Husker-Du To

Riddle #3

2012-02-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

Why bring the lazuli bunting, place it
in the flowering crab and then bounce
from his improbable head the bluest sky?

Why let the children build their tenuous
tower of blocks, complete with lofty turrets
for Superman, room for dragons and gold?

Why drop those sweet crumbs in the woods,
distracting us from witches and darkness
until we are too lost, too sated to scream?

Ça Va

2012-01-30T13:13:00.001-08:00

Sitting in the theater next to my daughter, catching up
briefly on the news of her day, before the room goes dark
and the French-Canadian film begins. Three minutes in,
after piano music and children on a playground, cut
to a young woman hanging, suspendue

By the neck, from the rafters and a blue scarf. Suicide.
This is the same daughter who, many years ago, still a child,
asked me, “Dad, wouldn’t it be easier just to die, maybe
on a plane when all the engines catch fire?” I don’t remember
my response, now—something reassuring, plein d’espoir,

Something the man in the film might say to comfort
the young boy and girl who are first to come face-to-face
with Martine, their sixth-grade teacher, now dangling
in the classroom. But there would have been horror, too,
horror that her bright eyes had already let in, avaient vus

So much of the world that such a thought should surface,
and horror that a piece of me was right there with her,
wanting to whisper, Yes, ma chère. It’s true. But here we are
instead, tonight, laughing together when the plot allows,
when there can be encore la musique

And dancing. I catch her stealing glances at her phone,
now and then, worried about her patient now lying in hospital—
accidental gunshot to the leg. She sees me watching
and shakes her head. “It’s okay, dad,” she whispers,
so we settle in. And she’s right, enfin: Oui, ça marche. Ça va.

Riddle #9

2012-01-28T20:26:00.000-08:00

Maybe I'm the morning's rime of ice
when the day has warmed to noon,
or the second moon in the night sky,
the thing a dog gives chase to
in his dreams. Or surely
the last wisp of thought
before sleep, leaving signs
like wind-furrows in tall grass,
fish in a silver stream.

Full of Sound

2012-01-27T14:52:00.001-08:00

The guy next door is watching TV
laughing loudly and clapping his hands again
so you step outside onto asphalt
surrounding one skeletal locust tree
and head to the greenest spot in miles,
the cemetery, which looks like a park if you squint
and imagine little kids in shirtsleeves and the sounds
of tetherball chains in a spring breeze
but eventually you see only the Tyler
or Hogan or Jackson family plot
with five slots filled but room for a couple more
so when it begins to rain you head back
to the old parking lot tree
for some protection from the rain
if not from the neighbor still so ecstatic
you begin to wonder what in the world he sees.

Joe

2012-01-24T11:23:00.001-08:00

Halfway down Eastwood, where Joe knows
all the dogs to shout to as we pass, we hit
our first full stop. I let him take it slow, this time,
peel back each layer, do his archaeological
business without my usual tugs. I am in no hurry,
this evening. Nose to the ground, tail a-quiver,
Joe circles the old stump clockwise and back,
staccato whimpers and low, thoracic
moans all the while, until at once, analysis
complete, he is off again, down the walk,
into a slow lope across the playground grass.

Carefully we skirt the central swing set
with its clutch of strollers and young mothers,
and keep to the fence line. Of course
there is marking to be done, and ritual snuffling
of every fencepost and tree. We both know
the route, though his is a full-body knowing
and mine a marker only of time:
forty-five minutes, on a good day.

Along the stream now, out of sight of houses,
of neighbors nodding hello, and into a stand
of cottonwoods and willows, semi-permeable,
with powers to filter out the day’s detritus.
But I can’t seem to make the turn, today. “I know,
Joe.” I see the questions in your tail, the tilt
of your head. Why have we stopped so long
on the little bridge? What is there to see
in the dark mirror below? Come on. This is not
how it goes. This is not what we do. “Yes, Joe.
You’re right.” So we’ll go home, he says, smell
by smell, even in the dark. Just try to keep up.

Genuflections

2012-01-20T14:54:00.000-08:00

Back when we knew I was the prophet and you
my acolyte, there was adulation and rapture
a-plenty. I remember how they hung on every word
and in your eyes. Even then the reverence, I knew,
was not without alloy, impurity, or seam. Trammeled
in your eyes, when you didn’t see me seeing,
the merest mote of doubt, one retinal cone
flickering with uncertainty, that small sacrilege
threatening to lay bare the lie. But hallelujah,
no. Fervor returns, welling up like quicksilver,
and long before the errancy can gel, devotions now
are offered, ablutions wash over another evening
on the cool back lawn, wrapping, cloaking us,
holy rollers in patchwork quilts and springtime, pilgrims
to every youthful shrine, gathering, kissing relics
along the road, indulgences for that end of times,
omnipresent, when the fire would pass us over and by.

