she said we were
delayed because of rain
so i tuned in the weather band on the radio
and heard laughter and crying and laughter again
the unstable meteorologist forecasting the
unstable weather
into our stable lives.

we stand in the middle of the valley
and wait for the water
because what else can we do
but throw our arms up in the sky
drink our fill
and hold on tight
to the hands we choose.

in the morning
we wake with pillows over our heads
and listen for the sounds:
birds
the settling of the house
higher up, airplanes and higher still
maybe god
but best of all
each other breathing
in the moment of confusion
about being awake
until the familiar patterns
on the ceiling
call our names
and we rise
with sleep in our eyes.

breccia

she said she'd give him everything,
but all that he wanted was
to stop running for a minute
to rest in the shade.

do you remember our version of the alamo? we were trapped inside, and we could have sworn that there were fires burning all around us, and muskets and cannons, and the entire mexican army had disguised itself as the wisconsin night. do you remember if i comforted you, if i tried to speak eloquently, or if i was as quiet and scared as you were? if i was, i apologize. i should have done more to help you survive. our hair darkened as we grew up, as we absorbed the soil through our bare feet, as we swam in the river with the tannins from the trees up north. i know that you remember the gardens, and all of the things that grew in them. watermelons. cucumbers. rows of raspberries and strawberries. rhubarb. carrots. the magic of pulling on the green stems, and eating them straight from the ground, dirt and all. we dug earthworms, nightcrawlers, on the mornings after thunderstorms and sold them at the end of the driveway, but you kept sneaking them back into the ground.

she was like sledding into a barbed-wire fence.
(that sounds terrible.)
she was like getting lock-jaw.
(that's a brave metaphor, my love.)
we didn't talk for years. did not talk. did not meet for breakfast. did not run into each other at fucking trivia nights, did not attend the same gallery openings-
(but you slept together?)
sometimes. when one of us was awake, the other was usually asleep.
(did you like anything about her?)
yes.
(what did you like about her?)
her shoulder blades.
(that's a good one. that's a trump card. shoulder blades do not tell lies.)
and they would either give in to me, or pull away from me, or sigh with indifference.
(you paid attention to her shoulder blades. that's impressive. i don't think anyone has ever noticed my shoulder blades.)
that's not fair, and probably not true.
(not since high school, at least. i remember dancing with this boy, and i had begged my mom to make me a dress with a spaghetti straps and a scoop in the back. he was afraid to touch my skin, but he was also afraid to put his hands around my waist. so he tried to keep them entirely on the spaghetti straps. it didn't work. we couldn't dance. so i told him, "on my back. put. your. hands. on. my. back." he was terrified, and he decided to grip by shoulder blades like handles. his hands were sweating, and he stared at my forehead. but i have to give him credit, he did not let go.)

after she told her story, it settled like lazy organic sediment to the bottom of the evening. he imagined dancing with her in her spaghetti straps scoop back. she was imagining him, as well, with his hands on her waist, then shoulder blades, then waist. they didn't talk much, but adjusted and re-adjusted the incredible sentences inside of their heads, wanting to say things like:

if we had met in high school, i would have slept in your single bed. your parents would have gotten sick of me hanging around. they would have worried about us having sex, but they didn't need to, because we were very patient teenagers. we were going to wait until we could drive across the border into some sleepy canadian town where we could rent a cabin and cover ourselves in quilts, light a fire, and forget everything about being kids, everything about being americans, and focus on un-learning all of the history we had ever been taught.

we're all barbed-wire, sometimes.

i drank another cup of coffee. my stomach growled.
here is what is.

our town

the best our town
in the history of our towns
was when i played george
and sarah marie thompson
played emily
in ms. piotrowski's tenth grade english class.

we had recently broken up
after a steamy 6-month freshman romance
(or was it 7, i can never remember)
and we had barely made eye contact
and had not spoken
since.

the tension was palpable.
i was thrilled.
sarah might have been, too,
but she did a good job
hiding it.

friends now
who were classmates then
still talk about
the scene
over
the ice cream soda.

george's lines
were my lines
and
emily was
alive
until
she
wasn't.

deoxyribonucleic acid

a poem about love
without metaphors
is just an empty mailbox
at the end of a long driveway
that hasn't been opened
in a very long time.
inside of that mailbox
is a very long letter
describing the advancements
in the discovery of
the structure of
everything.
also inside the mailbox
past the letter
and past a spidery web
littered with exoskeletons
is the portal to
another universe.

