ALL RESPONSES |
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She walks dark streets,
crossing corners like kisses.
Resigned to overcast,
in love with gray,
secure in tidy home, she walks
in a state of grace, safe
from circling danger.
Sunglasses hide eyes
from prying strangers.
Fear follows, as she dreams of him.
It was worse, once.
He never answered her moonlit cries.
Had he come to call,
he would have seen
the bright beaches, washed
by waves of brine, and the bathers,
sweating between breezes.
It had to be illusion.
Real is the sting of sleet on skin.
True is the wind
beating against bedroom windows,
waking us from dreams.
She knew there were no bodies browned in oil,
only snow, plowed into piles
and flattened into salty sheets.
Sometimes, though, he passed,
following the slippery path,
smiling sideways from his cowl,
a beard golden, the skin freckled
from sun, and bare feet
trailing sand and shell.
Her eyes followed his
until they faded against wrinkled ash,
footprints swept away
by wind and tide. |
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On Johanna’s shore we spoke of Jesus, drugs, life before Northwestern and the U, waltzed on a ballroom of ice, went for a swing in formal wear and wind, played Sequence, walked beside the moon.
Our first date: three a.m. debating the existence of Christ,
these things mattered.
Snow, sleet—the loss one feels after Christmas, December evening
truth shattered me and cut its blade into my fantasy:
you were as you should be: perfectly imperfect.
Starting over, these things mattered.
On new sand, pebbles poke at warm feet,
sifting white, clean powder through cracks, we peel off yesterday’s skin
and run into a horizon of healing—without where we’d been,
we wouldn’t know how to swim.
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He couldn’t sleep the night of the blizzard, the wind howled so hard.
She couldn’t sleep the first night on the beach, the ocean roared so.
He used ear plugs to muffle it.
She drank several martinis to forget.
The next day the sun came out, and the snow blinded him.
The next day she wore sunglasses against the glare.
He drove, sliding down the snow-packed street.
The sand was thick, deep, difficult for her to walk on.
He pulled down his earflaps against the cold.
Sweating, she pulled on her swim suit.
By evening the sky promised more snow.
Late afernoon sky warned of rain.
He had several boilermakers that night before hitting the hay.
She wore ear plugs that night to drown party-noise from the next room. |
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My grandparents
left no footprints, only seedlings
shells and rinds. Their parents
left only broken bones turning stones
in fields where hardship grew. The only male
in my family to live past forty-five--my
great-grandfather Anslem-- mined copper, knew
hell was cold and dank, a place to visit every day.
My parents put everything they owned
in the trunk of a car and drove until
they hit the Mississippi. Water, it seems,
has always given us pause.
Lake Ontario and Michigan after
the Baltic, Norwegian and North Sea.
What is mine is made
of skin and bone, calloused, tanned and torn.
I know the littlest birds have the sweetest song,
that spring comes stinking of mud, and green
travels from moss upward. Rhubarb
is brave; to bear fruit, optimism.
The smell of tall grass stirred by the wind,
baked in the sun is where I’m from.
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tonight,
no phone
calls, no
messages
just me looking
at my outside,
a mute world
no one telling
me how lucky
i am, how in-
adequate i am,
how i should be
reading poetry
about summer
sand dollars,
sandpipers or
seashells
snowflakes,
symmetry, bare
birch trees or wind
cold whispering
it’s time to go now
it’s time to go now
try to redeem your
self in a poem |
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Don’t you remember how
we were lovers once?
Didn’t our own bodies speak?
Our hearts flew one into the other
and then together we fell
like hawks mating didn’t we?
Let’s remember living
for the moment.
There’s enough winter in us now.
Why make more?
It stands already in our bones
that world we thought to refuse.
It rolls in our souls like stones
in the wash at the shore.
