Egress
How did we come to share this meal?
When did you arrive?
I wish there was no echo in here.
I wish you echoed less in my memory.
We’ve made no progress.
There is only one door, so we’ll have to use it
if we want to exit.
If we want to enter instead, we’ll
have to find another window.
Published on The Laundry Line, July 22, 2025.
Materiel for Poets
I want to…
crack open your earlobes
your earholes
your eye holes
to see you with my fingertips
to feel your breathing (berating?) pulse
under the heel of my hand
the derive the sum of ourselves
yes to be one two or even three
parts of the universal disharmony.
to bring us into the same patch of chaos.
I want to scrawl in chalk
on your sidewalk
to protest
to plead
to remember that we
you and me
make up the small army of our dreams.
mine is a martial art
hand to hand combat.
I use the weight of your (in)experience
place my hip under your expectations
reach over your apology
and grasp your smallest secrets.
I will twist,
leverage
you up into the air—into the ether—into your own self.
a self that you no longer recognize
as I have turned it 90?
to its usual orientation
and while you are slightly dizzy
I offer you a new way of looking in a
funhouse mirror.
if this trick works
you will never see true north again.
I will have disarmed you
and provided you with
a new weapon
a changed weapon
a sonic grenade
pull the pin
crack open your head.
Published on The Laundry Line, July 15, 2025.
Water Delivery
Oaxaca, February 13, 2025 12:30am
I should clean up the freesias in that vase.
The blossoms are falling off the stems.
They don’t smell as strongly this year as they did last year.
But at least I have them.
I searched in the market Sunday.
There was only one woman with a few tattered bunches.
No gardenias this year, though.
Might be the drought.
Only four rains last summer.
Not nearly enough.
The wells in the hills are running slow.
Jane’s is only seeping and Raphael’s is entirely dry.
The Casa buys water from the water truck.
500 gallons every three days for laundry and showers.
It comes late at night, after the other guests have gone to bed.
I am awake. I hear the howl of the transfer pump
starting up and the splash of water falling into the empty tank.
I think of home and my own well and always full water tank.
I think of the rain that never seems to stop.
Published on The Laundry Line, July 8, 2025.
May 3rd
Alders ring the pasture,
unfurl trembling new-green leaves above
pink salmon berry flowers.
I stand with my arms folded on the half door of the stall.
At my back, stored hay that smells like last summer’s heat remembered.
The sheep arrange themselves at the mangers.
Everyone shoving except for the old ram
whose stiff knees counsel patience.
One ewe scrambles up to stand in the manger.
The others eat calmly from underneath her grass fat belly.
Fluttering in front of a mess of twigs
and mud and spit glued to the top of a post,
two barn swallows bicker
over who will get the best nest above the hay loft
and who will have to settle for second best in the feed room.
My oldest ewe leaves off eating and shambles toward me,
head thrust forward,
asking for a scratch on the chin
and the chance to nibble on my gloved hand.
The swallows flicker in and out of the stall door.
Warm buff bellies and blue-black heads,
tails fletched like arrows.
darts that throw themselves through the air,
they circle the pasture
above the robins that hop awkwardly,
searching for grubs in the new grass.
The sheep settle into the business of eating
their figure-8 chewing
a soft, round motion that grinds
the hay against their molars.
Published on The Laundry Line, 1 July 2025
Salt and Longing
pansies, pensées,
senses.
thoughts—
a bouquet of violets,
a violence
of violets.
voile,
voice,
voices on my radio.
radio waves,
waves on the beach head,
brain head.
my bullying brain
carried off by
the tidal bore.
how many times will you accept
my ungenerous impulse
to control
your voice.
my unvoiced vowels.
after frustration,
incoherence.
incandescent syntax of fury.
wrath:
such a pretty word for the
explosive,
punching,
punishing result of
thwarted desire.
athwart:
to lie crosswise.
as my anger lies at right angles
to this keel.
this ocean isn’t big enough,
the far shore isn’t far enough
to keep you safe.
from my punching fist
the slap of my open hand.
open hand:
that should caress
that should
make an offering,
make a confession.
but the eddy will pull me down again
and we will drown in salt and longing.
Published on The Laundry Line June, 24, 2025.