rosalind closed her eyes
for once to black and not to molecular models.
it was all that she could say,
quietly and without
judgement or reservation,
"the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid."

between blades of grass
sky-scraper sheets of waxy green
ants march in line
clearing house
cleaning up
don't they know
that they should unionize?

you roll over onto your back
breathe deep
and keep up with
the current economic crisis
while i count ants
and encourage them
to read marx & trotsky
you hit me with the new york times
and bring me back to
rising gas prices
and interest rates

an hour went by
we fell asleep
beneath the big old tree
in central park
you dreamed of type-writer sounds
and i dreamed of
martin luther king
on the balcony of
the lorraine motel
where i had just been
with my father
our dreams together:
type-writer gunshots
revolutions
stamped on paper
rolling through the presses
stopping by the editor's desk
for coffee and a bite of cake
trying to solve
crossword puzzles
(who gives a fuck about crossword puzzles, really?)
impressive on the train
she was
and the way she left the
subway
the time that i saw
natalie portman
on the a-train
(why the fuck would natalie portman ride the a-train? was she slumming it on her way up-town?)
maybe she just missed
being beneath the city
being tuned to sleep
by the smell of the rails
and the plastic seats
carefully curved
holding commuters
like orphaned children
(you tell me to shut up about natalie portman,
that it wasn't her,
that even if it was-)
maybe i just missed
getting her number
pretending that i didn't know
who she was
rinsing all recognition from my eyes
with my flannel sleeves
and impressing her
with my knowledge of
abandoned subterranean spaces

here is a secret:
i love you
because i know that
you don't really give a fuck
about frictional unemployment or gross domestic product or slip/strike economies
(there is no such thing, you made that up)
or anything except
sleeping
on
the
fire escape-

he was there fighting for workers' rights
i tell the ants
horrified by their indifference
towards dr. king
towards you
and towards me-

later in the day,
i say:
i never really gave a fuck about natalie portman anyway,
and you:
she'd break too easily
and she'd never pull you through
the window on the 14th floor
with two pillows
and a torn quilt-

the economics of
midnight
play
above 45th street
where the supply is
the history of new york city
and the demand
is fucking history for just a moment-

your back is bruised
wrought iron bruised
by your love of
making love
on the
fire escape.

girl arrested, 1920's

don't let her fool you.
she's a criminal.
she's undone the button on her blouse,
and she'll undo you the same.
it's a shame.

she smells like sage.
it's an old trick.
no, i don't think that it is, i think that she's a cook-
boy, no, she's a crook-
and i've seen her down the street-
she's a mage-
she was buying a leg of lamb, wearing an apron, smelling like sage-
she's good with a knife.
-i'd bet my life she's a sweet girl.
you'd risk your life.
for a wife.

but she holds inside her pocket
within a secret locket
the photo of a boy
who always brings her joy
she'll show you if you ask
but no one ever does-

schlitz

the beer that made milwaukee famous
has long been gone and left us
with empty fermentation tanks
and many sober weddings.

Illilouette, trans.

names like pouring rain
Wapama
Chilnualna
Bridalveil
Nevada
Ribbon
Vernal
your book of birds
you stayed up all night reading
wanting to see a cooper's hawk
a sharp-shinned hawk
a golden eagle
but you forgot to look
because Illilouette
was roaring like a lion.

without daring to
i'm daring you to look out over the edge but
holding your waist
i've had a talk with gravity
and we reached an understanding
the water falls
and you stay here with me.

Illilouette
your teeth on your tongue
the name that does not bear translation
not-still-water
and we
are-not-still.

5.10.11 puzzles

the blues make sense to me

a worn out sofa in my grandparents living room
where my nani slept
for as long as i can remember
the kind with a floral pattern
and wooden arms and feet
just barely stained
by cigarette smoke
the fabric thin like an old work shirt
stuck too many times by the elbows of wrestling children

and me, without a clue
that is where i go
when i need to rest my head

the lake, too, at night
with a big moon up
and the doors open
the edge of the woods
where that old truck rusted
and resisted it's useless existence
the hood of a 1966 dodge charger
still warm
stars spilled like pepper
teasing us into believing
that our existence
would be manageable

she turned to me with all of the lost control of a teenager
and i don't remember anything (she remembers the car, and was disappointed when i picked her up a few years later in a 1986 lebaron) except that she tasted like cigarettes, which probably reminded me of my grandparents
and my home

there is a place where it doesn't matter if you run the stop sign at the bottom of the hill
nobody is out there
and there is one light far down the road an old farmhouse where nobody lives
the night sounds:
bullfrogs
crickets
we decide to turn on
the am radio
to catch the ninth
and press our ears to the mono speaker
but you don't kiss me
because you are nervous
with one man on
and one man out
down by two
you're thinking
"don't swing. don't fucking swing
at a slider outside
or something in the dirt"
and i'm thinking
"jesus christ, your lips
are close to mine
and if-"
we hear the crowd go silent
and our brains tell our hearts
that he's swung
and missed
but we hear the ball
hit the bat
and before it's even over the wall
you're on top of me
and that old blue vinyl
is our bed.

