Category: earthling

The Residents

Between shores.

In here, the past is paper fragments. We gather them up and try to remember. One sings. The song happens in the middle of a room. The occupants of the room are engaged in various tasks. The tune is off, the phrasing disjointed. No one minds. 

In here, only new arrivals worry about death. We all did, says a veteran resident. But you get over it. How? We want to know. The resident explains how something breaks. It’s like a levee and you let it because it won’t be stopped. The flow is too fast and the volume too high.

Besides, the resident adds, you can float. Besides, the resident adds. You’ll land somewhere. Eventually. Now, we let it take us when it comes. We float in this narrow strait, washing between shores according to the tides. Paper is gone now, but songs pass through, sometimes.

How to Do it All

Everywhere. All at once.

Select a large fish with many bones,
and sturdy shoes. Arch support is key.
Fasten the wings so the clasp is tight
and do not modify with glue. Even if
it seems like a good idea at the time.
Remove the lug nuts, affirm intentions
in the mirror, look both ways. Remember
to fasten the lid and check that the needle
is sharp. Remember the eye of the needle
and hold your hands like this. Be sure
your feet are facing and your head, like
this. Mind the gap. Beat well. Always
preheat. Cover with a damp cloth, pay
careful attention to the edges. Wait
ten seconds before you speak, look
both ways. Never forget.

The Latecomers

To memory’s watch.

Time was not the grace we had expected, but groping and atonal. In its presence, we barely knew ourselves. We’d see the photos later like, yes, but where was I? Memory moved to answer, but spoke only the language of missing parts, and we were not reaching for those, exactly. We held our hands just in front of our hips as we walked, fingers cupped as though holding the faces we missed.

If this is History

A record of intentions.

Then let it be known that the bleeding bodies of our words went first. Once emptied they could be sharpened to capital letters and fired toward certain ends. The first layer of a portrait is wet on wet, a luminosity that won’t come again. Point being, let this not be a likeness, but more.

When everyone had waved goodbye and the cars between us hummed a question of what might be saved, there came a flame at the end of the sharpened tip of a sawed limb, and we could touch but not taste it. We meant to leave the known world, but it chased us, yipping at heels.

We meant to tap the skies until from somewhere behind their altitudes we heard the click of a door about to give.

What Flies in Sleep

From cliffs of fall.

A question for the father, of forgiveness
and fear, content as any eye that knows
it cannot see, invents an answer, always
yes, we will find the gate and it will be
unbolted. Don’t worry, once the bug
is dead you can do no harm, so let
the finale let the lamp come and beam.
It was not night reminding of burials.
It wasn’t the veil or the dress but
the body inside, revealing itself
after removal to be an animated
ghost.

***

Inspired by a line from Gerald Manley Hopkins.

Skyfall

Driving home.

Grit over teeth, ash of last trees on concrete and I remember shade, limbs reaching and how the reach itself was still good and the want had yet to creep its vining hold and too far was still an abstract. It’s all moon tonight, all tides, and I’m reminded back to your last question, the one about where I went. The way I am still there but not with an answer. It’s a big yellow face, less definition than some and yet the humor of it shines through, demanding at least a wry twist of the lips even at this edge. Hello, Moon, and Goodnight and Good Luck and when my daughter was born the nurse said, she can smell you better than she sees.

The Supplicants

Shift change at the city gates.

The turning happened where we almost ended, feeling the old king’s gaze, the walls of his long sleep around him, each drowsy syllable dripping from the mouth a study in the effects of subatomic explosions. 

How long? We wondered, had been wondering. We shivered, had been shivering, naked in the shadow of the fortress. The next cold rain started a whisper among us, in the direction of concessions. What was the point? with the freeway cars above us hissing Yes. 

We could have run then. I think we almost did. But one dropped her knees to the grass and then her ear, and we followed, to hear who was coming beneath our soles to be counted, even now.

The Grounded

Regarding nearby deaths.

We would smell it sometimes, just outside, beneath the porch. Once we heard its scream at midday. We were in somber clothes with serious faces, lining at a wake. To pay our respects, we said. Until it called us out. 

Still, each of us held our private reserves of deflection. We flexed budding wings beneath dark clothes, planned our escapes. We dreamed in altitudes, had ideas about the next to go. We watched for drape of eyes over landscapes and their shine at recollections of near brushes. These almost always involved driving, when the rush of speed before it ended promised to finally know its peak.

Complaint from the Ground

Regarding the ongoing restoration project.

And I watched another raging hero with the priest, disputing the last claim to spoils of war––at the end of another bloody year, another daughter’s ransom, and the muzzled prophet muted, and I know you sent your heralds, but their words were weak against the noise. You said I had to learn to let things be as they are, but who was I to untie myself of every assumption inherited at altitude? Even the clouds are flying now from the weight of this constellation of atoms, held fast while the widening day goes on, denying all assurances that tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow will return from the place where it flew off right now, to somewhere past the sight lines, out of reach.

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