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Archive for June, 2023

The Waste Ferry

Posted in Poetry, tagged , on June 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Sights of minnow, despair
Fish dream to nonaction
The rudderless course of a ship
Its hull beating against a manless dock

Upended cups on bollards
Cranky pier beams
And glinty eyed gulls
Are harbinger of somebody’s breakfast

Mere muff grazers
Spill onto the dock
Warning of a fatuous Sunday
Afternoon
When the boat will be full
But not full of anybody
Willing to say what needs to be said

One thought is embarrassed to death
In a throat
Because the men want what they want
And you will have what you have

Late in the day
Jackson lost on the beam
One thought parts
Into milk and cream

Your eyes too full of pain and fear
You couldn’t tell me the truth right then
Not about anything
Not right here

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Siesta

Posted in Poetry, tagged on June 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »

The farmers move inland,
Brushing their scythes
away forever from the cool crests of wheat

Before siesta

When old men and little boys
alike
Come to sleep in a chain
of hands

Here they rest in rough dirt
made soft
By the bodies of young girls

Here they float over cankers in the Earth
Old salt furrows that can no longer
be farmed

Holes with no sympathy

Slumber is not measured here
in pounds
But in inches:

Rain hurts the mud wall
Unleashes dirt from the grooves
While a yeast goes to work on its millet

Otherwise, the whole world
is asleep
or dying

Across the handle of a rake

–1994

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Life On Mars

Posted in Poetry, tagged , on June 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Curses spilled from her mouth
And milk leaked into the shirt
The baby biting hard
at new blood
And macrophages
Baby still colostrum-laughing
Licking poems off her pages

A poem of milk
Is to be consumed by whomever needs it
And blood is fed
Brain, stomach and heart
The whole water bed

And even light can cut
And conjugate
Talk soft to
The Earth that was its mate

And even life on Mars
In tiny yurts and huts
Can’t lose the link to Earth
Still stirring in our guts

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