Poetry

Even the night is like day.
Revelation. Crickets scratch
greasy strings. Hide and seek
in leaves spotted by a rot 
within as if the North Star
had any say down here. 
Polaris freezes light in vision
like ice crystals in windows
some too wintry morning.
Alter ego to the coloration
in a tobacco field, green parade
of day, when it’s a field
I’m not working. Bob had his
Stanley’s Crow Repellent. Saves
replanting. I had tin pie pans.
I had two rows and dirty arms
all the time. In and out of 
the house without a child.
The poet laureate of Zirconia
grew up around a scarecrow
noisemaker, something about 
a contraption of rusty gears
from an abandoned still staked
tight enough to screech,
squeak and squeal as if machines
were dying somewhere out
in a field steep as the garden
bottom where I set my rows
until their green blaze had
filled my mind with more 
than the memory of them.
Pinch succors. Case in. These
bat-like leaves curing,
dark-fleshed woodshed monsters 
hanging from tin roof rafters
as night covered like a cloak
where I, on the porch, lit
a burley leaf, green-pondering
the feeling, flame and smoke.

A daughter watches as her father
loads stovewood on a kind of February
day that itches for renunciating spring
as winter breaks and enters like a sting.
Dad rolls down his frame at his back.
His little girl standing by, watches
forming her thoughts. He lets slip
Lemme see, a thought with breathy lip
when considering stovewood as judge
of something. Stove door opens
coal warms his Lemme see echoing.
There might be something happening
to let him fit more pieces to pack it.
Some assurance. Hope in movements
after such a slight phrase for ancient
ritual—springhope that lags and fades
inside the chest. The cold won’t tire.
It urges on a brief career of fire.

For here’s a verse in praise of a square:
Mind you, the only one that would, truly,
Waste thy clock & my rhyming verily
What no one would beget or even dare.
I thought I penciled this once & did share 
The ignorance for all; but ‘tween you & me 
I must’ve deleted the irony 
To save thy ears from praises of the square. 

But here’s my praise, not out of ambition 
Or to call those Nine that help the epic,
But for you, O reader, on this angle 

That any verse can have a conclusion 
Out of nothing, to give health or make sick,
To waste lines on the homage of a square. 

I don’t understand how this happens, why this happens, why the egg doesn’t refuse to leave, stays put, digs in its invisible feet, planted deep in flesh, the mother squawking, the sound piercing, the other chickens looking on, shuffling their feet, pecking at invisible enemies, their eyes twitching as the mother feels blood rush out of her veins, the pain a cloak to pain, the scramble for relief intoxicating, the egg caught in a stupor no one can rescue it from, the wind howling, swirling everything together, a hodgepodge of insanity and biological processes, merging to form this resistance to the other, each eating the other, a futile conflict where nothing wins, nothing brings resolution, nothing forces that egg into the world, a lesson potential parents must learn when their children say they had to choice in this decision, the love not enough to smother the pain the children feel about not wanting to live in a world they didn’t choose.

Growing up a concrete angel, strapped
to the ground in cheap suspenders 
pleasant to a mother’s eyes, how could I not be
terrified that they would snap one day?

Hurling me from this world to the next,
where suddenly I’m arrested 
for abusing clouds, giving heaven 
it’s first black eye. 

This little boy’s heart melted like butter 
as Mama’s fried theology sizzled 
after the preacher’s last burning words
covered the black book in smoke.

A long time ago, it was my favorite. 
I wore saddle oxford shoes 
to keep my feet clean, but was quickly 
redeemed by black patent leather 

tapping my way into heaven’s ghetto 
as if what mattered then
is what matters now. 
I’m still afraid of heights.

You must have been hungry, 
the one drowsy evening, crickets 
silenced at your closeness. 
You must have been able to 
smell the casserole, 
wrapped in an orange bottle 
in the old woman's bathroom cabinet, 
desire same as thanksgiving dinner, 
parents smacking your wrist 
   	to wait for prayer 
   before you can 
  	eat 
You must have been hungry, 
imagining the white potatoes 
on the bedroom nightstand, 
hands shaking— need calling 
   to crush them into 
  	a powder, 
breathe in the butter 
of mashed potatoes. 
You held your prayer loaded, heavy in your palm, as you broke open the door,
like a can of biscuits, threatened to spill the old woman’s red cranberry 
sauce into floorboards if she didn’t feed you what you wanted. While you 
rummaged through her pantry, taking ingredients used to keep her alive, she 
called the police on you— taking away the kids you left at home with 
strangers that destroy futures. But you knew about that. No one cried when 
you got arrested. You were hungry. They hold their prayers to your head, 
hoping to pull the trigger someday.