so what
if i listen to miles davis
it doesn't mean
that i know anything
that you don't.

the blues make sense to me because they are a language. i didn't get that when i was younger, when somebody first told me, "you gotta speak the language, man." you can't speak it until you understand it. and you don't understand it until it wants you to. you earn it. and i'm not all the way there, and i have plenty of understanding to earn. but i like bending strings and matching up with everybody else in the room, because the blues really do tug at our muscles and nerves and fill our brains with a warm wash of rhythm. it feels really fucking good to just play the blues.

she will hit for power,
but will never sacrifice
a sure single
scoring a runner from second
to fly out at the warning track.

she will write poems about babe ruth
tell stories about the negro leagues
and always watch the infielders
when most of us are watching
the ball headed towards the bat.

going-to-the-sun

with hank williams
on the canadian radio
a six-pack of spotted cow
and a folded torn honest to god map
just a tent and
empty notebooks
and me
and you
and going-to-the-sun.

under the influence

we've got nuclear water
she said
and i didn't care
because her eyes were very different
tonight
like she had been drinking
radioactivity

stealing someone else's style:
charlie chaplin bourbon with all of the old blankets
in the middle of the floor keeping out the draft that
comes up from the bottom of the house not wanting to know
what time it is and then forgetting about that while trying
to understand how silent was never silent and not anything was
ever really black and white especially not your eyes remember when
television stations turned themselves off shut down
and went white buzzing and no remote control
so you fell asleep to snow tv
on the nights in the summer
when you didn't have to
get up
and go
to school
and you shut me up
because it was chaplin time
and we both wanted
another bourbon

gentle reminder

sometimes i forget this
but sometimes i remember it:

it's not about
anything
except
being the most compassionate
most honest
most caring
you can be
with each person
that you see.

thaw

if we're quiet
we can take a sunny afternoon
and disappear into the woods behind the house
where
for some reason i don't understand
(there was a scientific explanation, and a casual mention in the local papers)
the dragonflies had expatriated
by the thousands.

i'm sure you'll study
and by the weekend you'll tell me
all about the reproductive cycles
and flight speeds
and scientific names
but not right now
because we are being quiet
lying on our backs
listening to their wings
and looking directly at the sun.

-----------------------------

we meant to read the paper
and we meant to drink the coffee
but
after a robin pulled an earthworm from the front garden
we got a little distracted.
it had been a long winter
and there was never anything interesting in the local paper.
so the coffee waited
until the early afternoon
and we drank it
sitting in the garden
with the thawing gnomes
and nightcrawlers.

lovecraft and the girl under the moon

lovecraft had a terrible time in brooklyn
his cat,
badger,
ran away
and was stepped on by a horse,
on one of the fruit streets.

lovecraft hated being
paved over
tunneled under
and otherwise pushed around.

he also did not like
being named after
a creative demon.

the shoes of his name were
too big to fill
canoe shoes
lake shoes
ocean shoes
filled with
the smokey blood
of well-written spooks.

lovecraft would have rather looked out across the pacific. more hope and more water and sharks and better surf and more beach volleyball. and fewer fucking horses. but just as many streets named after fruit. there was a girl out there too, he had met her at a shifty tent-pole convention just outside of Clear Lake, Iowa- what had been advertised as a ren fest had shifted itself into an aluminum can beer fest when a team of local frat boys dressed in cardboard armor captured the maiden fair. he was instrumental in her rescue, after fashioning a sling shot out of a y-branch and an old alternator belt. the assault was over a small rise in a meadow. he was hit in the lip with a can of a torn pabst, but was able to get off one shot, a shot he felt good about. the sound, stone on skin and then bone, was not something he was used to. he was afraid that he had killed the frat boy captain when he nailed him in the temple with an cubic-egg chunk of granite. blood was spilled, and the drunk kid didn't move. but he was only in a state of mental shock- he'd been felled by a nerd-enemy, in front of his crew-cut peers. he was down, and he stayed down. the sling shot is not a traditionally a medieval weapon, but nobody seemed to care. there she was, with her back-pocket bandanna already on his lip. he had never seen her before, and couldn't be sure whose side she was on.

