Ode to the Dickinson Line When it comes, the Landscape listens--
Yes, you realized the affliction
of surging years
when I woke to find
I could not move but moved
to make children toast,
send them out the door
to other rooms in other buildings.
Yes, you could alleviate
the flashes when
I curled under my desk
and did not want to rise
ever again, except that ever
shoved, jabbed, needled. Sweating,
I rose from crumpled papers.
Flush, I turned to wash chicken.
Slice the breast into pieces.
Every day that day. Every
year until the fever of age
evaporated into missed. Yes,
small comfort was enough.
the Landscape listens
the ghost of a pantoum written after reading Dickinson
When I go, the furniture hisses,
the pantry looks bereft.
Shades come to nothing
and the clock never ticks.
Blinds come to forever
when forever is a hole.
Did I say the clock won't tick
because her children have grown old?
A Monday Morning Monostich
When I go, the chair sobs. Her children have grown cold.
Triolet after Reading Dickinson's the Landscape listens
When I leave, a chair hisses
The cupboard looks bereft.
They realize what’s missing
When I leave. A chair hisses,
No longer realizes
When there comes a rift.
When I heave, a chair hisses
Till the cupboard owns bereft.
Cento with Dickinson Opening Lines and One Change of Tense
I would not paint--a picture--
I have never seen "Volcanoes"--
I dwell in Possibility--
The morns are meeker than they were--
A Route of Evanescence--
Now I [know] I lost her--
Crumbling is not an instant's Act
The Poets light but lamps--
NOTE:
I would not paint--a picture-- (348); I have never seen "Volcanoes"-- (175); I dwell in Possibility-- (466); The morns are meeker than they were-- (32); A Route of Evanescence-- (1489); Now I knew I lost her-- (1274); Crumbling is not an instant's Act (1010); The Poets light but lamps-- (930)
Found Lines for a Ghazal on Water
her family avoids any contact with the water.
Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater
enforcement of water
strengthening water
untreated human waste has flowed into rivers and washed onto beaches. Drinking water
Jennifer knows not to drink the tap water
The liquid in those lagoons and shafts can flow through cracks in the earth into water
decade ago, awful smells began coming from local taps. The water
put their house on the market, but because of the water
reinvigorate the drinking water
cavities until the family stopped using tap water.
violated water
Note: All lines are quotes from “Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering,” Charles Duhigg, The New York Times, 9/13/09.
The Nest in Winter
In the father’s shadowy hoard
pillows belch feathers across
mattress and floors:
what was an oriental rug, now
a carpet of scat, gone-astray socks,
calendars from rescue shelters
angling for checks.
There’s nothing to toss
among the vivid tethers to
Mother. Maybe my mother, maybe Father’s.
There’s no margarine container
any less pathetic than
a netsuke from Kyoto;
no expired sardine tin less urgent
than a dozen aerograms; no
receipt less intimate
than their honeymoon photo
snapped in the local aquarium.
The adult daughter takes in
the spew,
pabulum that a bird feeds its nestling.
The Dream of Leaves
How to access the material
of the unborn or the infant dream?
To rate, say, a rustling?
To value leaves rustling
before one realizes leaves? Before
one knows what a homonym is
or that every one thing
is a homonym after crowning—
The Dream of Shoji
How to say milk? How to say sand, snow, sow,
linen, cloud, cocoon, or albino?
How to say page or canvas or rice balls?
Trying to recall Japanese, I blank out:
it's clear I know forgetting. Mother, tell me
what to call that paper screen that slides the interior in?
Note: “The Dream of Shoji,” “The Dream of Leaves,” “ is reprinted from Brain Fever (WWN 2017), “Found Lines for a Ghazal on Water” is reprinted from The Ghost Forest (WWN 2024), and “The Nest in Winter” is reprinted from Foreign Bodies (WWN 2020).
