Poem 1

It makes sense to start here.

I wrote this when I was eighteen (1999), and it won an award. Basically, I exaggerated my own experiences of feeling frightened in the presence of my grandfather while I was a toddler. Abuse of any kind was never an issue, but the place and the man scared the hell out of me even so.
It reads as a little bit over the top now, but some lines still surprise me with how good they are.

Haunted, a Sestina (April-May, 1999)

Suddenly a creak startles the silence of the house,
one of those creaks that sounds
exactly like a footstep. A thirsty wind
rages through the fields of Pasco tonight.
When the dark comes to this land, I want the lights to stay
on until the sun fills the empty

sky. Even though family fills this place, the emptiness
I cannot shake; fear lives in every corner of this house.
Grandpa has invited us to stay
here for the week. While the others sleep soundly
I lie awake by the open window as the desert night
rides in on the back of the wind.

This place of ghosts, wind
and deathbeds has emptied
itself of tenderness. Grandpa’s tears dried-up long ago in the nights
and deserts where he and Grandma kept house.
Years of cigarettes made his voice sound
like the earth where Grandma permanently stays.

I was two the first time I stayed
here. He stood taller than a radio tower, with wild wind-
blown hair, shoulders of a tractor, and boots that sounded
too loud on the green linoleum floor. Empty
of little-boy courage, I could not hug him or love his house.
Grandpa, God of Night,

Spoke the language of fear: phantasmal grumbling in the night.
I imagined Grandpa as a ghost, staying
on earth only to scare me. He roamed the forsaken house
opening rickety doors with work-rough hands. The wind,
especially to a boy like me, made the empty
halls even more desolate. But any sound

is better than silence: the death sound.
I am still alive. The gaping mouth of night
hasn’t eaten me yet. Older now, I know Grandpa emptied
his youth into expectant desert soil. Wind-
torched fields and farm machines forged his soul. In this haunted house,
perhaps the ghost of his innocence is me, condemned to stay.

When I become a grandpa, I will not stay
in deserts, watching my child-self ride away on desert wind
and wearing out the boots of my hope in a suffocating house.