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| left | right |
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| this hand is warm,
and writes the words
with pen that finds a way
to other sides
of you
| this hand is cool,
and holds the blade
that cuts the living thing
connecting you
to me |
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In the most recent past
I thought of you as the mathematical characters
that led both extremes to infinity;
When I was down, you went lower
When my trunk grew, upwards in the Spring,
You were the buds.
You seemed to fit.
Now, with the aid of wisdom, or perhaps absence,
I see the latitudes that separate us, zodiac opposites;
The intuitive Cancer, who absorbed the clinging, warm nature of sand
seeking the obscure heart, the stern vision of Capricorn,
where traditions often overcome pleasure.
It was easy to see the beauty, the lining of
the silver and the gold rays of moon and sun
the white and tan skin of your body on mine;
harder to notice the swirling water between us.
With the aid of time, or perhaps winter’s darkness
I see why the Equator kept us apart.
Today, I carry only one pain, the burden on my hips
for not having you, near.
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In summer sky
on winter ground,
Clouds
Soaring, sinking
rising, sleeping
boundless, soundless
drifting, drifting.
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[Clouds on high
clouds aground:
Mutant nimbus
lost and found.]
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One:
Mama says, little one listen. A story falls
on the floor by a bed. Her voice blankets
the night bird, and the moon tilts closer.
From the other side, Papa brings water;
rivers rejoice. But sometimes mother goes
missing. Other times father falters or his
body is taken. Even the child doesn’t appear
or appears but later leaves. Those who remain,
step warily into evening’s dream. In a city
this happens and in a village, rural regions too.
Sometimes the story isn’t a story but a curse.
Sometimes water tastes of poison.
And the bird, moon, river, cover themselves.
Two:
A beautiful boy sits at a table where a girl pretends
to read. They don’t know each other; they have far
too much to say. Neither speaks. That seems enough.
Three:
Yesterday, someone new to town asked directions. Post office? Bank?
Library, grocery store, the way to school? But he didn’t know where sun
falls, where it readies for rest. Landmarks were given instead.
An offering.
Four:
Weather changes.
Five:
Mama says: food Papa says: home. Child says: love me.
Six:
Now. In another life, everyone lives here and keeps
harvested grain dry. In another life, everyone lives
there and watches water spill off the edge of a roof.
Seven:
She asks her ninety-year-old father to record
all of his stories for her birthday. He begins.
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i’d love to sing to you at night, lightly
(two a.m. / four a.m.
it doesn’t matter
for time seems unsettled these nights,
and i’m never quite sure what time i am, never
quite sure if i’m summer or winter so sometimes
i peek out our window to be seasonally sure--
but all i can see is a small house, wrapped in white,
icicles hanging from its eaves like cold rapiers
and there you are, doing exactly what
you are supposed to be doing,
a cut stalk, sleeping stiffly.
in the morning you will be a magnolia, stretching
your pink and awkward heart toward another day
a magnolia thinks in white, but it’s really pink
it thinks like: laughing pink, breathing pink
even in the dead cold night of winter
when i’d love to sing to you, lightly
three a.m. / five a.m.
it doesn’t matter)
i know by morning
i’ll be seeing a pink magnolia
and can let that thought go |
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The dead are covered by snow.
Chill clenches its grasp
in an icy fist of anger.
My land won’t ever forgive.
Each night I walk alone
in shadows across these fields.
Snow’s the only record where I’ve been.
No one watches me, nor ever has
but I’m beautiful in dark.
Silence falls with heavy shoes
across frozen earth.
Ancient moon, an old soul,
low in sky guides my path
to seek the immortality
so no one should have to die
this same way again.
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You’ve stayed away from the windows
unwilling to look at the yard
full of unfinished chores
and death
and then, overnight,
the snow
a foot or more
a gift, a day
maybe two if you’re lucky,
of clean white forgetting
until the mailman leaves you a note,
a reminder
that beauty is treacherous.
It is not until
you get out in it
and dig
and pain sings
in every muscle
that you realize
the terrible weight. |
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