Grandma Bird

Found art.
This old robin spent
Most of two summers
In the small back yard
Feathers salt
And pepper gray
Mottled pale orange
Not much spring
To her hops, her chirp
Crackly, must have died
Hidden beneath garden foliage
Old plants faded
And there she was
Papier-mâché likeness of bird
Buried now in situ
Waiting next year’s tomatoes.
Another robin’s back there
Measuring the room.

Sequitur

He wakes with wars
(Acrid metal in his nostrils, back of his throat)
Outside his door
(At the place he dreams of, prairie winds seep in)
Within his heart
(Wounded, just begun to heal)
All the Asias risen
(Africa in tears)
Heathens chant
(We are the infidels)
Young women sigh
(Like the animal inside)
In his ear, ask for
(We assume so much of each other)
Everything, undeclared
(And the request makes it inevitable)
All resources requisite
(Soil beneath your feet, the air)
No one believes
(Mesquite woodsmoke circles sacred spaces)
The reason he invades
(Enter now from all directions)
Is neither passion
(Far off a coyote calls)
Nor rich dark oils, but
(Our planet burning)
To prove himself alive

Spark

Walk against the wind, thin
spit though it double-turns onto your chin.
Kick the snow to a tiny tornado
and knock your knees against the trembling.

Belly-flop into the half-formed thing
though these December days weigh still and gray
and the televangelists are still proselytizing.
Bubble to the top of the rising dough.

Light a match to the classifieds
until the want ads burn staccato.
Pennies a word for paper and ink
(a profound reticence to think)
as dreams of the mine and yours combine:
light the pop-crack fire, kindling.

In the in-between dawn under right and wrong,
catch the insect by the God-smacked wing.
Start the spark in this muscle-bound heart.
Fill the space between your teeth with everything.

Inside the Raft

I ran outside.
Your brother was lying dead in the street
And you stood on the sidewalk
Screaming
Your hands covering your mouth.
I softened my focus
In order to determine the greatest need:
Three passers-by crowded over the body
Unwilling or unable to know its lifelessness
And you stood on the sidewalk
Fuzzy with perpetual motion
Screaming.
I grabbed you.

I grabbed you and I held on tight
Attempting to fuse your spirit back to its base
Keep you from killing yourself or
Tearing your hair from its roots.
Your hands over your mouth
Your hands in your hair.
The rocking, the stutter, the sobbing, the
Screaming.
You were fourteen, and your six year-old brother
Was dead in the street
Dragged by the truck
Library books in the road.
I held you.

“It’s my fault, it’s my fault, it’s my fault,”
You chanted.
“Oh god, I want to die. Please let me die.”
You tore your hair,
And I held you.
“I know that you don’t understand,”
I said, softly,
“But it’s not your fault.”
And I held you.
“God is great.
You must pray.”
And I held you.
I held you, and your head fell back,
Mud meeting heavens, and you cried
Dios mio ayúdame, ayúdame
Ay, Dios mio, ayuda….

Later
Seconds. Minutes. A million years
Later a librarian asked you about
Your mother.
“At home,” you stammered.
I took out my phone and took you by the shoulders.
“I need you to tell me your phone number.”
Suddenly you stopped moving
Condensing your energy into
Ten points of focus.
“3. Oh. 3…”
“Does she speak English?”
You nodded.
I stepped away.

Right before your mother answered
I thought of my own mother.
I saw her drop the phone
Scream, go limp, evaporate
Incinerate, disintegrate, combust
Liquefy, and disappear.
The who and where must come first,
I knew,
Before the what and why.
She answered.
“You don’t know me.
My name is Andrea.
I am on the corner of Mississippi and Tejón.
I am with your daughter and she is fine,
But there has been an accident –”
The line went dead.

So quickly the afternoon was ruined.
So rapidly the crowd gathered
So shattered was the light,
The November side-light
The near-dusk, disappearing-trick,
Glinting, glancing, entrancing light
The light your brother ran into
The last light
The only light that mattered
As it shattered
As first the truck
And then the trailer
Jolted, bumped, took hold,
Would not let go
Thirty feet
A stripe of rubber
Ending in the gutter
Where now the paramedics bent
Over the body of your brother.

I felt myself spinning
With the rotating lights
Hearing cries yet seeing beauty
In the way the four men lifted your mother
Dragging her to the grass
As though she’d been deboned.
Beauty in a woman, her hand
Flat on the top of your head, praying
Praying to God, entreating the sky
Dios es poderoso
Dios es fuerte
Dios en su sabiduria
Proteja esta niña
Protéjala, proteja
In your mercy
In your wisdom….
And then they took him.

No one would say
What at least one librarian already knew.
She had tried.
She had pressed his chest,
Blown air into his tiny mouth.
She was back inside the library,
A woman told me,
In the bathroom
Throwing up.

You were finally sitting
On the sidewalk
And I knelt at your feet
Both of my hands on your body.
I could feel you heaving
And I had nothing left to say.
I was near and also far,
Witnessing the tilt from denial to pain.
I could not turn off the beauty
No matter how shattered the light.
Your soft hair
Your long road
Your mother’s grief
And the driver
To your mother
How he held her
How he cried
How he looked her in the eye
And apologized
And the rocking
Like a raft
And all of us were in it.
Together,
Broken and weathered,
Alive.

Little Apple

I.
A woman who looks in the mirror

sees behind her
shapes
much like herself:

blue heron in tree pose,
heliotrope Chinese Houses
in the garden.

II.
A woman who bathes
in water like glass,
feels it shatter inside her.

In her mouth,
cross as a gull’s beak,
sea stars shorn from salt marsh.


III.
A woman who breaks a branch
of a manzanita,
desires its color,
the red so like a
garnet fastened to the sun.


IV.
A woman who watches everything
knows of regeneration:
the grace of the manzanita,
the grace of the sea star,
each her quiet enterprise.

-Barbara Sorensen

Wanted: Patron

I cannot bear this modern poet’s life.
For God’s sake, inspiration only lasts
as long as discretionary funds are rife.
It seems the bank doth future fame forecast.

Did Shakespeare have a day job? I think not!
His muse was kind as long as bills were paid
by his Dark Lady. It seems success is bought
and sold, and art in gold and silver weighed.

Be you ecclesiastical or noble,
my work is sure to please your worthy tastes
with themes immortal, relevant and global,
and as you like it: Cyprian or chaste.

And so, aristocrats and CEOs,
Please cast the glow of greenish glory hither!
Until you do, I fear I may compose
such mediocre verse as this, then wither

much like the ripest grape upon the vine.
Alas, let poverty not pull me to decline.