Category: My poems

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This is the kind of poem you write when you eat lunch in a cemetery.

the ghosts of suburbia
(for Bunny, whoever she is)

the woman with bottle-colored hair
locked her car door at the cemetery

perhaps an overabundance of caution
among these long-sleeping thieves
on this false-summer day

like the bunny named on her license plate
she darted from the car to a grave
bent over momentarily and was gone

before the trumpeter playing on my car stereo
finished the first chorus of his solo

this visit was less about communing with the dead
more about checking in
either to make sure they were still there
or to confirm to them that she was

it looked like a visit to a silent parole officer
Sergeant Murphy no longer a desk jockey
now pushing daisies rather than papers
in triplicate, two extra copies to eventually
go to the landfill, as Murphy himself has

a few hundred feet away she stopped
at a second grave, repeated the ritual

apparently her relatives had hedged their bets
against the day when the housing development
next door would expand into the cemetery

they’d spread the family around
to buy the long-term mourners more time

in this oppressive heat their presence
is Bunny’s challenge — a test of her willingness
to leave her air-conditioned Lincoln

she passes the test and is allowed to live
until her next appointment
with the ghosts of suburbia, the spectres

who haunt Lincoln-driving women
with bottle-colored hair

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The Last Siren

you can’t take your eyes off her when she reads
she says it’s the microphone
you say the microphone’s in the way

the word allure comes from the same root as lure, bait
her words dangling at the end of the hook
you can’t resist biting
and then she has you – all of you – not just the eyes

sometimes she pretends not to hear
but only because she’s already been there
written her message in blood on the wall
where it waits for the unsuspecting traveler

wandering in from the night
to a room full of aspirants who hang, writhing
on her every word

she is the last Siren, come from her island
on a boat of pages torn from your secret journal

Jason played his lyre to drown out her song
Odysseus strapped himself to the mast
but still begged for release, screaming
until the ship drifted out of danger

and now here she is and here you are
and she is still singing and no amount
of beeswax can stop your ears
and you can’t look away

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The first two lines of this poem (and thus, the title) were suggested by my friend Kim, to whom the poem is dedicated. Thanks, Kim.

convenience store sushi
(for Kim S.)

convenience store sushi
and vegetable chips
that’s what’s left
the kind of lunch you bring
when you’ve got no ideas
when all you can think to do is listen
looking down at the clear plastic container
with its fake lawn, greener than the one
on either side of your fence
time was you would have shared
the warm pieces of tuna and salmon
offered each other the last piece of
California roll, but today
she’s not hungry, sits with her hands
folded in her lap, talks in a low voice
so the people on the next bench over
don’t hear the world break
she’s done you that courtesy, at least
when it’s over – really over –
the sushi looks like modeling clay
you can’t even think of eating it
later a bird will pick the contents
of the package out of a wire trash basket
stuck to the top of the container
a note reading: we need to talk

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Ingredients

making this cake is neither good nor bad
all things are equal in the back-and-forth
I mix in the eggs, whisk them foamy
so many broken, so many cracked
it’s easy, she says, you just read
you just follow the directions
that’s always been my problem, though
I’m a bad follower, I can’t be folded in
I’m the shell fragment that you find later with your teeth
the little mistake that crunches and unsettles

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A tribute to four college students who helped me appreciate poetry in a new way.

Attention

Laura calls her teacher “Miss”
when they meet after class
she’s grown up in a family
that understands the weight of respect

Lawrence laughs flashing gold
his experience etched on the surface of his skin
he navigates with no need of a compass
gives nicknames to the old street-guardians

Samantha hooks her long brown hair
over her right ear, the better to hear you with
she’s already a swimmer
wet from the ocean of words

Jeff is the quiet one, taking it in
but he reaches for the book
leafs through the pages
asks what needs to be asked

Laura’s grandfather calls his daughter
by the wrong name, always hard to understand
but he’s had to learn two languages
breathing this air with his heart in other soil

Samantha writes poems, too
she knows what it means to love
can discern the crucial differences
can hold on to what’s real

Lawrence’s car has a fancy muffler
misnamed, in fact, because muffling
is not its purpose, it is a trumpet
heralding his presence

these four cast wide nets
infuse old words with new meaning
give a precious gift with no expectation of return
these four make the words worth the writing

The Last Piece Of Ice Under The Sky

There would be no point in climbing this mountain,
not even to speak to the wise man at its summit.
He has no answers, no solutions. He is merely old,
and that’s no achievement when you live on a mountaintop.

There are two men trapped at the bottom of a deep well.
Were they to assist one another, it is possible they could escape.
Instead they choose to urinate on one another, destroying
their supply of drinkable water and ensuring they remain trapped.

The wise man can see the mouth of the well from where he sits,
because years ago a climber with no money gave him, as payment,
a powerful set of Zeiss Classic 20×60 binoculars, strong enough
to turn a busy colony of ants into a whirling dervish of people.

By the time the climber had reached the base of the mountain,
he’d realized that the binoculars were more valuable than
anything the old man had said, but the thought of re-scaling the peak
turned his stomach to ash and filled his mouth with regret.

Turning northward, the old man can see the last piece of ice under the sky.
Upon it sit two polar bears, and between them on the ice is
the last fish from the water, their final sustenance. Inevitably,
they tear one another in two, rather than the fish, their blood staining the ice.

None of that really happened, did it? asks the filmmaker on the summit.
He’s come to make a documentary about the old man, to record his wisdom
for a decadent, unenlightened age. But the filmmaker is an unbeliever,
refusing to accept what he can see through the camera’s unblinking eye.

The old man smiles and extends the binoculars, offering
the filmmaker a closer look at the world-as-it-is, as it, in fact, must be.
The filmmaker shakes his head sadly, packs his camera back into its case,
and begins the slow climb back to the foot of the mountain.

He reaches the bottom and passes the well where the two men are still trapped,
their lack of drinking water also meaning a lack of urine for their battle.
The filmmaker thinks he hears moaning from the bottom of the well and almost
goes to look. But refusing to believe his ears, he turns and walks away.