Poems

Nuisance

Only the thickness of log

and triple-paned glass

between my children and

the open maw

of a bear.

I slip warm chocolate chip

cookies from the pan

Wild Nights — Wild Nights!

Wild Nights — Wild Nights!

Were I with thee

Wild Nights should be

God the Tea Master

All the weapons we marshal to confront the day

You ask to be left by the door before entering.

The sword in its sheath must lie on the grass,

the quiver and bow hung off a branch.

The Plot

Won’t let your bad self.

Let go of your old debt.

Tiring of your old self.

Won’t let your made bed.

Let your bad blood let.

Your grown debt get.

Mrs. Kessler

Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,

And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,

And stood on the corner talking politics,

Black Sheroes

My Black heroes don’t drop names like Fendi Gucci Prada

My Black sheroes rock afros like Angela Davis and Assata

But my sheroes are more than a trend and they’re bigger than a hairstyle

The Bull Moose

Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,

lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,

stumbling through tamarack swamps…

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

world shapers

creation stories are lullabies for grown-ups

they remind us of all the possible ways & means

that worlds…

After Betty Goodwin’s The Memory of the Body (1993)

As Whitman sang the body electric

Goodwin sings the body forested:

dense stand of dark-trunked saplings

illumined by a blood-streaked sky,

ominous forest where

abandoned children wander

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading — treading — till it seemed

Sonnet XV: When I Consider everything that Grows

When I consider everything that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

Ideas of Home

              i

Winter has landed; my boot bucks on a stone

surrounded by snow; I swear, I murmur

Oracabessa. “The rock” is what I call home,

From One and Half of You

Price depends on how the cheongsam

was made, the fabric used.

Gasp. Lift breasts with one hand.

Stuff your body inside.

If you wear this print of peonies

Theme for English B

The instructor said,

Go home and write

a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you —

My Brother at 3 A.M.

He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps

when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.

         O God, he said. O God.

From Silvija

If you can’t speak / write in a fissured / alter-language

Of nerve-matter / dura mater / orbit of the central axis

By a crevice / scattered / venous lacunae / lamina code

monday thaw

On TV it looked like a high-speed photo of a milk drop

the dying leader of the Pana Wave laboratory cult smack in the

centre.

Acres of white cloth streamered his followers, who

The Problem With Being a Box Too Small for Its Contents

Love, you ask too many questions.

Let’s agree: we are whole

from “Road Shoulders”

power lines held by birds

of prey the hostile expanse above

ditches teeming floral invasive

wayside fleurs

late summer the shoulder sang

holds breeze by

The New Experience

I was ready for a new experience.

All the old ones had burned out.

They lay in little ashy heaps along the roadside

Equinox Ritual with Ravens & Pines

— so we said to the somewhat: Be born —

     & the shadow kept arriving in segments, 

    cold currents pushed minerals

Top

After learning “me” and “I”

but well before my father learns

a restraining order's

between him and our home,

we share some good times.

Remember the back of his bicycle.

The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow

A little black thing among the snow,

Crying “weep! ‘weep!” in notes of woe!

“Where are thy father and mother? say?”

Kiwetinohk Ohci

    stop at the edge of everything—
bend down and stick your hands in the dirt.
grab a fist full of soil and pull it close: inhale.
 

more treaty lines

1790 → treaty 2, district of Hesse (step into wolf)

province of quebec

“We do herby certify that the following goods were delivered to the

several Nations”

Dear Dolphin

The shaman at Broadway and Main

with a plastic shaker and some sage

says you’re my power animal. Says

we both have big brains, like to chatter.

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

Player with Railroads and…

sturgeon

i twist and gasp

open and close my mouth

searching for air

whenever a sturgeon is caught in the rainy river

i know

the feel of strange hands touching my body

the struggle

to be free

Shall earth no more inspire thee

Shall earth no more inspire thee,

Thou lonely dreamer now?

Since passion may not fire thee

Plenty

The sky, lit up like a question or

an applause meter, is beautiful

like everything else today: the leaves

When Winter Comes

Rain at Muchalat, rain at Sooke, 

And rain, they say, from Yale to Skeena, 

And the skid-roads blind, and never a look 

Pride

A half-hour.

Thirty minutes.

One thousand eight hundred seconds.

They sat.

Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence

Jacknife/2

Each day, I am apprenticed to the boy

I want to be.

He rifles the ball

and I catch it

or I fumble.

His red head ducks and weaves,

thinking, end zone.

Lake Baptiste Ungenders Me

upon contact / head first / baptismal

the rind of me / peels into ribbons

of foam / and pearls / i re-brown at the water’s

touch / its two-way mudmirror / hands me

its own name / earthliquid / bottomless

Mariah according to my yt mama

when I try to talk to my mom about what it was like

to grow up surrounded by yt people in the prairies

in the 80s though it seemed like the 50s

she tells me in a so-there tone

A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,

A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,

Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,

grass

grass is unusual

it was invented by the Romans

unlike most people grass stays where it grows

if grass had gone to the moon it would be there today

because grass looks luxurious

people put it wherever they can