Featured Poet
( Northern California )
I surrender to this window — half asleep. Fog swirls in over the cement, sparrow quiet, an acre of wild flowers crowd in, muffled— my garden not, but still I take joy from it. Reflected me — superimposed, almost automatic, reciting a coffee elegy for adrenaline. My hand moves like wind, like silent bees, easily pneumatic. I surrender my silly boundaries, my will, even as the sun glares on asleep, vaguely mindful. The magpie’s twilight shroud is like the dead — too easy. In the raccoon mist the haze and weather band sorrows together into one distant stare, one regret, like a kiss, stolen. Alone, here, now as black and white birds dive, I become a sprawling field of asphodel.
How many days had she run her finger along the crease in a letter? How many nights spent running from the burning house of his love? Still the trapped ghosts of curling cursive remain, moaning their serifs— spirit, ectoplasm, energy stays in these, his last words written. Another hour, another moment, when we are together in the flames— oh, Love, I burn a different color with the thought of your face. With ink as black as lies, as cold as moonless winter nights, he signed his name like a forger, a brilliant copy of a lover. Let fire cleanse his words from the heart of the forest. Set flame to yellow paper, set flame to curling leaves, to the trees!
Out of the darkness of our love I see the chromium clouds lighten, gulls in the wind, the spindrift dunes. Everything is quickened by fear— the deer darting into the brush, your awakening gasp, taillights. I wear it all like a tailored business suit.
I stood in the brush, without a word. The soft symphony of the river made the perfect background for her. Any movement would have drawn attention, guilt rose like flushed pheasants on my brow. Yes, I watched her. Water splashed against the backs of her legs. The moonlight cast her surreal silver—serene. Her head darted to every sound, her predator eyes glowing, keen, hungry. I was a stiff with stag fear, lucky to be downwind—praying for this wolf to disappear.
You're walking alone in your steel town —desolate— anxious of clocks and whistles. The spirits of the dead laborers who dreamed, this town crowd around you in a sudden march. You feel like a soldier in rolled up sleeves, sweat dripping down dirty forearms. Where is the war that caused your brothers to die? They were your brothers, right? Sometimes you are certain that the people who made these streets, who smelled of metal and knew their god was alloy, they were your family. Artillery shells have wounded the sidewalk; although you can't remember explosions or jumping into foxholes, but today you're confident you could storm an enemy gun emplacement. You're certain you could compromise their depot on the edge of the county— you've taken notes, made drawings, watched their movements for days till the notepad pages are smudged with a grime that reminds you of factory dirt. It's these little remembrances of what it was like to work in a community, to know all your neighbors, to feel secure in an honest life, that stir you, fill you with anger when to think you so easily bought what the enemy sold in those early innocent days. And you can't find a pair of shoes that were made here or even in what’s left of this country. So you paint your face guerilla with coal and soil from the abandoned mill and walk like the black foreign suits, the carpetbaggers who lock their doors at night, and revel in cheap food and goods in the megamarket. To them there are no seasons, no towns, no states, no boundaries, no sanctuaries, no preserves. You trudge around these global villagers who detect the scent of money in your pocket. They don’t see your ghosts. Do you think you are clever enough to barter for your next need? What service, what product can you offer in return? You're scaling the wreckage of the old hardware store, air thick with the smoke of violence, the carnage of a battle that burns your nostrils. The loose bricks and scrabble you clamber over are the last remnants of landmarks from an old world you thought would always be right here.