Making Space For Our Living
ONE
The Spoon
Someone in the Main Office
did you in.
Someone in the dead elm.
Now all day the aluminum spoon chirps
in the knapsack.
It’s time you left this place.
On a Line by Charles Simic
This table is a cup
he lifts,
a receptacle of
weights & measures/
proportions
Without it he cannot
know
his own hands from
the ink a printer mixes
with water
the right proportions
or lines
will grey-out
in the poem
He knows
the yellow cake
he likes
the chocolate frosting rich
with butter
his mouth knows
more
than tablespoons
of shortening, & flour/
cups of it
spacing
his wife’s
day
Till with his hand he cups
her chin, lifts
to mix
her mouth with his
This woman is the table
of his life
A Photograph
This poem is a photograph
to save Lois
in her floor-length dress asleep
on the bed
with the kitten, Julep &
Brandy, the mother
on the floor
her dress is red
& the candle
snuffed
in the kitchen
the pork-chop bones &
apple skins
on the greasy plates
the sauterne bottle
in the dim light from the dining room
casts a green
shadow
across the table
outside the window limbs
& branches
sing
with the wind
Dance of Guilt
A robin working
the fresh —
cut lawn
in front of the Oldsmobile
blood-red
on the gravel drive
splits
a worm
with its beak &
takes half
down
flies off
the rest for its
mate
or young
the hopped-up Chevy
57
swerving up
over the
curb down
burning rubber away to
miss
the tow-head kid on a skateboard
brings back the red
& brown
the tail
on the freeway
the long brown
twitching
chocolate-point Siamese
Bequest
To the chittering
small huddle of
warm fur
that didn’t make it across the freeway
I leave the hard-bound journal
I never wrote in
Towards Peace
To begin he remembers green
Iowa hills
speckled orange
with Tiger Lilies,
land his mind stretched, hands
trembling with
the wheel,
road breathing beneath.
The cracks repeat the names of love.
A flock of farm pigeons
breaks above
the windshield, now joins in
the mirror, pulling
to the new sun
the last
of the suffocating Iowa night.
Across Nebraska
Driving across Nebraska
my wife pulls into a Rest
Area to
hit me . she hits me
It is she claims
for all those times
I should
have hit her &
didn’t
A bruise along my forearm a purple
weed
I bite her ear-
lobe/
twist
between her breaths
a blade
aeons old
Where We Go From Here
Evil dogs us
We desire that this be beautiful
that we
go beyond the chill fringe
Thigh-
flesh glistens our
minds flood
We have stalked time
to whirl upon
to create
for this moment
one scent of hyacinth
over the hills
Now the Wind
Indian Paintbrush
in the cool
valleys
rev
their slim engines
Mountain freshets enunciate your name
Your life long
a tethered dream has
crouched
beneath your shoulders
& now the wind knots
your muscles
to its heart
& sunlight sucks dry
your blame
Of Sunlight
Heavy scent of spring grass
passing below
Sun
& she behind me warm
to my back
our buttocks bare to the horse’s flesh
No cities
no dream
we are this naked beast
making space for our living in these hills
We move
unto each other
& are the syllables of sunlight
singing
Oregon
A rainbow
sifts
about our heads
on this butte,
the stone
ecstatic
with lichens
Birds buffet in flight
with our eyelids
A lone sheep
an odor
over the rocks
pulls roots from our blood
with its teeth
& ruminating
slowly
we dissolve
The Balancing
Peach blossoms drowsy
in their curves
dark branches
like teeth
Floating, the slight
breeze
of the wings, cool
on your cheek, the hummingbird’s
tiny bill slips deep
for the fluid
Tall grass dancing, sun
off fox fur
reddish-gold,
the young rabbit jerks
as the entrails pull free
Early evening a warm bath
Night approaching
a curtain of tongues
Blood Rite
Flesh traps
rigid
this winter mettle
shrieks
too late
to protect
split
the roost
the fox
untrapped
blood of white chickens
hot
frothing behind its eyes
feathers new snow
over the hill
Spring Roads
This is Idaho.
