Poetry

“CONSPIRE” MEANS TO BREATHE TOGETHER

A brick here, a girder there, and soon,

high-rises trickle light

          like constellations decrypted

among the broken clouds.

The ocean idles at the end

of habited earth. Gravity-leavened,

           it rises while you’re sleeping; it loves

the crinkled moon. Tonight

              you’ll body yourself upstairs.

Speck of space dust flare

and plummet, their evanescent

           signatures

congealing in evening air.

The nictating city

slumbers in its wetland bed, a billion

synapses sending each minute

          uneasy missives

to an ambivalent heaven.

Girded in a cirrus halo, the moon

commandeers your clerestory, her iridescence

         devouring every brilliant

thing in sight. Eating until she’s

         filled with light.

Halcyone Literary Review   October 2020

RESIDUE

Dear Death Valley: Your runways and roads

are rut-furrowed now, that thousand-year cloudburst already over-

vetted by park rangers’ Biblical renditions. And me, I’m just dirt

eroded from slopes but not misspent, bound to be alluvium

down east of Baja Norte. Does that make sense,

direction-wise? Poles wander, but we sedimentary brethren seek

our watery level, except when thrusting plates look

for an occasional coupling. The humans, you ask? Gravity’s a road                   

to abasement of the sapien senses                                                                             

and there’s a load of prone examples: fleshly feelings super-

devastated or outright canceled by quake or virus, Delta

or Omicron, ashes drifted to river bottom, just dust

at every ending. While a billion light-years past Earth’s

partitioned rotation, two tons-per-teaspoon neutron stars seek

union in an unsteady minuet, planting

scant ripples in space-time’s jouncey blanket. The globe rode

a likewise potholed highway once (before that over-

active brood arrived) when a some semi-molten unthinkable

rock flung a moonsworth of Earth into orbit, at least that’s the theory.

Physicists of one ilk or another claim to have the dirt

on our hypothetical origin—“condensed matter” they call it—really

not a conversation-starter for a species seeking

clean air while scribing skid-marks on the rock-hard avenue

to oblivion. Their chronicle of layered                                                                   

leavings includes plenty of residue

to go around, e.g. two oxygen, one carbon, a sensible

molecule now seeding heat exhaustion. Highway 61                   

is their anthem to entropic deconstruction—Earth

urging do what you want, Abe, but run while gazing        

knowingly out at cosmic pandemonium. (Yes, I’m over-

stating the case, but the bipeds applaud excess

and out-of-proportion allusions                                                      

all the time.) So, what’s to uncover                                   

in this mussed-up anthro-muddle? I suspect

it’s just us, shouldering robes of restless dust

churned up from a well-worn road.

Very sensibly yours,

a few layers of leftover sediment

seeking passage to a final valley.

Wild Roof   September 2024 

SHOOTING RABBITS

It’s the day for shooting rabbits. I can’t imagine

why it’s been so long. Neither can anyone else. My business

is the new business; the old business

was finished long ago. Now some are getting

ready to shoot; some are already

shooting. No one has given us

the answer sheet; no one

has an answer. I dream of shooting

the long-range missile in the silo. This counts

as a big rabbit.

The Laurel Review  Fall 2010

DEPARTURE CLEARANCE

A rain-blackened branch

creaks in the breeze.

Leaf clutter rustles under

pendulum steps.

How many times

can a limb shadow sever

the silver string of recollection?

Mottled daylight plays

among the trees. Look—

it stays a while on you.

Taos Journal of Poetry and Art  July 2017

SPACE

It’s ten p.m. when you step into the study and stumble

through the two-year-old’s debris field. Your spouse

rattles a snore from the sofa, oblivious to the nova

                                             dusty little star cluster, will you

                                 never coalesce?

at her feet, while the dog winds himself

silly and sighs in a corner, declining

your entreaties to reacquaint.

                                             arm of the spiral, neighborhood

                                 of anarchy

Tomorrow he’ll delight in desiccated kibble, yellow

nebulae mottling rectangular lawns, and the coded odors

of a regiment of ticking parking meters. An orderly

                                             the vacuum roils

                                 with effervescing particles

universe, like the days when the Ring Nebula

was just a ring. Now it’s a supernova, gas and dust

blown everywhere, as epithets still fly

                                             the probability of collision

                                 is never zero

over Pluto’s demise. Space pablum spatters

Hubble’s double ears. An unplumbable hole

inhales a nursery of stars. Gravity waves rumble

                                             event horizons

                                 leak undecipherable information

the guts of the planet, triggering another

strike-slip fault. Like a promise that only holds itself,

you’re made of mostly empty space. Without an explicable

time spools

                                 into a singularity

whim in your head, you retrieve

from the carpet a faded blue bead

while radio telescopes in the desert

                                             gravitational lenses

                                 magnify the explosion

intercept signals from

a red-shifted dim double star

announcing its self-annihilation.

Blue Mesa Review #7, fall 1995 

TERMINAL VELOCITY

A penny dropped from the top

of the Eiffel Tower could kill

someone. Or so goes a myth.

Which building it departs doesn’t

matter so much as its constant

terminal velocity

in draggy Paris air, a speed

of around 44 km/h—to the top

of the head nonfatal. Constantly,

I’m apologizing for killing

the head-banging fly who can’t

press for clemency. The myth

of sin. The myth

of the bumblebee’s fast-

flutter as unairworthy—it doesn’t

hold any garden water. What’s the top

speed of a low-flying death,                                  

or the undelivered forevers

of every whom and what? Always

the myth

that a kill

happens once. That the velocity

of original thought tops

a goldfish’s eyeblink attention. Doesn’t

matter? Who doesn’t

long for a forever

fontanelle, a lucent pane above

the brain’s imperious aims? A myth

more delectable than a speeding

sou, an acceptable ending

to a baby-faced tale. Am I a killjoy                                                

for insisting that a particle accelerator doesn’t

manufacture black holes? That the velocity

of logic flirts with relativistic? Constantly                           

I’m plunging down another magical

warren chase, as songbirds on high

are inevitably drawn to sky-scraping selves, killing

sentience in an instant. You know, the myth that                         

top speed will never taper, never end me.

No Country  June 2024