beat back times we entertain our little wrongs.
And what it must be like to turn away the dark,
to call down light from stars—poverties we have
hung bare, a constant grain for each of these mistakes.
IN JANUARY
There are words I seem to only say with you,
but I try to pray in spite of that. I say them
as I walk this cut bank by the creek,
as the morning’s ice storm shines
like all the words you use to talk to God.
I bow to silver trees, to white fire glazing bright
and what the new snow hides beneath—
shallow water soon to feed the fields, green
born from a melt of sleet. This is how
the things of earth put away the past:
it’s another diagnosis, another glum return
from sickness. I want to have good words
to say to you when I come home, but seem
stuck on the differences between a quiet
and a silence: that what finds its way to voice
with us hopes for more than spent uncertainty
and the ceaseless, steady thaw of my belief.
THE JILTED HUSBAND SPEAKS
What comes forward from darkened fields this winter? How long
can we deceive ourselves? Cold, true like a stray dog, nuanced
like a gossip’s words. Should we try to make it through another winter?
Drifts and pulp-white sweeps, sleet cuts into dirty snow—
we’re baubles packed in antique curios, rising early
to battered banks and crystal trees, teeth brushed white as winter.
Our mix—bitter bickering or loathing’s hollow swell. And when you
touch my hand in bed the only thing I know is how to melt away,
as you’ll return to his front door—shadowbox, weaving winter.
Constellations tell this one each night. Graffito fixed above,
ages spent retelling songs. The lie rehearsed till vivid and complete.
Corvus, fly away or hold your stupid tongue this winter.
Our minds arrayed in hail and damages—shut-ins to the storm
and servants to the haze. Choking down dull serial, swallowing
equal parts discomfort and disdain when we touch once all winter.
In the dusky park’s bright snow, I walk into the storm: frantic white,
orange lamp-lit prints, my squeaking boots. We are both
the pond and ice, both the street and filthy slush of moonless winter.
My body’s built of frozen earth and yours from mine. We’ve dressed up
our disgust with self-doubt. Incriminate myself again? I speak nothing,
wishing I could turn the bare skin of my back away from winter.
SLAVE WALL
Along that dusted drag, cut through the thicket, rise slabs
of stacked stones from some hundred years ago.
The craggy course lurching farther than my eye allows—
dead arrangements with the past and harder truths piled
to the knee, defying budding cramps of thorny weeds
and stretching like a snake dividing lines of property.
This records the era’s cruel, brutal trade—blind power
eating at the heart. How does a wall get made into an altar?
Which fractured rock reminds us of the hate we hide away?
Each rugged memory of history’s chains, each raw split
making known the past. And this is how we go about
remembering it here: Kentucky River to county line,
we tally up the evil heaped, stone by daunting stone.
THE HOLE
I remember your face surprised
at what was missing
as we stood at Ground Zero,
looking in Manhattan’s mouth.
The buildings on the block
still draped in sheets, frocked statues.
Rain and mist arriving with us
to fill the gap and soak our coats.
You said I love you, and I thought
how strange and sudden we can be.
What comes after a moment
when you’re still and staring?
Tragedy made us hungry and dumb—
a long walk and night ferry home,
clicking photos of the cityscape,
absent two jeweled reaches to the sky.
What should have come,
and what comes in the distance,
is that we’re hardly more
than intimate strangers, and I
should have said it back.
But there were sounds
I couldn’t make then and the ones
we heard had to be enough—
taxis
