like a silly fish

     
     
although i
am only
a foolish salmon
attempting to
stand midstream
& leap
from the
crush of
icy waters
to the
bank of
spongy grass
& step
one foot
at a
time
into a
pair of
pants,

i will
love you
as a
man
     
     

song

 
 
once i watched you enter a room
felt you as a whole quilt
                                spiced and draped
across the length of me

there is something in your name
when i hear it makes me want to
                                burrow in the softnesses
behind your knees

i swore if i could sing i would
my heart was ever glad
                                a few simple minutes in a day
 
 

pieces of the son

 
 
the artichoke and pomegranate
know too well as subtle fluids
the full and sweet
of sweat and blood

as oil from the olive
and other viscous tides
can carve alluvial fans

so to do the placental nutrients
etch and nurse the embryonic rhythms
of the natal ebb and flow

this water follows us
and in the light and darkness
of uterine seizures
a small man knows
everything

i will to mine make known the ache of living

that the raven and the humming bird
will fight for food

that children sledding suffer freak accidents

that sunsets and young mothers
battle together against the bright allure
of a silvery moon

by the wayside lie pieces of the son

a low-running mountain spine
a cobblesome river
neither still nor stirring
a smudge for hope and dearness

runnels lead here
the heart closes and opens
yet nothing might pass
 
 

self loathing

 
 
there have been women here
cackling jews laughing loudly
in the front room
spoiling my morning coffee
their voices resonate across
apogee and archway
working ever closer to my ear
now singing broadway musicals
slightly off key
but with depth of timbre
lets you know they've had
a lesson or two
haughty bitches, these two
no longer here, of course
though i feel them in the wood
sense their very id-nesses in the grain
beneath my palms
smell them on the air through
bacon fat and coffee grounds
and expensive eau de toilette
sticky as incense
expansive as musk
mank and odious
as kelp rotting
on eastern shores
at sunlight's latest hour
 
 

maria christina carmelita de la cruz

 
 
bucking the old black pickup
against heat and elevation
over washboard and runnel in hard low

radio doling sad old mexico story songs
and gritty walking rockabilly blues
true as the aching road
hot and poisonous as the heart's deep core

my young mestiza bride bundled
cold in the truck bed
wrapped in the garment she wore
first to communion
and last to the wedding bower

end of the road
i shoulder her two miles
up goat path and glaciated
boulder field to hardscrabble peak
up and up to the green pinebough cross
over the girl child lily--
stillborn
dark and fatherless
in this northern anglo town--
so mary might hold those tiny
bones and grieve no more forever
under the watchful eye
of sacajawea's ghost

ascending through scree
a trio of haggard old goats
look me over slowly
i step aside and
the last one brushes
my arm in passing
regards me carefully
with a milky eye
and from its
bearded mouth
drops one
delicate yellow
tundra flower
at my feet
 
 

haying

     
through the reek of fallen hay
i smell your alfalfa brown
a ripe fomenting of chemicals
amid the tumescent fervor
of decomposition

after haying, corpses
of field mice turn up

two beside the doorstep
one beneath the hammock
one even in the bathtub

two men came to visit
asking had i seen you
i'm a poet, i replied
i've seen it all
they went away with a pamphlet
of my writings and several
apples in a basket,
bloated mice
tucked neatly
under faux grass

grain alcohol on the air,
thick as the redolent stink
of lavender and ammonia
on god's own breath

your cunt drying quietly
somewhere in the fields

hay hooks and baling twine
on a boulder
in the humid shade,
picture perfect
beside one lightly
rusted digging
shovel
 
 

the boy and god sat together

     
     
the boy and god sat low
together

a monkey harooed on the night

the two reclined on earth
as across large pillows,
looking upward past the stars

remind me to be grand,
said one

and the other, saying nothing,
smiled amply from his cushion
     
     

i was a bull

     
i was a bull
a hero
a fish
a mountain

several millenia
passed in ecstasy

tonight i am a tired
                              moon

the energy to bend slips me:
i run out of things to be
     
     

In Her Father's Eyes

     
     
I got blown for the first time
at a party when I was fifteen,
and my friends and I spent
the rest of that evening marveling at it.

We spoke about the important things like
how it felt and if I loved her and
did I kiss her afterward.

I talked too much that night,
happy and proud and aggressive,
and when her father arrived to pick her up
I shook his hand too hard with both of mine,
then kissed her right in front of him.
     
     

daybreak

                                                                             
we split each other open
then with bloodied hands
i brought in cords of wood
                                          for stacking

afterward, when my mouth had emptied
into yours and this tongue still tasted those breaths,
snowclouds rose above the mountain
                                  the spice of heartwood
skipped from under the maul

you touch me here
            you touch me here
and here

it was you cleaned my hands
                  smoothed salve on these palms
and held them to your skin

you gathered all the splintered spindles
and reassembled the forests

when that was done
we knelt together
                  by the heat of the woodstove
weeping for the carelessness

     

on thinking of you as i fell to restless sleep, & thinking of you still as i awoke

     
     
i stole away at dawn
to prepare great bowls
                of tea and oranges
from which we refill ourselves
to linger over names
and places yet unknown

those hands, this mouth
throw forms of clay across the earth
from the deep bosom of laughter

                                            hearts and bones
                                            aligned in length
                                            with one another
     
     

Traveling Birds

     
     
Today I walked with Moose.
I admitted I was worried for him,
that he'd seemed rather morose of late.

He told me he wasn't sad
and he wasn't angry,
a little lonely, is all.

When I asked after his family
Moose related how the yearling
got herself caught in a tangle of barbed wire.

He'd watched as the rancher who found her
put her down with a .30-30 slug and dragged her away.

After that his wife ran off east of the hills
with another bull, an old friend of Moose's,
in fact.

Silence filled us.
We walked the creekbed
with the current.

After a while I offered if there was anything
to cheer him up, I'd do it.

He huffled and snorted,
looked at me out of one immense
dark eye, passed a hell of a fart
but said nothing.

You've been eating the compost,
I observed.

I know it's not good for me, but I
can't seem to stop.
I get so tired of low grass and weeds.
I've taken a peculiar fancy to your
coffee grounds, he confided.

Shall I cover that?

Yes, (sigh), it would probably be best,
not even so much for me,
but one of the elk has been picking out
the egg shells, and he smells terrible.

Moose flared his nostrils,
turned his head abruptly.
I stepped back to make way
for the large panel of antler,
tufts of velvet furze singular
in the low angle of sunlight.

Do you smell something?

A leaf pile burning,
diesel exhaust,
wind out of Canada--snow's coming--
and the old cat, she's out prowling.

I saw her track near the wood pile.
Is she dangerous?

No, she's all but lost her teeth.
Still, she likes to come in,
drop some sign,
give the does a scare,
though at her age I think they'd outrun her.

Why does she bother? I asked

Why do you walk in the woods?

I pondered that a while
until he interrupted my thinking.

I'd like a cigarette, he said.
Caught off guard, I answered rationally,
I'm sorry, I don't smoke.

Next time, then?

I realized it was a question
and agreed to bring cigarettes next time.
I almost asked what brand
but checked myself,
smiling.

It'll be skinny this year, he mused.
I'd like not to have to graze the winter.
If I could lay down and sleep it off with a
warm dream, I would.
I've always envied the traveling birds.
They talk of the south in such colors
I can't imagine,
and always with a little twang
in their throats I've never
been able to place.