Poetry










Soft White Center

I like the sharp crunch

of a beaten sheath of ice,

it’s soft white center–how it's hardened peel

crushes into glitter,

spreads and then unfurls

like a bulb beginning to open.


I like the warm hues

of a white rose left in lamp light,

how its folds tuck yellow into shadows,

into hidden hinges starting

to unwind and collapse,

to sink–like closed eyes

in release.


       I have watched my body churn before a canvas,

       weeping white into gold with both hands,

       as a blinking star begins to swell.


I like to soak cemented floors with cold water,

feeding liquid into pigment like a mother,

to watch newborn tendrils curl and nervously disperse.

And as the pulse pools and starts to settle,

I like to wash it all away with one quick gesture.

---

A Body in Time




I wish my hidden veins could sing

and tell me what prevents their breath

from moving like it did when they

were small, free and unencumbered.

I know the burden of what binds

you, the unseen way of limbs–mine,

with new age, how tender is the

skin, how quiet, the crackling of

a wrist, the whining of a neck,

the call for weighted hands, pressure—

for someone else’s touch. They try

to speak to me with a dull ache,

we can’t be everything that you

have lost. Instead it lives with me,

within; this silence, a wingless

bird waiting, a body in time.

---

Efflorescence


Somehow

something new

emerges through

the moss of thought

between now, where patient hands routinely tick,

                                and before—where precarious,

sewed patches of time

fade in and out,

like the seamless movement of clouds,

in surrender to a breath of cool air.


Just as the parting lips of a window suck smoke into the sky

or an exhale breaks through the surface of water

warm static starts to spill out of the opening.


You wonder if it’s heat will stain your face

                       or hold it.


You wonder if it could tear a hole in the horizon

and expel all of the birds inside your body,

as kindred feathers flicker before kindling,

to cast what has passed

                                     into gold.

---

The Last Bird of Glass

The Grey Bird 

and the Lost Bird 


The Last Bird of Glass

drops a feather, like a shedding

regretting the undoing

of the Lost Bird,


Who waits for the Grey Bird to replace him,

to dig with dull beaks into backs made of glass

and to groom till the sky opens up.


But the calling of the open 

of the doorway 

of the hand 

fills the beating of the body of the Lost Bird.


In pursuit of the Lost Bird, the Grey Bird goes missing, and 

the Last Bird of Glass begins singing.


The Grey Bird and the Lost Bird grow out their wings

to empty through a mouth of endless blue,

while the longing and the singing of the Last Bird of Glass

abidingly breaks in two.


The silence that follows,

the wading through wings,

holds impatient hands in place,

and the missing

and closing,

the beating of hearts,


leaves a feather at the bottom 

of a start.