names: Cleveland; Lettow; Grimes—
small spaces of keeping. Places defined
by brood & lineage. Your fingers trail openings
& fall into hollow drum, drum. Your name
once aperture, an invitation; vow. Distance &
years untie the knot of place to you. Unbound
between aisles of pews, you spectator
arrive at The Last Supper, heavy frame in dip
offsets the scene. Your eyes swallow you
back to the kitchen table, to each stroke
of your mother’s hand, outlined gently; changing
brushes; capped colors labeled 1-11; a guided
masterpiece. Grandma Evelyn peering over shoulder;
unction in a simple squeeze, “A fine addition
to any home”. Home: four letters burnt
into the underside of each rib; vestige
drug with us, round & round. Dizzying affair.
Are we called—how instinct of V
dwells in the goose? Are we called home
ventricles feeding heart? O, duel system
circulating us. These bells, someday
will be yours. These bells
already yours. & home is a small round lid
paint drying inside. & with water
so elemental, discovery & rediscovery:
carillon batons & pedals play
by ghosts & echoes of ghosts.
Caught in Diastole
Mist exhales the foothills—up and over saturates, dissipates
and lilacs and moist; twigs and pods strewn: this becoming under other
held in a gentle roll. Brontide in the lightening flash mimics
the cardiac cycle—here again, we caught in diastole
filling, filling, until our walls cave us, change our shape,
require we purge the hoard. The body knows forgiveness
in the senses: odorant molecules of rain carry
promises in the glomerulus; our eyes in dance. Jealous
sky gathers and gathers, dilation keeps us
longing for—elements imbibing until…elements in fall—breach.
Before Winter
What barren waits for. Flesh
culls a layer, a layer more. Wind becomes
estranged. The branches salvage. The Vs;
the Vs greater-than, less-than the sky
& what is gray heavies
in the lack of light, in the pupils
wanting horizon to look back, & long.
What illuminates just before dark.
What we call a season, because we must
call something up the throat, the epiglottis
vibrates above the slope of the tongue,
attached. What something
must we offer back
to the swirl, the hemispheric homeland—bound
in pirouette. Our spines knowing we are
in dance. Our minds chant stability. A feather
tufted in feathers. Before Vs, there were beaks. A singular beak
points. An instinct is a direction. You smell the flurry
before the flake. & barren is intermittent:
a season is stacked moments
melting through our mouths caught in capture.
Always a wait within a gasp. An entrance
in lips gaped apart. You taste
dried leaves on your pallet & a promise
of warmth to tend the frost, to take the low bow
where sleep peels at the inside of a thing—
say ‘hibernate’ here. To burrow in something other
than self. Say ‘what continues to adapt.’ Say ‘inclement.’ Stay
still in a thought; cloak a word
over the mouth spool. Understand, you will be let go.
Alone at the Lake
How often your mind mirrors the lake,
surface frozen, mid ripple.
What was once water
rips from sand at the seam—
to be unstitched; bits of you
scatter & resemble seeds
dried & un-sowable. Beyond shore
depths teem. What keeps
a body held in? Sewn breath
of January wrinkles thoughts
here—where buoys strew
float-less & sad—a crime
scene in wait of discovery.
You want to believe
a shore may stretch forever,
guarded circumference of self
looping in & around a body
immobilized; the