Cheshire

2012-01-15T21:25:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I hear the wind
through my eyes. Look closely
and the pixels appear, then lose
their hard edge like the bare smoke
of shadow at high noon.

Here in the evening ether
I can hear the music, almost
taste the wine, cast a shimmer
in your glass. Just a laugh
and a dance now to shake it clear.

And, O, all those ships under full
sail, canvas snapping, prows
cutting cleanly! Well.

Off you go, now. That's my smile
I've left there for you,
in the night sky.

Fun with Fungi (along the Great Western Trail)

2012-01-12T10:05:00.001-08:00

Askew

2012-01-04T09:12:00.000-08:00

There’s something not quite right today. Askew.

Definitely not on-kilter. It’s as if you, all of you,
are pod people now, and no one seems able to tell

but me. As if one insignificant satellite fell,
so everyone’s GPS calmly sends them just 1.3

degrees off, north-northwest. Have you jointly
agreed not to notice the vertigo

of this day, how even the mad concerto
of evening traffic is maybe half of one half

step flat? Because what I see in your quaff
of coffee, your bus stop stare, the insouciance

of that bluetooth laugh, is an ignorance
borne, I can only surmise, of a Stepford Wives-

like blind eye, when clearly nothing jives,
nothing about this day is copasetic, nothing

passes the smell test. Can no one bring
back yesterday, that golden day when a person could

be counted on to tell you where you stood,
before she—or someone very like—would move the fulcrum,

nudge the lucid universe one bubble off plumb?

Grass Widower

2011-12-30T19:09:00.000-08:00

When he started watching from behind the arbor vitae.

When she smiled right on past the meatloaf, out the window.

When she changed first her shoes and then her gait.

When she knew more than he did.

When, in this new dimensional plane, she turned out to be someone he had never met.

When she shook her head and flecks of straw caught fire.

Your Face

2011-12-28T21:41:00.000-08:00

Your pants are creased and folded, shoes
polished and poised. Notes have been left
on the care of your cat. Tomorrow

we will see you only from a distance,
and it will seem as though it has always
been that way. We will not clearly remember
the sound of your voice, let alone
the reason for your trip.

Someone will pass the old photo around
of you as a child watching the train go by.
Another will tell the story of the year
you would eat only red food. By the time
we want to smile recalling that girl you almost
married with the wine-colored sundial
birthmark on her neck, you will be already
at the station, and it will be too late. Although

we will eat our evening meal and sip
at our cups, a few of us will be distracted
still, trying to picture you by the window
as you ride through the nighttime desert,
struggling to imagine shadows of saguaros,
mesas going black, your face.

Consanguine

2011-12-14T10:08:00.000-08:00

Photons of pollen, still warm, rose in the moist
Spring air like lovers raising a bright glass
To the new year, back when there was courage enough
For such things, in the infinite entropy of hope.

That fruitless sawing at the air, beating back every foe
Real and imagined, couldn’t hold at bay the wildfires that split
Into a hundred more with each one snuffed out, love lying rent
Among the ashes before scattering to the four winds.

Autumn rains turned the bare earth black, as creeping vines
Ran red along the stone wall. In the middle of every sleepless night
Darkness furred your throat like bourbon while loneliness massed
Along the horizon, annihilating starlight, signifier, signs.

The woods are silent, muffled further by a heavy snow
That leans in buttresses against the trees. Nothing
To be done at last but a terminal burrowing of mind
Until each cell of memory shatters without a sound.

Now a thousand thousand collisions have cornered Higgs at last,
And now we wait again. How is it we can crouch here,
Set to spring even now, willing ourselves to run through the field
Once more, as if this time god will trace us back to him?

At the Reading of the Handsome Poet with the New Book

2011-12-12T11:13:00.000-08:00

How jarring to see someone else living
the life you intended for yourself.
Forty years ago you saw exactly
how it should play out, and blithely set forth
on the very road where now this fellow,
this interloper skips along, oblivious.

