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This morning the sun rose on a clear sky,
hours after I sat down to my table
with coffee, reading unsent letters
someone else had penned. I left
under a cloud that collected
over just a few miles of sky—
it was gray, wet cotton, something clean
becoming something dirty in the act
of making something clean. I left
thinking of what you said to me nearly
three years ago now. Red sheets,
a clear night, my mind fogged
by ingested illusion. I can't decide
if you were lying or just scared.
It may well have been your only honest moment.

I left and drove the opposite direction.
A horseshoe of water that appears endless
on the shore, but instead has boundaries
that today I will see from both sides.
Two shores, seeming the same place. Two
shores, but the sun sets on different sides.
On my drive, tiny purple clouds hung low
on the horizon, distant, over the other side
of the lake, over my own city.

Today I am wondering what will come,
the package on its way to me is veiled
in mystery and faith, carried across
the miles of soggy cotton skies & bluer clouds,
yet another lake away.
I only know his first name. My newest heart,
marked in gold for just now over one year.
I didn't know, I don't know, what he is
sending me. An honest moment. Sheets
washed clean. His written name. A letter sent.

a change in weather

I look east across the lake,
two lakes, divided highway,
a length of track. Can I trust
the miles, the sighs of breath
between the words
we so breathlessly eject
through our fingers,
squared page that shifts and splits
in seconds? Something comes like wind
against the current, against the clouds
that pass over me, and then over you,
I track the snow...
my heart is frail in the present cold,
but the constant promise of spring
bewilders any doubt. It always comes.
It is always a surprise.

I have grown parched these months

I am licking baklava from my sticky fingers
and recall that four men have pierced the skin
of my awareness today with looks of longing.

I cannot help but inhale sharply at the prick
of an unfamiliar feeling that I am so thirsty for,
but can barely recall.

oh, help.

Does anyone know the html I'd need to widen this blog just an teeny bit? It's throwing some words down on the next line in certain poems, and my words aren't fond of being thrown around all the time...although, when they get in experimental moods...

yes, well. *cough*

That's beside the point.

If you are a tech-savvy poet, or just tech-savvy in general, please let me know what I could do to fix this issue.

summer sun-kissed birth,
Miranda

The Season of a Wound

Now that August is ripped in half,
the sun sets on the torn-calendar clouds

and through the window, strikes
phantom bruises on the back of her neck,

only shadows from something unidentifiable,
they fade in yellows and violet like contusions,

like the visual cue of coming rain, white
in the overturning leaves to their paler sides.

A walking pillar of light, she is disguised
in a blue shirt and black pants, the business

casual shadow sheathing her shine, pale throat
uttering nothing, her smile a pliant bruise.

I am startled and cannot compose my
eyes and mouth to the appropriate response.

Mothpane Window

Stuck between a for sale flier and the large glass window, a moth is missing
the bottom of its left wing. Brittle off-white creature, she looks crushed
to have been stuck there when she was just looking for a way out.
There’s no telling how long the same paper has been pasted up against her
body, for months or years, and likely she’ll remain forgotten there until
the house is told, as she blocks no price range, or the dimensions of the bedrooms.

An observant passer-by might even miss her, but sitting on the brick curve
outside the adjacent office every day, I stare at the windows of that quiet space,
not aware of anyone inside. I’ve read every description across the grid
of paper, scoffed at shoddy real estate sold off at prices higher than they are worth,
and wondered if that moth was pinned to place in mid-flight, when she lost
her wing, her life, and if anyone will notice her when they peel away the posting.

Wrung Hands

It sounds like the words are underwater:
a conversation between two girls behind
about the passing of an uncle, a flight
to Detroit, announcements of place—
its not my stop for ten more stops, and the wind
doesn't carry the same rain as this morning,
in fact it doesn't carry rain at all.

What kind of travel will my feet make?
Away from last week's shattered car window,
toward a newer song (the chimes of doors closing
sound in time with music under headphones),
there may be no chorus, but this
refrain — let's not carry rain at all,
let's not carry rain, just let it fall.



This poem is published in the online literary journal, Blood Lotus. See their site at www.bloodlotus.org

After-Work Witness

Tonight, its all about the boy with his toes too close to the train,
smiling like a moon-eyed lunatic and smoking a cigarette across
from the "no smoking" sign.

Concerned looks from all of us in our black peacoats
bounce off the third rail with less effect
than light. I pray silently, without relenting

the hard glare I've learned from walking without light
on the streets of this city, that I won't see
a bursting pocket of skin & blood & fat & bone,

a sublimation that would make me
even later coming home, would stop the train,
but wouldn't cost him a thing, save his life.