Drive through 16 miles of
muddy, pot-holey spring roads
to this frozen lake,
pine-cloaked basin
below the mountain.
Is this God’s country?
Is that Him up there, lonely
on man-fragile skis
cutting slow zigs
down the slope?
There’s somebody up on that mountain!
No. The deep black eyes
of empty oil drums
say no. There’s
no one.
This is Idaho.
The Presence
Throbbing
deep
in the damp
cellar
corroded
green
brass-rim
spectacles
smeared
milky
with death
Seven
I trace
with my pen
a seven
someone else
has written
& wonder
seven wives
or children
or geese
seven billiard
balls
or clues
or seven
graceful ways
to die?
Her Knees
It is her pale
knees
going to water I love
when I say her father
has died
& there is hope for us
The Adequacy
To father, who asked,
I say we’ve gathered these years
to learn the adequacy
of caprice.
Our lives follow the goat
& this vitality is as much of horror
as we deserve.
We will be responsible.
Where there is beauty
there is not defeat.
Between tribe & estrangement
we sink into the grasses
with the horses feeding
& brushing the flies away.
We hold for some moments
what will never change.
A Mother’s Song
There is something
ugly
in you, active
as a transistor
buried below the hills
of Duluth.
Who could love you
if they knew?
Who would stay
in the same room?
Survival is not beautiful.
The evil of a child
is delicious
& continues.
Pungent. Thick.
Your movements are shaped
by the basic forms
of death.
You rehearse
with each breath.
Your genius kills
like a deer
& is your best.
This is glory.
This is home.
You’re welcome here.
Light
A young woman is lying naked
on the sand.
Her clear eyes beckon
the sky.
Like a gem revolved slowly in the sun
her thoughts make love
to light.
Pleasure hovers over the beach
like prayer.
TWO
Lines for a Workday
Mrs. Place
& Mrs. Place’s sister
Mrs. Smith
make rugs.
Rag rugs.
There’s more to this.
Mary
& Mary’s man-
friend Gary
weave & build
& feed the dogs.
Joy is willed.
Lois steers the Craft Shop
& rocks her husband’s
boat — he cracks
his cradle leer & bails
the water in.
Her tie-dye treads his calm.
His poems make her swim.
Sexist Pig Makes Good
Crossing quickly
with no grace
the summer courtyard torn
by machines
for improvement
the fat girl smiles
toward his window
the peaches
in her basket
nudging each other with her steps
She means to tell him
she too has scented fur
beneath her belly
& his bed would be a kindness
she could forgive
The peaches are bruised
& she is not beautiful
but they make good
in the world
this morning
The Green Eraser
Squat rectangle rounded
at the corners
smudged black with rubbings
makes time
to be
To touch its strange surface
my time grows
The thought I leave
supports
itself
till snakes of soft rubber
writhe off
words
dissolve
our time
comes
Fertile Grass
Dip your pains
in yellow paint
Sell daisies on street corners
Kiss her before it’s
down,
she’ll spend the night with you
Are we together?
Don’t mistake the moment
for Nature
Fertile grass
The deserved joy
of brooks
Isn’t this a party
& when we try, it’s simple to go
deep
into daylight
Sonnet
You dare intrude
This land is
A brave man needs
support
Your woman is a trip
to the beer tent
Piecemeal & warm
Her firm globes bespeak learning
Speed
Breed for God
From a grassy knoll
Correspondence with an orangutan
May the best man grin
till he becomes the epileptic
in the first row
Keep tracking
The whisper
between oak root
& rock
Becomes a third party
Amongst Buttons
Lovingly.
A milky translucent oval
she clutches between
her lips. Downy. “Cough”
he said.
No,
the sunlight lazy through gauze curtains.
A passion without dust.
“Sew me to your trousers.”
Whalebone. Shell. Do fake pearls
make the best buttons
for white blouses?
Deep red
of polished wood
like tiny overturned bowls
the swollen nipples.
“Sew me to your mouth.”
Where’s the Salt?
Who left the green umbrella
in 305?
Who filled the ashtray
with damp oats?
Some young lady is humming
toward marriage,
her cautious petals
still pressed
between her Bible.
