Poem 13

A while back I asked my friend Brie to check my archive of poems to weed out the ones she didn't see going anywhere. As it happened, she had very little time to manage her own blog, let alone help me with mine, so I forged on without her input. However, she who hesitates is lost: the eleventh poem I posted was one she selected to be removed. To be fair, I posted this long before I got her input, and I revised it somewhat, but it still did not meet her standards. I'm leaving it up, but today I'm posting one she said she really liked. Check out her blog, Word Shave Meaning, or Words Have Meaning if you are picky.

Why I Am Awake with My Head Throbbing

When leaves decide the dawn
has crept up suddenly,
they whisper to one another:
“So it begins; so it is always,”
and without their whispers
little birds would not sing
to anyone at all.

It can sound--
sound against windows--
and like chainsaws to alcoholics
trying to drain the last sip of sleep
before rising to open restaurants
and shuffle papers.

And so life begins with little birds
and in some places ends;
their larger cousins glide overhead:
music through bone flutes.

In Tibet they sometimes tear the flesh
from the dead, and leave it
-the sand of a fleshy mandala-
to the beaks and talons.
For what are birds but a visible wind?
Pockets of air even in their bones.

Poem 12

What do we need to say?
A forced cough eats
at silence here.
Parked cars
dirty gold from lights.
But under each light
a shelter of glow protects
white lines on black friction.
You and I stand dirtying
our pants against your
mother’s Chevy
here in the high school lot.
You said you could only write
after or during dark.
Tired hands after eight
flexed over keys
and twisted pencil gray
into margin-flowers.
We are here to swap poems,
forced by each other’s
knowing that we will never
lay it all out, and so we trade.
The slips of paper:
doves darting between shadows.

Poem 11

Here is a short poem. I'm not sure when I wrote this or why, but I have not fiddled with it much since then. Every so often I can churn out something I like in a first revision.
As I post this, I want to change it already, so I'll just hit "publish" right now.

Communion

Sometime in the future,
ten P.M.,
a young woman with yellow hair
lifts the comforter,
looks past her small breasts
to the growing womb.
Her fingers explore her belly
after not knowing
that five years later
her daughter would
stand in the bathroom
and run fingers over abdomen
while she waits for the bath to fill.
She wonders how her baby will feel.

This poem is completely fictional. I have never been on this date with anyone. This is more of a poem about eating with women than any particular one.
I'm not a fan of the ending to this.

Dinner

I’m usually good enough
to write a poem reflecting
old lights on older hills
and the car trip from Eugene.
I was four.
And I can put them here.
I can label and say,
“Look, a moment.”
That trip
can drag out a slog through snow
into a Ford to wait for warm-up
and a seventeen-year-old’s
breath heating my neck.

But lately, my time waits here
with you
and the work of candlelight
against your teeth and the fork
perched in your fingers.
With your eyes,
you steal me from my years,
pulling me, shuddering,
out of that bath.

Fresh minutes unwrapped,
glimmering:
they sit, plain on white tablecloth,
under pictures of men
in the Old Country
and women, protected by aprons,
gripping bread.
How to know you here?
I can count your scars
and the times you lied
to smooth your father’s drunk.
That, or I can look into the air
as it loads your nostrils
to fire a laugh.