In the Bread Aisle

I have a short list of words—

Words I would whisper out into

The deepdeepdeep night

With the bigbigbig trees—

The trees that I think are all

About sex.

An arrangement of letters

Wrapped into one of those billions

Of words

That I haven’t ever said to you before.

I would touch your ear again,

Feeling the

Peach fuzz that

Covers it completely. Feeling your

Heart

Beat

Through the thin fabric of your pajamas

Across your broad ribcage.

I can feel each coil of muscle

Where it attaches

To each piece of bone.

But who watched you move silently,

Violently,

Achingly aware of your proximities.

Stiffly grasping, like a broken-backed bird.

All the while silently sobbing—

But refusing to wake

The sleeping world?

Me.

So I’ll stare at the intrusive glow of

My phone screen,

The blue reaching back into my

Orbital Fenestra,

Where it can’t hurt anyone.

I will turn it off

And go to sleep. 

City Sounds

I wake and climb up on the roof above

To look out over all the Portland sky.

I close my eyes and let the wind become

Six miles per hour of new words to write.

The sounds of horns and bike wheels all rise up—

Distracting from the words I cannot think.

I wish just once

To close my eyes

And hear a mellow loon call.

But I will settle for the sound of trains.

The Tallest Man on Earth

The nurse staff asked

“What happened to him?”

I answered, silently,

Is it anyone’s fault when an evergreen falls?

Careful sheets and lilac flowers and orange rinds too,

Cover you.

What did I do to

The man in the moon?

Nothing-I whisper-nothing.

And all I can think of is

Lying facedown on the bed

With one eye open

Next to the lilac flowers

Listening to you tell the fable

Of you, the tallest man on earth.

You left me there,

Waiting, naked.

Next time, I’ll introduce myself—

“Hello, it’s so nice to meet you, my name is Scapegoat”

Unnamed

I saw a woman on a bench today—

            I memorized her.

            Every freckle I could see

            And every sigh that left her lips.

            I took them for my own.

I saw a nymph on a bench today—

            And I knew she knew

            Where Amelia Earhart

            Had gone.

            If anyone could know, she could know.

I saw a goddess on a bench today—

            And the world tipped to one side

            And left me groundless.

            Even time paused

            To wink at her

            Before continuing his work.

I saw a girl on a bench today—

            She left after saying “hello”

            And I didn’t want to follow. 

Clam

In the palm of his hand,

For his convenience,

Lay a clam.

Fissures and fault lines

Made up the map of her shell.

A smile was barely visible

As he crushed the shell inside his fist

Revealing the naked pink

Innards. He could almost see

Her shivering.

With a smirk

He tossed the mess to the ground. 

The Salt

The salt-sea

Breeze and the

Sea-salt spice

Make up most of the summer.

I watched a little red buoy hoist himself up up and up

Into the waves.

Tumble, tumble, head over toes,

Only to start the climb again.

His little journey

Is never-ever-ending.

I think I hear him calling

Over the rumble of the ride.

Nothing smells quite like

The sea-salted breeze

Or the faint, far off

Linger of a

Long-dead crab.

And how can I do anything

But lay like a stone,

While my skin starts to

Darken and my lips

Start to sting,

Until I can feel them crackling under my tongue.

Until I dissolve into the sea-salt waves.

Until I am the sea salt too.

Clouds

I had to write and revise ten poems for a class last semester, so I'll be posting them in the order I submitted them for class over the next couple of weeks. I posted this one before, but it was before revision. This is the new version. Enjoy!

Clouds

Sometimes all I can see

Are rabbits in the clouds,

Or mermaids.

Or even mammoth creatures.

But usually, just clouds.

Sometimes the sky

Turns purple. And we all have

To wait awhile

Before climbing trees.

Even oftener still,

The sky lets loose

A bright and lusty barrage

Of water,

That everyone ignores.

I will always marvel at you,

Even when the rest of the world forgets.