shaped

long rolags, pulled fibers and twisted.

But I have heard the spinning wheel’s hymn

and tasted the baptism of dye—

the heavy scent of wet wool, of turned earth,

perfume of red madder, of  woad and weld,

the alum acrid as Protestant guilt.

Still the rug at the door is not my rug.

It belongs to the sheep and to the spinster,

to the mother of my grandmother—

she whose arthritic hands, twisted and hooked,

made those roses bloom on a Sunday when

no work, except by the women, could be done. 

originally published in Penguin Review, 2006