"those fucking idiots. i told them it was a stupid idea-" she had come to the fields, she said, to make sure nothing got out of hand. he believed her. "mike, the tall one, the one you... hit. he can be..." her sentence faded away, and they listened to crickets and bullfrogs. her name was opal, and she was visiting from california. she was a friend of mike's sister. "i thought i might sleep with him tonight," she said, which was awkward and hurt his lip. but then she smiled and said, "thanks for shooting him. you saved me the trouble."-they walked beneath the giant moon-ball and traded secrets. they both loved hills blanketed in waist-tall grasses, and the dew-ed tangle of spiderwebs on the hills in the morning. she was a third generation heiress. he was a second generation lumber-mill planer operator. "there are lumber mills in brooklyn?" she asked. "no. i do miniature lumber now, in my basement. for miniature furniture for miniature houses." she was perplexed. "people buy that stuff?" the moon-ball laughed and a short cold breeze kept their noses awake. "it's not much different than what we're doing. an escape. we escape to this world. it's the same scale as our world, but very different. some people want a world that is just the same as the one they are in, but on a much smaller scale."
at this point, in a field of knee-high wheat, he was kissed. the scale of the kiss was, in relation to the things around them, very small. but in relation to miniature furniture in miniature houses, it was very big.

lovecraft went back to brooklyn on the train. the next evening, he stood in front of his bathroom mirror. his t-shirt was dirty, and had two small holes. he hadn't shaved in eight days. his hair looked like abe lincoln's. there he was, in the middle of the city, alone, missing his cat, and looking authentically human. he smiled, his big gap-toothed, split-lipped smile, and turned off the light.

amen

rocco, come over
and teach me to play
slide guitar.

she was afraid of the strings
but she was metal on metal
and bone on bone.

i don't know how much it cost me
he said
before asking for
her entire hand,

which she politely refused
him
and instead
placed upon his head
a cap of thorny-thorns
(he keeps it now
in his bureau desk
beneath old, old, old
news paper love letters)
and he goes home all alone.

rocco,
come over
and teach me
how to play.

his fingers bleed
playing his
rusted
barbed
wire
slide
guitar.

remember the easter quake, when he was young

She couldn’t remember where she had placed the sugar.

It wasn’t raining, but it looked like it might be in the city.

Things were not in order, and he had trouble sleeping when things were not in order. Their lives had been turned around by the quake; not broken apart but rotated backwards. They were safe, and had everything that they had before, but finding it became difficult.

Their son, the little boy, was sensitive to seismic activity. He liked it; when he was a baby, on their trips to the Midwest, he would never stop crying, fussing over the stillness of the dirt under their feet. But in California, he was always happy. He tugged at their legs before every tremor. It took them some time to make the connection. The big one, on Easter Sunday last year, he was rolling on the living room carpet like a cat. She opened the door, and he bolted out into the yard, and buried his ears in the earth. She was just about to pull him up like a carrot when the window panes began to shake. He stopped moving. She called to him, before she realized that he was in the safest place possible. She thought he was afraid, but when she got closer, and lay down next to him, she realized that he was laughing. They both let the shaking stop, and rolled onto their backs. The quake had left them behind. The neighbors streamed from their apartments like worker ants.
She tried to remember what she had been doing. Looking for the sugar. Brown sugar. She had been baking a carrot cake.

“I don’t think that’s possible,” he said, after she told him what had happened.
“You go away too much.”
“You don’t go away enough.”
How could she? The little boy who loved shaking needed her.
“He’s different.”
“Maybe he’s autistic.”
“Maybe. I don’t care, I don’t really care, but I think it’s amazing that he can do something impossible.”
“He can’t predict them. Nobody can predict them.”
“No, but he can feel them. I think he can hear them, too.”
Her husband, who traveled for work, but didn’t make much money, sighed. “How bad was it?”
“Not bad. Like the top of a roller coaster, but it stopped before we really started down.”
“You were ok?”
“He was rolling around on the grass. Like he knew. Like he knew he would be safe there. Nothing broken."
-she thought about the look on his face, being rumbled in the afternoon sun-
"But the sugar moved."