Whether or not he is happier than you
is beside the point. It’s not even that your own life
is so bad. Hell, people may be envying
your career from afar, your friends, the way
you work a crowd until all eyes follow
when you leave. It could happen.
The thing is, they say you end up
with the life your inward self
truly wants. But how can that be?

How can you have been so wrong
about what you wanted, so cut off,
divorced from this other entity, the deepest
you, skulking there within and wanting this
life, the one who surreptitiously pulled the levers,
opened this sluice gate, flooded that lock,
let you believe in the free will of your life,
even allowed you portage around a dead-end
tributary or two but, in the end, played you
inexorably to this shore, this warm and shallow pool?

Minutes of the Last Meeting, 1964

2011-12-07T21:36:00.000-08:00

Not knowing it would be the last time
in the dragon cave, we carried on
as usual. 1. Ale was poured.

2. Reports were given on the search
for magic (inconclusive, suspended),
rations (3 pop-tarts, cheese mallow,
1/2 bottle orange Crush), follow-up
on last week's possible centaur sighting
(wishful thinking/Great Dane). 3. Heated

discussion broke out again over the need,
yay or nay, to have more than one human
in the club. The name Angela (red hair,
fast runner) was tossed around again but,
in the end, tabled. 4. There was no real enthusiasm,

that day, for charades, or sword-fighting,
or telekinesis, so when 5. someone motioned
at last for adjournment and 6. a bike ride
downtown, well, 7. things broke up so quickly
there was no time for 8. a second to the motion,
I guess, and 9. no call for a next meeting, no one
to tell us we should 10. stay a little longer.

Anniversary

2011-12-04T10:47:00.000-08:00

It is good to be in her good graces
the inner circle
to have favored-nation status
a chosen one
picked for games at recess
me me pick ME
good like the first breath
after diving too deep.

To be outside her light looking in
is to be bereft
cast into sepia tones
snake-bit, the poison
working its way
inward from each extremity
where it will stop your heart
but leave you living, just.

Awake

2011-11-30T03:59:00.000-08:00

Here are pistachio nuts in the shell
little jars of curry paste an entire row
of teas in aisle three a ride-on buffing machine
rounding the corner. I can't remember why I'm here.

Christmas music overhead is loud
and sweet but the Pepsi guy restocks
while rocking to the wire in his ear
a little air guitar between cartons of Mountain Dew.

Somewhere near cleansers and Swiffer brooms
I realize I have come to a dead stop
asleep on my feet until clipped by a gray
gristle of a woman and her motorized cart.

Outside with my bag of string cheese and minty floss
I see in slow motion the Salvation Army poised,
the sun just hitting the red kettle and the gold bell
in her gloved hand, the wind-up of stored
energy that will, inevitably, set it ringing.

Ovine/Lupine

2011-11-28T07:55:00.000-08:00

Putrefaction was well under way
But it was still arguably a sheep.
It oozed when I poked it with a stick:
Some liquid and a puff of smell.
Maggots made the tail twitch;
Ants were rapturous on the snout.
As far as I could tell, though,
He was neither consoled
Nor aware that come spring
Flowers would grow from his skull.

Things I Know

2011-11-17T14:50:00.001-08:00

Up, up go the pigeons as I walk
through the town park. See them startle,
flap wildly, bend together in the air
and settle once again farther on

Near where the two men behind
the willow tree jump to their feet
as I pass by, adjust their pants
and ask me what the hell I’m looking at.

If you really want to know, I think
to myself, I am looking for the things,
the people, the creatures who still make
a sound I know, who speak or move in ways

That I remember. Every day I walk
faster because there are fewer now,
and it’s some kind of fear that follows,
as if someone with a giant push

Broom is sweeping up the very world
behind me: the stone statues, the trees,
pure laughter, even the idea of a park
in a city near someplace like home.

Safe

2011-11-14T06:55:00.000-08:00

It was raining when we passed the scene,
so the flashing lights glittered
in pools of water and broken glass—yellows
reds and blues dazzled those of us
slowly passing by in our long train of cars,
still whole and dry and different now.

We all craned our necks to see. Some of us
speculated about damage estimates, others
wondered if anyone could have survived
and said they saw gurneys with white sheets
pulled all the way up. Kids in back seats
swore they saw blood washing into drains
and a cop leaning in at one window
with a Barbie doll in his hand.

And then we picked up speed and moved past,
and it was like the morning after the carnival
leaves town and you know very well that flesh
and blood people took down the tents
and loaded them onto trucks along with the Tilt-
a-Whirl and cotton candy machine, but when
the only trace left is a field of matted grass
and the faint smell of sawdust, you almost believe
the whole thing was staged just for you
by gypsies or monks in some sort of traveling
morality play, after which the dead actors
with ketchup blood get up, vanish, fly off
to their strange and other places.

