Baby Mama

Belly too big for such a small animal, spring nights warmer,
We nudged the gentle feral cat out of the laundry room
To give birth in some hidden place, to add her progeny
To the lineage of striped cats who’ve roamed prairie for decades.
But days later, her paw. She limped, licked it furless.
Two tiny wounds. Snakebite? Damn it. We let her back in.

The day before April Fools’, on his way out, I heard him
Make a perplexed sound, turn around, announce to his daughter,
To me, “Come see the kittens.” She gave birth to the first two
In the litter box. Repulsed, I arranged a dirty towel on a pillow,
Moved them all there, where, two hours later, two more appeared.
Two sand and black stripeys, two black with half calico faces.

She earned her name last summer when she showed up
Pregnant, too sweet to be believed wild, but wild nonetheless.
Enthralled with processed cat food and human touch,
She slinked around our door, tripped us walking too close,
Disappeared a couple days, came back thin. The kids
Searched the farm, a day later found a weak kitten in the corner
Of a close-doored, open-windowed barn room filled with milk jugs,
Boxes, crushed beer cans and scraps of dusty pink wall insulation.

The kids probably touched the kitten too much, put it back
In the barn. Baby Mama, nearly a kitten herself,
More interested in us than nursing, gave up on it. Next morning,
I found it smothered in the insulation, stiff. Surprised
To find myself judging a cat for derelict mothering,
I buried her kitten in the grassy field, forgave her, so young,

So newly loved. Last night, after six days of non-stop nursing,
She slipped out the laundry door into the dark. Kittens snuggled
Like warm monkey bread all night without her. Surely,
I thought, with a healed paw, her body craved mice. Or freedom.
We called for her this morning, like parents of an addict,
Not expecting much, but hoping. Kittens slept, still breathing.
Finally, stepping out to start the car: there she sat, elegant,
Behind the rear wheel. I opened the door, praised her return.
In she ran, hot with milk, and lay down with her fat, blind ones.

Refrigerator haiku (magnetic poem)

Wanton world puddle
Ricochet cloud runs dark wild
Heart galoshes thrill

2017

Forgetting Air

Some spring mornings in Fort Morgan,
stepping into the parking lot,
crossing the mowed lawn of campus,
it is easy to forget about air.

The breeze is strong and clean and sweet,
oddly lacking our factories’ famous scent:
cheesy beef beet poop soup. Relief!
The smell of money went walking somewhere.

But then, entering the building,
we are greeted with night’s awful breath,
inhaled and held by brick and mortar
long before morning wind kicked in.

A building cannot exhale through a new day’s
shortly opened doors. We enter the stench,
take our usual breaths, filter, forget:
like inevitable death, it fills us.

Questions for a Pumpkin

Do your seeds sing a slick song?

Are you aware you are
both food and lantern?

And home?

Do you dream of hundreds of tongues
searching the cheeks of a huge mouth?

Or of wingless albino bats trembling
in a wet cave, upside down?

If a woman entered you at will, a kept woman,
would he carve windows of ears, nose and eyes,
a doorway of a crooked-toothed smile?

Would she become a candle in your belly,
throw herself in a flickering dance
to light his way home?

Can you accommodate two?

Or love?

Would it hurt, would you mind,
if she bakes and scrapes
the innards of your entrances,
blends in eggs, sugar, milk, cinnamon,
rolls a crust, pours you in,
eats you, her home, with him?

Bridge

At thirteen, the stubborn plastic tube
of childhood ear infections had to be removed.

In its wake, the healed hole did not close,
stole bird wind and breath hymns. Instead,

he learned to drum blast beats, buzz rolls,
crash and snare. He learned the muted world,

to turn without fanfare or shame
his better ear toward a quiet voice.

If we had known how easy healing could be
without major surgery, we’d have done it sooner.

With simple tool, a doctor roughed the edges
of the perforation, made a bleeding wound

of tympanum, and with a common hole punch,
cut a dot of paper thin as cigarette skin.

When she placed it on the ragged hole,
it became a bridge for blood, for hope,

for cells to build themselves a road
over the small chasm. Sound began to cross

at once. Driving home, the radio rushed him.
Overcome, he dialed down brass and bass,

like a solitary monk who hasn’t seen a friend
in years first bows from the neck, the waist,

then holds him at arms’ length
before the caught breath, the full embrace.

Toward You

A Christmas cactus burns
seven fuchsia blossoms
toward a northern window.
On the other side,
the dim room inspires
only one bud, still tight,
the last to let go.

Here I am, blue out of season.
How many blooms do you see, love?
On the dark side, a tense fist.
You, my light, my southern exposure
know me better than this.
I can’t help myself. I turn.
Open all my hands.

It's National Poetry Month!

Please join me in trying to write a poem a day through the month of April! Find all the support you need here:

NaPoWriMo

The Dead One

Find the dead one within.
If you are lost enough, you can revive her.
She soon will be your boat
off the island, your dodgy water.
Drink rain from her rotten mouth.
Teach her to talk, to sing
your mother’s favorite songs.
The dead one’s desire: your compass.
Carry her on your back
until she finds your legs.
Teach her how to flirt with love
by playing the unsuspecting girl.
Dress up to make it real.
She will chop your wood,
dance you ‘round and through the fire,
drop you in the river tied together.
Breathe air into the mutual drowning.
Dream her lost history.
Give up your plans.
Begin flowering.

with gratitude to Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan’s Swiss Army Man

Anatomy of a Mason Jar

First you were for cucumbers,
Bread and butter pickles I taught
Him to love, their yellow
Stain brightening egg salad.

Or was it beets, the obscene
Lolling eyeballs of earth. Red.
Your glass a lantern full
Of cloved, impossible sight.

It doesn’t matter. Rusted ring, lid lost,
You have outlasted better glasses
In the cabinet, crystal goblets,
Cheap tumblers, stately beer pints.

Our finest, my pride,
For serving guests wine despite
Hard water marks on your shoulders,
Mineral threads along your neck.

Humble belly of water, tattooed
Name in raised script, you are the vessel
At my bedside, the three a.m.
Wide mouth kiss against parched lips.

Settling back into the down,
When he hands you to me
In the prairie dark of dawn,
You are his clear promise.

Burning Books with Jack

When he threw Amor Fati
into flames, friends and poets gasped.

White book! Heads shook.

I ran to find mine bubble wrapped
in a briefcase, amateur sky
with all the colors in it.

ah jumped in after Jack like a sigh,
and Danny’s script, wanting nothing more
than for words to say nothing,

burn, be nothing with his.
Glowing gold pages turned with the stick

of an acolyte. Spent light!

Unreadable ash
made of us and especially
Jack gibbering joy-scat

to the earless moon, hands
grasping at the halo like a drowning man,
fingers coming up empty and fool.

2017