Friday, November 27, 2009

poem a day #12

HAND, fig. 1

Detached, it is a seamonster's skeleton,
a mess of bones pushed together
by some well-meaning Victorian
who kept piling them in there just
because they seemed to fit. Ah,
but how it would move.

One, arthritic, is called
a different species, a herbivore,
its bulbous joints made it slow.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

poem a day #11

SWimING
And.
When we talk we
are in the black Atlantic, your back
to the sandy finger of land and mine
to the waves, so
when I disappear I have been swallowed whole
and have to fight my way back
with my breath tight in my chest, the
memory of what I was going to
or should
say ballooning in my ribs, wanting
to escape and spoil in the salty air
and when I do surface
you are farther away, nearer
to the shore,
cresting the waves
and calling my name.

Monday, November 09, 2009

poem a day #10

PASSERIDA AT MIDDAY
Birds on a telephone wire like
periods when you fall asleep at your computer
buffet away, singing. Theirs
is a world seen from on high, where
shining cigarette cases whiz along
the flat, black, inedible worms. "I saw
a whole line of them today," a finch might say,
"Their many points of light like the sun
upon the water, and I became sick
sick with their beauty and song
I had to fly or sleep and did both."
And no one listens to the finch, so easily struck
by beauty where there is none,
so eager to find song where there is
only the variable hum: the horizon
shuddering.

And I would be like the finch, I
would be life-drunk and woozy
if I could reduce life to a patchwork
of light. But the telephone line is black
and the birds are always dark in the day,
those flittering periods.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

poor excuse a day #8,404

NOTE: It is harder to write a poem about Andy Warhol eating a hamburger than you may think. I will return with my results TOMORROW.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

poem a day #9

DO YOU KNOW WHEN THE MONGOLS RULED CHINA?
Two dudes, to pass
a test, ask questions by Mecca:
The Circle K.

DON'T FORGET TO WIND YOUR WATCH
When faced with that
which is most truly awesome
always proclaim "Whoa!"

Monday, November 02, 2009

poem a day #8

RECALLING

In Thailand I am standing
on one flat riverboat packed
with the hot jostling of people and
my father is on another, departing,
pulling away. The water is black,
oil-slicked; churning from the way
they pass so close by like bodies
releasing from an embrace. I
know he must have been calling me
because I jumped and I don't remember
the other boat, only
the lip of the right boat:

How the rubber coating had
worn away from other feet
in other shoes, landing. The wood,
water-warped, exposed.

And it is often like that. Nothing recalled
exactly how it happened; only
one moment in transit: a mold
waiting to be cast.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

poem a day #7

FORGETFULNESS

In the moment the phrase
--at least I think
it was a phrase-- seemed
so perfect, so memorable,
that it could never be forgotten,
not even for an instant.

But now, trying to remember
something about the way
leaves part around my footfall
or maybe it was the sun on her
kitchen tiles all those years ago or
the feeling that the world literally rushing by
has had at least one person on it
to plant the telephone pole, is
impossible.

Something that rhymes with
Maryland. Something that
sounds like people down the block
hammering. Or
something without a rhyme,
something
that has never cast a shadow,
never had someone call it by name,
never wanted, so sorely,
to be somewhere else.

I would fill a book with those words
if they would reveal themselves,
crawl from their hiding place
on the tip of my tongue.