this house leaks

breathes through
cracks between

sliding panes
one hundred

years old.
My bills

are bigger
than they

could be
but wind

seeping in
is free.

2008/2011

Walking the Winter Mountain with One Dog

for Andrea Spain

Our bearded neighbor said he saw
boot tracks in snow roving through
our land. He put his foot inside a foot
shaped hole, enlarged it, your small
Vibram sole print, ballet toes behind cold
steel, danced about by canine tracks:

one set, one less than last year.

I wonder if you met January spreading
gentle shepherd remains on land who,
unwary, receives our bodies in blood
and ash. If I were large enough, I would
hold you that way, as liquid or dust,
and let the wind do what it does to us.

2008

When an eight year old boy sobs

I hate my life one hundred and eight times
on his top bunk, refusing touch,
and mother leaves his side after trying
to lie beside him, and father lifts his head
from folded arms to let her climb down the ladder,
the boy eventually sighs himself to sleep
while the parents lie in bed almost holding each other
in the dark, speaking in bed tones of how to best inhale
suffering and exhale relief. She says she wrinkles
her brow, closes her eyes, hunches, feels red heat
when she breathes in; opens her eyes, softens
her expression, straightens her shoulders, sees
cool green when she breathes out, because
it is the body that remembers before the mind,
the body where suffering lodges like a sliver
of glass in the palm. It won’t work its way out.
He nods. You have to break the skin.

2008

Because we knew I'd be the one hurt

I want to follow the broken Vs of geese.
I know their awkward hopeful song.
They are flying the wrong way, east,
toward the rising sun. Instead I would go west

where, orange, our hope set. The sun drowned
so beautifully. You snapped a photo and
the night before, the string of possibility,
that white spider’s thread between

hearts and tender intimacy. I resignedly agreed
and bled, not wanting you to see me wrapping
the frayed end around my finger
like a child’s simple reminder

of what to do when the time comes.
Yes, west: I would wade in the place
where the sea once rolled in dark
around my unlawful feet, pulled

ancient sand from a spoiled shore
while you mourned the awful coast
grain by grain out from under me
to help me see.

2008

Through

Handsome, we never
had a chance. It’s true.
You were lonely alone,
I was lonely in a room
full of people. We made do.
We had no future, no past.
We had it all if all

we needed were two times two blue

eyes, times two empty
hands, times two blue
nights: double duet of thighs
growling too much desert sand,
too different lives unable
to stand together, so we lay
and now the lying is through.

2008

waiting for poems and a baby from Rosemerry

no poem in words
this morning from you.
perhaps the words whirled
directly into girl upon
your trembling breast.

2008

thumbnail

Pink sun rising over cuticle sill,
rosy flesh beneath transparent window of you,
why have I never wondered that you spread
across raw skin, reach beyond round tip,
produce opaque crescent moon waxing toward
necklace clasps, stubborn stickers, scabs and
itching skin, not useful like your four sisters,
but useful nonetheless, scratching unconvincingly
where they reach to scratch, an afterthought,
sometimes not joining in scratching at all. Lazy?
I think not. You have your own mind.  You simply ride
the thumb, that famous digit that makes us
what we are, fumbling, reluctantly following others
to find purpose. When needed, though lonely,
you do what needs done, and it is enough.

2008

When a love can find no ground

When a love can find no ground
it sends pale roots through empty spaces:
arid dusty closets, musty basement trunks,

between forgotten hardback books,
looking for water. You feed it spit
and tears, visit its translucent limbs alone,

refuse to prune, watch it wither finely
into spindly filigree, lovely for wanting
to live and dying so quietly.

2008

Small Town Wrestling Sestina

It’s hard to write a poem in a room
full of small sweaty boys and the smell
of bleach. Parents line the walls on mats
like lazy Buddhas with bad backs.
Boys wear spandex short-legged jumpsuits, tight
and low cut across flat chests.

And my son, age eight, wiry heavy weight, wore on his chest
between nipples a temporary Tinker Bell tattoo, tight
when he stretched, wrinkled as he crawled across mats.
A muscled father, upon seeing it, patted his back
and said, Cover that up. So he did. I can smell
the homophobic sweat of men across the room.

In this small Republican town, there isn’t much room
to be wide. We live inside windows too close, tight-
lipped in suffering, good neighbors. We back
each other up. The thin man against the wall three mats
down removed my gall bladder last year, saw my tattooed chest,
breasts sagging sideways above inflated belly, smelled

the air escape my hissing body, not to mention the smelly
little polyped pouch that housed my bile. His and my chest
heave with pride while our sons collide in tights,
practice domination on maroon wrinkled  mats.
We yell with shaking limbs across the room,
Throw a half nelson! Keep him on his back,

Son! And the weekends accelerate back to back.
I miss his second meet, stuck in a conference room
in Denver. Almost home, driving down our street, I see the medal on his chest,
dull faux gold, second place, he smiles through crooked teeth. He smells
clean, says he was beat by a boy from Sterling 5 to 3. Slamming fists on the mat,
I learn later over beer, our son wrestled through his furious tears. My throat tight

to hear the way he growled, scowled and fought to breathe through tight
angry lungs, hyperventilating, flung the undefeated boy across relentless mats,
spun away and sobbed without shame, fiercely wriggling off his back,
one of two kids never to be pinned by this lonely champion black-chested
kid wrestling through a sea of white skin.  So small across the room,
the referee raised his thin arm high, armpit wearing the smell

of victory.  On the edge of the mat, back against his father’s chest,
finally finding his breath, our tight-limbed smelly boy made himself room.

2008

Never let him build

a house of you, my dear.
He would steep in you, forever
train you dark and bitter (See
the stain ring!) unless you pull
the string, wring him out from time
to time, and point toward the sea.
Remind him you are no house,
no fragile cup, but rain soaking
needles, the mother of cones
spreading seeds, a lover of heat,
waiting for fire to scorch
and breed what you drop.
You are the work of green.