tell me

Tell me how I can’t remember
the excruciating pain
of spinal surgery—
hooks, pins, 2 cut ribs.
I can’t feel again in my body
the way I felt those two delusional
weeks when the pain beat me
like an abusive drunk, and I was up every night
shrieking, writhing like there were demons inside
my cut up flesh—every pound of it roaring.
But I can remember
how my heart felt when my three best
friends, all braces and concern,
showed up at my bedside, sat for hours
until each inch of missed ground
was covered.
It still makes me
teary.

Tell me how the man molested and beaten as a child

learned to put up barricades
like his dad put up fists, to harden all of himself,
to turn even his skin
into concrete. But for some reason,
when the rain pours onto his tin roof and
splatters over the weary world,
something in him breaks, and he feels
whole, still feels
whole.
 
Tell me how you can sit in a concert hall,
thinking of the food you’ll eat after,
or how you’re going home alone,
and then the cello does a solo, and suddenly
you remember how it feels
to be loved. You think maybe
your grandmother just put
a blanket around your shoulders,
kissed your lonely cheek,
and sat down next to you.
All this from a
melody.

Then tell me, yes, tell me

that there is nothing supernatural
about this world.
Tell me that the spirit of God is not
now wending
among us.

happiness and whole milk

It’s the little things that make me happy.
Like when my brother and I make bets—the way
we did when he was a pro ball player and I was an ice skater,
writer, and Broadway star—still. I’ve won
Blizzards and bought lagers for babies and basketball,
respectively. When I talk theology with my sister,
which isn’t as profound as it sounds
when we’re in sweatpants on the couch,
palming gigantic mugs of tea, garbed in store-bought blankets.
But it is more spiritual than it sounds,
because I like when she says
redemption, takes a sip and blankets her
pregnant belly with a happy hand.
And all the while the highways are going to bed,
and all the while the rain is making love to the roof.
These things make me happy
like the serendipitous way that some days
my underwear matches perfectly my shirt,
and no one but my backside and me knows
the extent of my sex appeal.
Or the way ice-cubed coffee tastes when I’m tired in May—
like Italian boys sweating and thrusting
hands into tomato patches and grape buckets,
or like shadows must taste to trees—like midnight but awake.
I like the way fruit gets drunk on its own joy juices,
fattens and falls because it’s so drowsy from the weight of
its own fat happiness. And the Bolivian farmer
who is missing teeth but smiles more than Miss Roberts
because what does he care about incisors
when the papayas are swollen as ripe shiners
and the wife is full? She always chuckles when she spits
the pips and later under the whole milk moon, she’ll kiss
his mouth with the missing teeth and believe that his
lips and his bronzed bare feet belong
to a prince. Because that makes her happy, but also
a princess. What makes me happy is paper right before
its first kiss of pen, like you before your first kiss—
smooth-faced, expectant and boundless—and then after,
more lovely than before it all, before
your lips were marked up with the language.
Think of the black-haired Egyptian woman who speaks
in silk scarves that harmonize with her hair. She says her name
is Elham and when the teacher asks
how to pronounce it the Latino man cries
out Iowa! The silk-mouthed woman speaks the language
of God, but this man speaks the language of distance and borders,
of backroad maps, of running. He likes the rhythm
of adventure, and I like the way he thinks.
When I am driving home the same way I drove home
after someone died or after a volleyball game,
a DJ lady comes on the radio and tells me a story
about her friend who, all her life dreamed of making goat cheese,
dreamed of the churning and the curd.
One glad day, she saved enough dinero to
buy a goat that grows cheese like you wouldn’t believe,
cheese that makes the cows come home or at least
gives them a chance to catch a matinee. The DJ lady
tells me to carry hope in the bottom of my shoe so I won't
ever give up on my own sweet cheese dream,
but I'll probably tuck it into a bra strap instead.
I want you to be happy.

ekphrasis in response to "The Slender Thread" by Mark Rothko

If there is a  world where poets don't lie,

where painters don't always kiss 

suicide, it is here.

It is inside the superfluous fluff of a duckling

kept afloat by spiritual planks of tangible anger.

