The Impossibility of Crows

The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens.
Doubtless that is so, but it proves nothing against the heavens,
for the heavens signify simply: The impossibility of crows.
Franz Kafka

Amid endless nothing,
formed by what it cannot be,
surrounded by eternity,
which falls,
into lungs and
up and out again.
Ascending to the end
of the endless sky,
which is blue,
only for light's sake,

black feather

Pillow Talk

Can’t free the art from
this circumstance.

God said, “Too much!”

Love made more of us
then we were.

An ant carried
a gigantic crumb
across the silk duvet.

Yariguies Brush-finch

I tie knots in a blue cord 

suck a black pebble 

and frieze your name 

in a firefly’s light. 

There are graves 

speckled with sea salt 

and burnt sage. 

I’ve exhausted fire 

and banishment. 

Shall I sing backward 

three words, three times,

run my fingers down my neck, 

forgetting yours? 

Naked I smudge and pray 

upon glowing beads, 

the waning gibbous 

on my brow, 

Venus in my right eye— 

A fragile heart beats 

sound inside 

new feather floats 

down to roots.

Appeared Spring 2008 in the Cafe Review

Vulture

Peace is the
dividing cell
ferocious in the marrow.
It coats the bullet,
cannot be marched to
with signs or weapons.
Peace is the vulture
loving the corpse,
the rising mist
on a mass grave.

It never left.
It pulses
under the noise,
Peace does.

We thought we
could name God.
And we did.
All of God’s names
are God’s names,
even the one
you cannot speak.

Like God,
Peace has every name we ever gave it.
It is upon the back of the cockroach.
Peace has always loved the shiny armor
of a cockroach.

appeared in Cafe Review Spring 2007

Dressed for the Market

In odd fantasies, I have imagined myself, 

sent through a handy-dandy gadget 

that makes Julian potatoes. 

Cross-sectioned me, a layer of adipose 

tissue, wrapped in ecto-endo-dermic 

cellophane and skin. A part of me slab-like, 

steak-like, marbled, with a plug of bone 

the dog would quite enjoy. Or possibly 

a breast section; mammary tissue resting 

upon one of the “C” shaped, paired, 

bony, or partly cartilaginous rods, 

that stiffen the walls of the body 

and protect the viscera. That “C” 

shaped gift from Adam, 

that cradles the central or innermost 

part, aortic pump-thing, 

which makes me tick. Or possibly 

a mid-section, with stomachic vessels 

feeding and maybe what my esophagus 

anteriorly communicated there; 

a late lunch or something swallowed 

when the pouch was new, which never did 

pass through; a 1959 penny or one of Mamma’s 

pearls which having rolled down my tongue 

is now forming an oyster in my stomach. 

And I have imagined further and odder still, 

the hands of friends, relatives, or strangers, 

selecting their sections. Stepping from the line, 

hoping for a choice cut of their choice. 

They point through the glass display at a pair 

of thigh pieces, meaty weighty cut from 

a big-boned girl. Me, slaughtered and dressed 

for the market, like the cow, you never knew, 

and so do not hesitate to ask the butcher to wrap.

Symbiosis

A red flower,
distracted by
a jet passing
over the sun,
bends down
to a motoring
hummingbird.

My Name

This is my name. Now quiet. This is. This is. Quiet now. Quiet now. Quiet now. My name is yours. I give you my name. My name is under my toenail. It is between my teeth. My name is mother-woman and I am larger than my name. My name is power. It is all the power of the unseen. It is all the power of void. My name is Isis. No. Inanna. No. Gwan Yin. No. Patricia. No. Julia. No. My name is unspeakable. Can you hear it above the cough, the bark, the water flow? My name is nothing and I am so much more than empty. I am more than missing. I am larger than black hole. My name is not yet and I am still waiting in the fluid sac. My name is missing. Who took it? Who took my name?

Apnea:

This poem
is a vanity: worse than lipstick.
Things are extraordinary.
The moon wanes.
A belly swells.

This poem is technical, yet angelic;
with the word apple in it;
and something about the blush of sleep.
This poem is crafty: a petite point.

It is structured in the breathless dream of night
where the sliver-moon sparks and magic
cells are stars dividing—
sailing in the void.

How Things Go in a Poem-Relationship

You are the Poem.

At first you are perfect.

I want to read you all night
– a love poem.

Next, I realize I’m naked.

And you are common,
anyone can have you
folded up in their pocket.

I leave you – unfinished.

The Human Element is Fire

He knew I'd
bring my knees together—
knew these lips
before they kissed trees,
spoke to mountains,
or belonged to another
continent.

And all the Gods were
Goddesses—

Dreamt:

We’re together in a dwelling appointed
with beautiful details
gilded dressers and marble floors.

In the sunlit grand hall,
I paint over a canvas of yours.

You walk away, wading across a shallow stream

and disappear into the copse
of the far shore,
waves rise and wash the feet
of my companion,
and my feet.

In the afternoon mansion,
a kitten head
tenderly mews on the
expansive turning staircase.

Heartbreaker

Janis went into hiding. 

Her hair cut in a bob. 

She wore pumps. 

And cleaned up—good. 

Janis went down 

to the basement laundry. 

She married a salesman 

who didn’t feel the way 

she felt. It didn’t matter

—much. Janis hid behind 

a baby belly. She smoked 

in secret and screamed 

at her cry-baby-kids 

a running-on-the-lawn. 

Janis lived in hiding. 

She went to cocktail parties. 

Her manicure looked natural. 

Her perfume spiced the air. 

She baked a clam dip. 

She worried about her weight. 

Channeling Janis. No one sees 

my drunken bounce off the walls 

of her psyche. They don’t hear 

her moan into the needle 

at the edge of identity. 

I’m a mother, a housewife. 

I’m Janis. Laundry—dive 

into the sheets of night. 

Dust—cough into a tragic 

cigarette. Breakfast—drowse 

in the shattered invisible— 

detach and linger—in the rafters. 

 Did I make you feel?

Cottage Names

I introduced her to Olga
saying, name the spider
and it won’t scare you anymore.
On the couch pillow,
face stung by the sun
and a kiss, Abigail slept
beneath the fluttering
wings of the bat
she’d named Carlos.

Regret

He climbed down
from the boards.

Someone whispered
passionate prayers.
Someone slept nearby
— contentedly.

God became a man
in each respect.

Out on the stoop,
the boy she means to stir
gleams by—narrowly.

“Eat me,” he says.