Now three angels of metal
bring gusts
to the classroom.
Three angels of musk.
We must sing praise
to the fields, praise to the fickle hammers
pinging in our ears.
We must touch those petals,
must soften & swell
with our lips.
Then she will whisper “thank you,
thank you for this.”
The glow of her face
will lift like radar, will rise
with pleasure
between the columns
of rain.
Kitchen Vision Event
The cat’s tail
matted
with tiny particles of digested Kal-Kan beef
beats time
with my jaw-knuckles
while my wife’s
nipples
keep slipping
into song
Black Bread
In a song about Welfare
I see my children
by the thousands
as tiny bubbles in fresh bread.
Each chimes its own shiny note.
I would like to eat your music, I say,
& do.
Alone on Yellow Lake
A 43-year-old sturgeon pokes fun
at my pink heels.
I’ve mastered the secret
of water I say,
the one we call “buoyancy”.
He giggles through his spongey gills.
As I drift lower I notice
the absence of flies
& a delightful increase in humidity.
A subtle purring reaches
my ears, “sweet”.
The March
It’s the unruly dogs
in the audience, she sighed,
& we knew it to be the truth.
In a kind of pastel exasperation
we settled back to watch
the seasonal march of the PhD’s,
the swamp water rushing in
over the tops of their waders.
Not even the bloodhounds follow them there!
It’s time we got hold
of a parts manual, & a set
of Japanese tools — there’s something wrong
with the applause.
The Crusade
We left the hooters
on the bus. No telling how fast
they might go on foot.
“Up the rpm’s!”
We could still hear them,
though we were separated by miles
of rancid pork.
The trail-boss was a re-cap,
the cook a cop.
At last, as we six gathered around
the counter-sunk urn
weighting missiles of spittle with phlegm,
the hungry blonde whispered
“I am the one
who got the red bean.”
Her faith had won.
Lost Poltergeist
We still
the rocking motion
the brain depends on
the heart
We bring patience
from within
The sense of novelty
which fools the lungs
to breath
Come home dear Priscilla
we need your hunger
The dance the parson wept for you
has come to right
We call our nights the Parson Dance
We call your novelty
to make the little spin
we feel within a certainty
Strung through
The pivot comes loose
We quick behind the glaze
The Dolphins
Across the city
of Tiahuanaco
across ttme
my cipher seeks you
who’ve spent the sacred
Mayan nights
editing the Bible
who predicted correctly
the Book of Aluminum found on Mars
when are you coming home?
The children grow lonely
& down my dreams
the scarred dolphins shriek.
Jigging the Astral Body
We are the assassins
of consensus.
Our laughing drags behind
the shards of life’s coherence. Do unto
other realities.
Do unto your wife.
An awkward surge in the sentence purifies
this hesitation’s interface.
Our quickening length
the immaculate
forgives death our passage,
& the moody region’s terrorists.
Here our sex glances
like an off-rhyme
jigging the astral body.
The Space That Has No Negative
Evanescent, she said. It’s you,
lying on the couch, your naked limbs
illuminating the room. You are
sleeping, & with each slow breath
arises the body taking you away. Now,
below me, what is left of this world
enters me & stays. We are single &
together, what we have that touches
holds continuous & warm in a basin.
Reason is no enemy — too cold & weak,
it incites no fear. Here all movement bends
toward center, & our delicious stasis
tugs out & spreads. This is the space that has
no negative, that owns all &
earns each moment our freedom. A sphere
recording its future as it grows.
An Order of Event
Just beginning now an
order of event
reverses separate movements to this new & simple
dance — a knitting,
a fabric of limbs,
night warms at the heart of our whirling.
Light now, it’s light we
emit, & this
energy the center of the universe.
The Arc
A certain amount of room to cross
the galaxy
recording us & our
utensils
the holes
our coins make
smaller the
arc of egg shell the minds kin
You Will Meditate
The pubic fur longs to be flesh
to know
the unsettling
Laughing pierces the durable
& is itself
You will meditate
for velocity
You will be The Astronaut
Entry: 0637 The Orion Notebooks
& at the center
like a crystal fist
we discovered the gland
inventing
the universe