Poetry

An inch of snow fell yesterday,
illumined the branches of trees,
erased curbstones, and covered the trash

that blows through the park. Tonight
has lost its edges and joined
a thousand years of nights. A scent

composed of leather and sweat
rises when I shoulder a door,

wanting in, or maybe wanting out
of rain and wind, out of a vacancy
I’ve learned to inhabit. Voices leak

down the hall from a half-lit kitchen
where someone is frying onions. Maybe
also a bit of beef and something sweet.

I slip out of wet shoes and enter
a dream past which is not

only mine. The tale’s more
than one family’s wars, trials,
and steerage berths. This frozen night

joins with other nights, the haunts
of a billion ragged dreamers,
selves adrift in a moving world.

After “Nature Boy”

For lousy pay, I drove a van
between Detroit and Wapakoneta, Ohio,
spinning it once in a white-out storm
and sliding up the Luna Pier exit

to stamp and thaw among lost souls
in the moon’s damp firehouse. Later,
I shot weddings, shingled roofs, herded

children and was called, in each job,
by a different name. Adrift. While
he wrote about love, eden abhez

and his family camped out below
the Hollywood sign in forties L.A.
Today, they’d be jailed. Picture his wife
braving the wind on dry nights.

Maybe she was the visionary.
What do I know? I’m tone deaf,
sipping coffee and reading wikis
amid the tremors of another time.

Only that he moved west and changed
his name and slipped a hit to Nat Cole.
That they had to track him down
to sign the record contract. That we want

to unravel love, to get it or save it,
though everything leads to return,
love evaporating and falling like rain,

like snow, while we turn wheels
into swerves and utter strange
bird cries, waiting for a crunch.

The dream of snow is a relief
In it’s own
These burning fall leaves
Are far too harsh compared to ice
There are too many of them
Too much

Snow is a secret
Blanket to cover the crunching
Brown leaves like dirt
Soggy and frail
In the ongoing autumn rains
Melting them into the earth

The music of the sun’s rays
Crisp the air
Beat the people
Sweat spilling from their foreheads
As they dance in the light
Dreaming of snow to cool
Their tired burning bodies

Where does it hurt when I lie?
Is it in the piercing pain of thorns weaved
around your forehead with red truth sliding down

Is it the acidic taste of flame
raging in the dissolved vinegar eating
thousands of bumps on your tongue

Is it in the open slit of your side
where a sea of blood and water
spilled like the downward stream of a waterfall

Is it in the holes in your
hands and feet formed by rusted
iron pushed and twisted into cedar wood?

Savior, what does the sting of sin
feel like? Where does it hurt most? And
where are halos found among martyred men?

           We are puppets to

Your systems.                 Our only qualification

        Is to be the number that

Satisfies your                  minority quota defenseless

Without                           our heartless haven

     You shoot us              in the streets

Not because of                our words or ideals

But by a                           variation of color

Forgetting         

             that the pavement

    Is stained by the same dark hue

  As we hold our

Fathers,   mothers

Sons,        daughters

Sisters     and brothers

In our       arms at the hour

  Of their death. We

Cling to Our Lady’s

Cloak. Asking not for

Her to crush your head

But for your conversion.

We petition her for another

Guadalupe, Mother

Unite us like you

Did before. Show

them how a mixed-race

Can be Miraculous.

One light out of 86 flickers
Like it’s trying to tell me a secret
Listen
Words echo around
I count the lights
The windows
31, if you include the stained glass
That reflects on the speaker
Listen
The chandelier has one light out
Two of the light covers don’t match
Listen
14 people sit in front of me
Tapping feet
Tip
                tap
tip
                tap
Leaning in to whisper
Listen