One Word

"We are of the same blood," you said.
It’s true, and times like this
I want to demand one word

for what lights the stars, what pulls
the green spears up from dark soil,
sends the warm shivering tide
from atria to fingertip, for what glows
in the dark rivers of our bloodstream.

I want one word for the helix
that we build with arms around,
for the one luminous cloud that spins
a silver lining for all else, one

for the rhythm of our pulse
that is the music for every earthen line,
one for what puts the trees in worship stance—

But we haven't gotten that far with words
yet. Maybe the closest in our language,
although tarnished, might be God

White Birch

Today my shadow feels just like the skeleton of a tree,
completely black against the blue sky of dusk, so indifferent,
emitting neither light nor swallowing all in dark.

Today my shadow feels skeletal and completely black,
neither showing the deep groves of scars in the bark
that would grow over me as evidence of my existence

nor leading an eye to the roots at my base, the grappling
legs I would plunge beneath the soil to root me anywhere.
I am only shadow, today, and only the outline of myself.

But should I feel one shock of my own light resist the dark,
I will erupt white like a birch from a forest of dark branches,
and haunt the tail lights of every passing car with red regret.

Yesterday I...

Yesterday I learned a language
that I always knew, but didn't know
how to listen to,

and learned that love is a large
and many-roomed place
where dear ones wander through
and are always welcome, even after
they've chosen to leave.

Yesterday I learned
how to make an hour
stand still enough to photograph,

and touched a still quite tender bruise,
not minding the pain—it is something sunset-colored
and somewhat violet in the rain.

Dear Father, Mother, Sister

Dear Father,
Do not be proud that you are the one of three brothers
who ended up with a loving bride, even if it seems because
you listened to the cup-string coming down from heaven.
Their hearts are tender and taste like badly beaten apples.

and Dear Mother,
Please do not judge your sister's frame that squares
off at her shoulders, because although her gait has never
swung centered at her hips, no more curved than a swollen
tree, she is no less a woman than you, or her wife.

and Dear Sister,
blink against the gray in your eyes that hardens like cement.
My soul is full of fire and water in equal parts, to boiling
and my name is full of splinters...and this is why I'm heated
and untamed. I cannot bear the cross the same as you.

I touch the orbs around me with both hands, and can only tell you what I see.

Hum

The seperate sing slowly together,
raising a quiet noise not thunder
but shifting sand, low
within the wind — who set apart
does not discover joy in creating a new
language with another? Words are shapes
that noises sit inside (remember
the cupped sound as the small, dark
one read her poem, something tucked
in two hands or a coat pocket,
do not forget the gold curve of laughter
that can be shared on two ends
of an invisible string) and hum.

in transit

Transfer

I.

the little space that separates
my hand from the wall
flies by fast enough
to tear off my arm
if I could touch it
through the glass

a man’s ghost in the brick
is only a reflection

people do not look the same
out of the corner of your eye


II.

the middle-aged man, a sad mustache, in olive green
transformed into a younger man
with the same likeness

(although his shirt was truly a terminal gray)

he winced when he saw
his doppelganger on the blue line
wearing a wine stain-
colored shirt just like his own


III.

two women board at Irving Park
wearing the same pink t-shirt
with a slight V at the neck
as the older woman to my left
who’s husband leans over gently
pointing them out to her
she smiles
like Chablis


IV.

the domed cathedral &
the curve of the tracks
conjure Florence—and it could be
if the rust on the roofs here
were terra cotta
and not rust

below Belmont
dirty glints of white light are eye-braille
in this space where we all avoid touch


V.

I have to cover an absurd grin
when the train shrieks through a tunnel,
fast and rattling, jerking me out
of my seat

recalling a man at the coffee shop
who pointed out to me that I find chaos alluring

I feel the smooth, hot
metal of the tracks on my eyes;
a sleek clarity


IV.

to me, here,
there us very little more beautiful
than a green vine climbing the wall

and nature’s hieroglyphs
as watermarks on the cement;

the way the landscape changes going out


V.

this afternoon, its just a train ride
but I see a future
through this small window
smudged with the small lines
of my own fingerprints


VI.

every morning there’s a rainbow at the station

a raw draft for hungry teeth #1

If You Listen

What is the supplication of need?
Is it opening the cans of food
you can count in two hands?
Is it circling round the aluminum
as you whisper unheard, unmouthed,
the hunger in your belly? It is only
the same hunger in your heart.

What is the evening?

Where do you place your feet?
At the counter, near the sink, here
in the cool aftermath of day, draining
the juicy ink into a dish to serve
yourself when you are too tired
to be hungry for any more?

What is the consummation of need?
Is it the mandarin oranges in a green bowl,
bright, even when the day is overcast.
If you listen, you hear the hum
of the cooling unit on your high deck,
and the rippled coo of the pigeon
that has landed on your windowsill—

and then? The altitude of blessing.