January 31st Golden Shovel
after Ariana Van Dyck
I wanna upside down myself in February, oh
I don’t mean flip full nocturnal and forfeit the
sun's little kisses. I mean I wanna speak frankly to birds,
prune limbs, draw a rabbit for two straight hours. What I’ve
been megaphoning to me is to homecome myself. I've been missed.
Snow Removal
Martin doesn't drop the snow heaped in the bucket of his front loader. Five minutes
now, hovering, while the diesel rumbles. “What the hell, Martin!” That's Dwayne,
his breath a cloud puff in front of his face. The crew has been hauling snow from
streets for days. Dumping it all on a stretch of Bay St. -- a whole block, avalanched
with dirty snow. “Drop it, man!” Dwayne, arms out, dumbfounded. Last night,
standing in the hallway of his building, Martin's brother called. “Dude. Travis’s dead.”
In the kitchen, Martin told his wife who'd said, “Martin, you never even liked Travis.”
Martin backs up the front loader, spins it around, and picks up speed. The bucket
wobbles out in front like a child holding a bowl. When he gets to the middle
of 3rd and Court, he drops the whole grayed mass. Every car and truck creeps
their way around it.
That Knives Dull
That jagged peaks of mountains round
That legs of card tables release their level
That running shoes lose their treads
That brake cables slacken
That sweaters’ wool pills
That pant seats thin
That bars of soap dim to wafers sharp
That face skin drops
That spines compress
That house paint ungrips its wood
That plastic clouds
That caulk browns
That cracks spider porcelain
That the phone
That nail polish chips off the tips
That batteries in wall clocks drift
to sleep
That cut dahlias wither
That uncut dahlias shrivel
That flowers bow down
when they're done
Wild as a Kind of Alone
My father liked to say he was a hobo. He said hobo.
He smoked Marlboros at the picnic table on the driveway
and fantasized about eating beans right from the can.
My father, clinical psychologist,
inventoried our belongings on 3x5 cards. Chest
of drawers, buck saw, gray metal typing table:
purchase price, depreciation. For the paint, a list
taped to the basement cabinet doors:
Interior Primer Exterior Stain
Half full Quarter full Nearly empty
As a family, we hand washed every window
every fall. Every shirt became a rag.
When I broke with my husband, I knew
I would be out there with the deer,
scavenging berries on back lots
with my rude teeth.
So I made a budget that allowed for nothing:
I’d cook dried beans soft, fold scrap paper
envelopes, sew the menstrual pads.
Questions: would the cotton be soft enough? If
using velcro, could the bristles be kept from
my tissue paper parts? Would the water required
to rinse the shed-blood cost more
than the cotton? Then I lived like this.
Put herons in my chest. Spent hours with owls.
I was ovenbird, hagfish, howler monkey. And it’s
been years since I was hungry. But I still squeeze
my sriracha bottles clean. A coyote quiet with itself.
A therapist said to me, Be extravagant.
Every time I type that word I can’t believe
how many As it has. It’s unapologetically resplendent.
I’m in a mansion shell in the woods. Every night
after bathing, I put on the long pink nightgown
from Goodwill. The skirt so mooned,
I have to hold it in my arms
just to climb the stairs, which I do,
pretending an urn of honey steadies
on my head, while my hips swing right
left, right left. All the way up.
AngelPaw closed her eyes, listening to the other apprentices sleep, and the occasional drops of rain. She groomed herself, looking at the sky. “StarClan, thank you for this wonderful day.”
— Penciled on lined notebook paper, sidewalk in Red Hook
Looking wonderful, apprentices drop for days.
Angels sleep others. Rain of occasion.
Her listening close to stars paws you.
Thank this eye groomed sky.
She the clan.
Truth
Somewhere there is a small room with one thin-framed bed
and a mattress with a yellowed fitted sheet pulled taut.
And on this bed there is a mother splayed and grasping
with two hands on her lower back, mouth ahowl and eyebrows
up with disbelief.
Someone has stepped on a crack
Two hands grip her lower back
Two shards stab her bowing rack
Somewhere in the world a child
Somewhere in the twirl a mild foot
tripped the trigger
Some small foot skipped a beat
Some tall boot kicked a mother
Our mother on her back
and of howl
She howled and her eyebrows
couldn’t believe it
Her belief was beating her heart out
til the blood came all over the floor
If you don’t crack
when you step
on your mother
your mother will crack you back
Your brother will howl all night
Night trees will push up squares of sidewalk
like they can’t take it anymore
They can’t take more more
When you hop on the scotch
so you land pin pointed on the square
You save the world You save it
You save the world with your hop
You stave off the howls
with your one leg good
I know you can do it
I know you know your feet
on concrete You know every crack
between here and High Street
Animal Eyes
after Arthur Sze
“yesterday a coyote trotted across
my headlights and turned his head
but didn’t break stride; that’s how
I want to live on this planet:
alive to a rabbit at a glass door—
and a flower where there is no flower.”
— from“Unpacking a Globe”
A 38-year-old man grills a 27-year-old woman
for intel on her friendships When on “multicolor flashing”
the string of little globe lights hiccup between
the last combination and the first The last Sundance
in Park City attracts greater
numbers of first timers The server says yes,
it’s not supposed to be Tacos de
Pastor, but the menus, the cost of re-printing…
Mixed salad in the bulk bins at the co-op costs much
less than salads packaged in boxes, but a great
many of the leaves in the bins have given up hope
and slide their green-black selves against their peers
Ronald Bronstein wrote Mary Supreme with his buddy Josh
and at the Q&A Ronald says neither of them can stand boring people
(people who bore him, presumably) At at a small art gallery
a 71-year-old man says every Thursday he visits his wife
in the memory care unit, but I don’t hear about the other days A Black man
on Instagram urges us to make as many friends as widely as we can, saying
the president and his people want us all to be fighting: black against white
against brown and men against women The building I live in
was once a barn, and, on the 2nd floor, I think of the bicycle,
the motorcycle, and the washing machine and dryer down
there as two donkeys and a horse, their rounded rumps,
swayed backs, flickering amber manes, nervous hooves
stamping the packed earth, and the wind
always coming in through the wall