Raised by Wolves

2011-11-10T10:42:00.000-08:00

We told Barry it was a sugar cube laced
with LSD. Laced. We heard
it first on the drug movie they showed
to scare us sixth graders
out of becoming junkies—creatures
most of us had never seen
until faced with the staggering, dark-eyed
zombies in the movie.

One scene showed how LSD, the wildest
drug, the one with the grooviest
trips, could be eye-droppered
onto sugar cubes and then slipped
into someone’s coffee at a party. But ours
was not really a sugar cube, just a little square
of Styrofoam, and laced only with something
latent in every child, something like evil or genetic
markers. It’s what the cool kids are doing, Barry.

We chose Barry because he was the closest
thing we had to a junkie. We knew
he had to give himself shots throughout the day
and keep a package of graham crackers
in his desk that he was allowed to eat from
whenever he liked. And he would share them,
too, so if it was jealousy, it wasn’t for that.
We weren’t sure why but we loved it

when sometimes Barry would go crazy.
He would run clear around the school,
climb backstops like a monkey, oblivious
to everyone, even the teachers who frantically
called his mom and then tried to corral
him. We must have been a little scared, yes,
but there was something else, as well. I mean,
he couldn’t even talk! Just an occasional war whoop
and a look in his eyes that reminded us

of the story about the boy raised by wolves.
And then, usually before his mom arrived,
he would wind down and stop, at last,
eyes closed, legs quivering a bit, and when he woke
wouldn’t remember a thing, only laugh
to hear us—gathered around like neighbors
at a house fire—reel off the crazy things he’d done,
before the teachers hurried him off

to the Nurse’s Office and us to our desks.
Looking back now, of course I’m ashamed—
Styrofoam or not—but at the time, come on,
here was a kid who regularly ventured
into the shadow-laced world we knew
only from movies, German fairy tales,
and the little pinpricks of pubescence that danced
along the top of our spines—and yet returned
alive, laughing even, but clearly no longer one of us.

In Obscurity

2011-11-06T13:59:00.000-08:00

Hunched over a desk in yellow
lamplight with maybe an awl,
a hot glue gun, a lathe. Discards
lumped along the crowded shelves
like clay thrown from a wheel
or badly fired. Pretty ones hung
on a tree where you might see them
as you pass by, or note how the last
light catches them in their fall.

2011-11-04T16:34:00.000-07:00

You hear stories about the horrible father who leaves behind his babies and their mother and runs off with some tramp or some motorcycle and maybe he calls the kids on their birthday and fedexes a present at christmas and everyone says what a horrible man how could anyone do such a thing. And the kids think so too and for sure there are years of anger and abandonment issues and therapy but then what the hell do they do at some point? out of all that believe it or not it comes welling up like crude oil they want to find the old shit maybe confront him yell in his face really pummel him in his flabby ridiculous horrible chest but mostly - go figure - incredibly - just one "sorry" just one long sobbing hug and all the world is right again and never mind all that, dad. Oh dad. You hear those stories. He's a bastard wrapped up in his money or his booze who never gave you the time of day never sat on the bleachers for you or read a single fucking bedtime story or knew you wrote heartbreaking songs like fucking tom waits but never mind one day he'll smile on you pat your head say what's new, sport? And hey that grandson of mine is a dead ringer. And then it's all okay? Then yeah I guess it's all okay because it's dad after all and I hear stories like that and every time they rip out my fucking heart.

Deer at the Window

2011-11-02T08:08:00.000-07:00

Two deer died in the backyard
this winter a month apart
which has never happened before
let alone dying in precisely the same spot
with no obvious signs of trauma beyond
wet matted fur and countable ribs.

So starvation, right? poison
at a stretch, possibly, but why
in my yard and what drew each
to that ivy patch under the window—
some netherworld nexus, my own
Suburbmuda Triangle? But no,

when the wildlife officers came
to wrap them in plastic tarps
and haul them off, neither man showed
any distress, nary a shiver, certainly
no desire to curl up next to the foundation
and give up the ghost.

I have to say, though, I still tiptoe around
that spot, still fancy I feel a cooler air,
a chill at animals starving in the midst
of plenty, a premonition almost,
warning me like a horse head in the bed
of a fate being laid at my door—well, window.