It is under the red rusted blushing silt,

between the stars of a half-hearted heart

atop the tomatoes, beyond the flames of a torch

that bubbles glass into handheld globes which in turn flutter upwards and never break.

It is here in the heat of sliced light, in the light that blinds you,

that opens your eyes.

a touch of blue

My professor is brilliant.
You can tell by the way his hair is long,
Silver, spinning in on itself and outward.
He paces around the room
With wrinkles in the places his thoughts
Have been thinking
All these years.
His shoes are polished but worn,
So we know
He is eclectic, a mix
Of classy and colloquial.

He is explaining the language of books.
He is explaining mechanisms of research
He is explaining the right way to consider.

A touch of blue
Startles me to awareness.
And from my plastic desk
I think to myself,
Why am I doing this,
When I could step outside,
Take a bite of sky,
And be filled?

My professor is brilliant.
He steps my way
And asks me to please,
Be quiet.

writing in spring

When spring comes,

I know I should be writing poetry

but what I end up doing is planting
gardens—green beans and broccoli—
scooping wet black soil, picking up
plump bugs, tugging at weeds with divinely
callused hands.
I end up bathing in waterfalls
of sunlight, next to sunflowers,
above the earth
worms.

I know I should get something on paper,

but then I’ll go bicycling between
the apple groves, up peaks
along ridges down mountains down
to the clearest stream,
meandering through earth like quilled cursive.

I’ll be going home to pen a line,

but then stop to baptize
myself in the hallowed shadow of a wizened Oak,
or in the fresh fur scent
of toddler wobbling calves.
I’m sweaty, smelly like tilled loam,
but the grass still knows
how to love; it holds me as the sun
breaks and oozes honey on horizon.

I’ll finally get home to write,

but then I’ll stay outside, carry my niece
under the ripening sky,
tell her she was formed just
a day after the Gold Finch and Blue Jay,
stay just until the light
rain dots drops on our cheeks and
kisses us clean.
The cosmos fattens, blooms
aubergine, settles on land.

Another day spoken for,
and not a syllable inked.

concerning this

There is no denying
Her life will be hard.
She will grow up
Without money.
She will never know
Who her daddy is and
You will never
Tell her.
There will be times
When the pain will spit
So frankly, point-blank
In your face
That you will barely
Be able to justify
Her existence,
There will be times when you will
Curse the act you thought
Was love, curse the bed
You blessed.
But say, one day, she
Bustles up to you,
Muddy and breathless,
Summer's scent sealing
Her like anointing oil,
Curls spilling sunlight on her
Rivulet bones.
She holds a tulip
She picked from the neighbor's
Patch, offers it to you
Sacredly,
Tells you
She loves you.
Would you not gather her
In your arms,
Gently sweep her hair
Behind her ear
And whisper your reply,
And kiss her there
On her bubblegum cheek
And know,
As sure as death,
That there was a time
You carried the world
In your womb?

in the beginning

In the beginning, there was nothing.
Nothing but Love.
Perfect, spinning, dizzying, dancing Love
Love bursting at the seams, exploding from the core
It couldn't be clamped down or shut up
Tamped in or squelched out
A love so savory and succulent
Rich and bottomless that in It
All perfections rest

It wasn't lonely or sad or needy
Or afraid of being unaccompanied forever
Love was flawless and so colossal, so vast and deep
That It lacked nothing, needed nothing
Had everything.
And because of this,
Because it was so effervescent, ever-pulsating,
It could not be contained.
In the knowledge of Its own absolute goodness
Love sought only one thing--
To share Itself

In an instant and an eon
Love welcomed light and dark, sky and earth, water seed
plant fruit
Into existence.
There came fish and fowl, giraffe and cow
There came beast and bug--
There came beauty, which only Love can craft

Love knew this was good
Of course it was good!
This fresco had come from Itself!
So incredible was this that
Love yearned for more,
Desired something that could delight in It,
That could long to know Its swathing mystery.
Though creation proclaimed Love's excellence,
Nature and creature could not
Seek their architect

And so in a thought in a lifetime
In a light year in a flash,
There came man
There came me!
Lookin’ like Love.
And in that moment,
In that million years of a millisecond
Love
Offered itself to history
Opened itself to the risk of reciprocation
And fell in love with all who would come to exist,
Before they existed