Prayer in the Storm

Today is
an avalanche

The night is
upset desert

packed light
snack light

Bring
morning

Sing
morning

by light
or not night

_

Lest I Forget

I don't speak to our dead everyday
even today, I'm just... just listening.
Listening for the way they whistle.

Mostly the dead never disappear
I can sweep up the dust and papers
and know they never appear either

Still the weight of their stare lingers
on my eyes, in smiles, the limit where
my breath slices my lungs like apples

And my freedom, this pulse I carry.
I close my eyes, every time the last
Holding in glances, instead of arms

_

Sunrise

The twentieth goose is lucky
lit against the velvet moss
that cushions under-river
from summer's rain of light

*

The meticulous discipline
of my rising heartbeat
nuzzles bright and attentive,
guides dust and goslings

*

To a paraphrase of the sun
one day, ruined, diurnal--
winging an elegy for those
who die without signature


_

Snapshots

A wheeling wave
the kids are drenched
swallowing hot, sweaty prayers

Rick teaches them trees
Son of a...? (beech)
We chuckle and shake our heads

At night amidst snores
we count as silence,
diagnose the radiating bloom of calm

__

High

The memory of a plane
crawling before flight
the tires tearing grief
a captured sigh of air

the first possibilities
of the night-mare are
gold-tipped at dusk
needy as a pilgrimage

I follow legs of furniture
to the crotches of trees
light bleeding from clouds
coming down, bringing it all down


___

Perhaps it is true. Yesterday, a student blamed his dream--of a gray mold that crawled up his toothbrush--on the Gabriel Garcia Marquez we've been reading in class...

_

Misspeak

Stew
a head
of cabbage garbage
in-certitude
curtained disdain.

Yellow is gold
is lemons
yellow is pages
is journalism
is cold Englishman's lyric

she says
planes, and trains
--not kind to my migraines
it rhymes, write the poem
I say

elastic-electric
forced
forged faked
shudderin' end
ex-tension
_

Snatch Dispatches

Big A and I went to see a student production of The Vagina Monologues this weekend. It was an amazing production with student-scripted passages and made even better because we were sitting with  two of my work friends who were seeing it for the first time.

What happened: Big A and friends were talking about how they'd read excerpts of The Vagina Monologues before but hadn't really caught the show.

What I dreamed that night: That Big A was telling my friends that he'd read "snatches"of The Vagina Monologues before.

I nearly peed myself from laughing.

_

Vignette

Invisibility
Stands at the street corner
begging from indifference

Lightness
is her weight bearing
down the breath in my chest

_

The Cure

This backbend is the future
tight wire of dreams
warm like dance
step, tip-toe

*
your toenail could tear it,
from some other room
a cough, a prayer
renounces

*
your breath
goes to my brain
your back is turned.
(But arched closer to me.)

_

Commit

Like pilgrims
supine, weeping

clothes are planted
like stations

And also like
excuses and bruises

The saddest story
ends again and again

_

Shiva

You've hired this happiness

for the flowering day

it waits patiently

multitudinous

diegetic

I'll never forget how you felt
green leaves rust-edged
their first voyages
whispers
sighs

As if you invented a beauty,
in a curl of misfortune
its willing trident
striking flint
delicious


_

Daybreak

There is a river

rubbled wrong

with illicit sun

there is a silence

mighty, fruitful

festering

there are lies 

and examples

legs trailing

into the temple,

comprehending 
monuments

in their unruly

matted and

sultry sleep


_

Dream

The gorilla eating cereal
is real is real
I never knew him
but friends are falling
falling off really high ledges

Husband has been thanked
for something things
he says he never did. Never.
Paler than winter, the approach
of winter--these swells

In the space between wish
and nudged words, a miss,
a mispronounced reality--
an enormous medieval
leech wriggling its lure

_

Hinge

The past's prelude
In the dark

a child's cough.
Breadth of beginnings
the point of decision
uncome

the phone call

the e-mail

falling is like flight

in my body,

and the earth's--

thoughts run wet

_

Gone

Dreams
of apocalypse
of apology

turn this sheet:
winds are witchy
twitch in tantrum

these sorries--base
and bloodless
  yet seduce

to always elsewhere
arrivals; hearts
apart from here

December--lucent and lost
is patterned frosts
and year's finish

_

Augury as August Ends

The earnestness in this enjoyment

--calm, confused schizophrenia

of trees, changes: everything.

And here--right here--a fibrillation

of notes and sighs, of animus.

Brutal brightness, laid bare.

_

Mind. Business.

Baby baby baby
snakes
taper taper taper

tight

wave happy, happy 

goodbyes gone

clank tears,

swing slaughter

Nothing to do here

Keep moving along

Nothing to see

rest shadows, exit.

_

The Week Before School

Traveller, we could go
to Damascus. There.
Damn. Mass. Cuss.
It's my humming body

It's skin like chipped dreams
and questions, small cases.
I can wear a Kanjeevaram sari
you will wear a week's stubble

We'll soon travel all summer
in slumber, blessed stateliness
supplicant to windows radiant
with swimming celestial doubt.

_

References Have Been Checked

Breakfasts have been a lot more leisurely since the semester has ended. So leisurely that Li'l A has to be shepherded to school before Baby A has even dipped into her cereal or her cheesy eggs. Before she has finished telling me every single detail of last night's dreams. 

So Li'l A went off to school, and Baby A is dawdling at the kitchen table.


Baby A: I don't want milk or eggs anymore.
(Accusingly) YOU don't eat eggs or drink milk!

Me: I don't now. But when I was a kid. I drank milk all the time and ate an egg every day.

Baby A: No, you didn't!


Me: I did, actually!


Baby A: Ok. Call Ammama [grandma, my mom] let me ask her.

I initiated an international call and was duly exonerated.

_

Selective

For these are the measures of the everyday assassin
wash hands and sanitize.
Moisturize.

Every thing in its place.
Hair. Bullets.

For you will assume news is anachrony.
For you will know anarchy is nothing.

Nothing.
Nothing is nothing.

Below, a window--
To the window.

All is quiet within.
And you are steel.

Smile.