Muon Man

2011-10-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

Little man in your little life,
Walk the dog and kiss your wife.

Only three days, ever, will be about
You—and this has not been one. Out
The corner of your eye you see
The lovely ones, luminous women free

To smile or not, men who somehow keep
To the light. Together they sleep
Less than you, laugh more, tempt
Fate yet find themselves exempt

From those quiet moments you know,
When, on the train home, below
Universal radar, unlooked for, facing
The window, one blurred vision chasing

Another down the line as far as you can see,
How clear it becomes, how insistently
The remaining backlit corner of your mind
Has unraveled, until one day you find

Yourself immune to morning and despair,
Passing through both with room to spare.

Autumn Berries: A Quadtych

2011-10-21T08:16:00.000-07:00

Rose Hips

Serviceberries

Blue Elderberries

Mountain Ash Berries

Promised Things

2011-10-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

It was when they’d closed up his skull for a time
to see if he would open his eyes and who he’d be
they said you should get out
take some time away there is nothing you can do here
until it seemed that maybe I could
maybe some fresh air and faces would after all
would do the trick so I told him I was going
told his empty face how soon I’d be back
put his hand beneath the sheets
tucked him in like this had always been his room

And went where it was a holiday judging by the music
and decorations coiled around each column, and people—
just like they’d said—
seemingly capable of such speed
who thundered as they passed in sounds I knew to be words
but that only nudged me harmlessly like metallic balloons
and one little girl was crying into her bag of candy
throwing her shoes at anyone who came close
while her parents patted and shushed
and promised things when she got home;

Still it might have been okay
but for the cinnamon-sweet potpourri
insinuating however gently with warm places and times
that Christmas was coming here
would snow even me under eggnog and holly berry
until I could never find my way back there
to the other side of the glass
where it was only winter
but where my son lay warming
and waiting to speak.

Beslan School Number One

2011-10-12T13:33:00.000-07:00

You can’t fool kids for long.
By first grade, these days, Father Frost
is already fading. They will ask you
about a coming divorce
long before you gather them
for that awkward hem and haw.

And on the second day
of the siege, when you offer
bottles of warm piss passed off
as apple juice? Please. They will know.
By the third, they will be children
no longer.

Feral

2011-10-05T06:55:00.001-07:00

There’s a feral cat, just a gray shadow
that pads past my window, insinuates
himself between branches of the river
birch, melds, solidifies, until only golden
eyes follow the bird feeder’s swaying
with every sparrow and rosy finch.
I have never witnessed the violence
but can imagine the outstretched leap,
bite to the neck, the spray of feathers
and brief, final thrashing. There are mornings
when I step out for the paper and find
that doily of blood, down, and bones
just off the walk in a covert nook.
And beyond that, something wilder
crouching just out of sight.

Sports Bar

2011-10-03T08:12:00.000-07:00

Three guys and a pitcher of beer. Game day.
All of a cloth at first glance. Team colors. Ball caps.
The younger has even dyed his hair. Maybe 20
-something. He laughs with the middle-aged fan,
first about his hair, then on to heavier stuff:
West Coast offense. Nickel defense vs. dime.

And then an older guy. He’s game. Throws in
the sweep and the I-formation. But he's a half-step slow.
I can see that from here, the look from the younger men
when they have moved on to cheerleaders and tailgating,
and he comes back with nothing but leather helmets
and Hail Marys. I swear I see panic starting in his eyes.

He's out of his depth on women, these days,
and cursing. Some of the words have changed.
Is he supposed to be angry when he says them?
Bitches? Broads? Laughter covers all. Another round.
Thanks, boys. Laughter. Women at the bar.
How ‘bout that team? Two women at the bar.

Ash Yellows

2011-09-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

So the arborist was out here yesterday to look at the big ash tree
in the front yard. It was one of the reasons we liked the house
in the first place, the way the tree screened us from the noise
of the street and was already big enough for a hammock,
and a rope swing when the kids came along. It was our Himalayas
against the hordes, and we seasoned, year after year, in the filtered
sunlight, until finally there was little left but shade.

Which suits the two of us just fine in our Adirondack chairs,
sipping iced tea in these evenings now gone quiet.
We hadn’t noticed a thing, from here, might never have known
except that Brian came home on his break and said, “what’s up
with the tree?” At first I thought it was just that he’d been away
or was remembering a younger tree, the tree he had climbed in
and fallen from and hidden behind. But it turns out he was right
and we had just been too close to notice. And of course

when the arborist pointed it out, it did seem the highest branches
had grown thinner, “deliquescent,” the apex leaves sparse
and so transparent you could almost see right through to sky.
“Ash yellows,” he said right away, and went on about mycoplasma
-like organisms causing the tree to die back from the extremities
inward. Fanciful (his word) witches’-brooms will soon sprout mutant
and yellow leaves near the soil-line before cankers and cracks
work their way up from the base of the trunk. Weakened, at last,
large branches or whole trees have been known to topple, crushing

pets, houses, people. Which is why we can’t just leave it,
he says, even though it looks plenty hale now and may
have some good years left. Anyway, can it ever be the same
in this yard now, watching poison-filled phloem slowly
yellow every vein of every leaf? “There’s no cure,
after all,” he says. “Let us take it down now

and replant—a hybrid or an Asian elm
will do well here—or even, at this point,
consider leaving yourself
open to the sun.”

Toasty James

2011-09-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

will walk in the spring
but for now rolls like a bear
cub rooting for mom

wide-eyes himself, smiles
in the glass, nods approval
of the whole wide world

Mischievous Gods

2011-09-26T15:03:00.000-07:00

Well they’d have to be, wouldn’t they?
Loki flashing his dappled flanks, playing
murderous games with the blind. And always
fire—toying with it, stealing it, fanning lust
into flame, then laughing as we burn. You, Coyote,
once walked on two feet. So you know. You
two, Heart of Sky, Jehovah, making monkeys
out of mud, women out of ribs. Hilarious.

How else to explain it, make sense of a world
with tsunamis, malaria, Hutus flashing
a million machetes, the brain cancer survivor
hit by a bus? Anansi maybe most of all,
who weaves all our stories in his web
and laughs to watch our wisdom spin away.
I hear them laughing when I string these words,
see Eros capering just outside the firelight,

having once offered Psyche this heart, this face,
then stealing her for his own. Damn. Good one, god.

Against Winter

2011-09-22T09:54:00.001-07:00

Blue jay on an old stump, beak down,
pounds acorns into splits and divots,
pointed blows wedging autumn in tight
against winter. Some he will never find

because not everything can be found again.
Sometimes salt over the left shoulder
is just salt, and even your knocking on wood
won’t hold. Young children work loose
in spite of every hex and spell, old folks lose
the thread and wander the woods unraveled.

Sarah took a ring and twelve years of life,
our picnics always a month too cold, still
we wrapped ourselves and shut our eyes against
the wind and whatever else was coming.

So stand there, shriek your blue jay shriek
into chilling air, tell yourself all you like
this is mine this is mine this is mine.
We’ll talk together again come spring.

When the Spring Comes, the Grass Grows by Itself*

2011-09-20T07:21:00.000-07:00

As one upon whom favors have been bestowed,
I expect nothing and am never disappointed.
Though men may take no note of my crying
In the wilderness, I feel no discomposure.
Like the butter hidden in the milk, I am
Reborn repeatedly on the deadly path,
Always pushing away with the left,
What is welcomed on the right.

*from the Tao Te Ching

Passing Through

2011-09-19T14:46:00.001-07:00

I pick my way gingerly through the house.
The party is on its last legs, lights dimmed.
Passing the front room, I hear Dark Side
of the Moon as it ends and begins again. One couple
leans together, sways around the room—
she laughs into his neck—the shadows of other bodies
clumped in corners. Fingers of whisky and weed reach
into the hallway where I pass photos
and mirrors of faces I can’t make out.

A chocolate Labrador noses
through cartons from Li’s Mongolian.
He hears my heavier tread hit the kitchen tile,
lunges with a flurry of staccato barks, teeth bared,
so close I can see the flecks of red pepper
as he wraps his mouth around my ankle
and thrashes like a shark. But someone
shouts at him from an upstairs room
and he slinks under the table to lick himself.
Incredibly, his bite fails to break the skin. Perhaps
there will be a bruise tomorrow. For now,

I ease open the back door into a moonless
night; the screen wheezes slightly, open
and closed. I will read in Sunday’s paper
how the neighbors may have seen a stranger
but could not be sure.

2011-09-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

The weight of the year not in days
or hours but in conversations
and their opposite.

Drips and drabs of loss like
dry leaves and take-out boxes,
but more the uncountable neuropathy,

Too dull now to hold the glass
even the wrong way to. That small
sight, that strait room, built at last to suit.