If I Were A House
and could choose my own
address I'd settle these joists
in Topanga Canyon. For all
I know the place teems with
termites, fire-hazards, earth-
quakes, and industry
assholes. Who cares. I could be
dumpy as a salt
box, weird as an igloo, allergenic
as a horsehair yurt and you'd
still drive miles to pay
me tribute: the Topanga
yurt—so exotic one can't help
but sneeze.
Poets and Artists O & S, Fall 2009
Spirit Guides
George slept with a stuffed
parrot and a monkey, Simon with a soft
orange cat bestowed by his maternal
grandma and, thanks to an inspired toss
at the county fair, with a lemony-
yellow bee big as himself. The bee, minus
its deelyboppers, lies face-to-the-wall
where it was thrown on piled-up casualties beyond
the battleground playroom pool table,
my wife’s once-cherished Lowly Worm squashed
beneath its butt. Neither
the bee’s vestigial
opalescent wings nor its jet black rear end
speak to me, not
as when it whispered to the drowsy
Simon, now a helicopter
pilot, about joyous
flight: vistas, the mysterious fulfillments
of hovering, humming, the whock, whock,
whocking rotors and the air’s
rush. Si moved on, to nurture his feckless
housemate’s cat that loves
his room, and communicates by pissing
on his shoe. George these days makes artful
noise. Monkey or parrot, who
wised him up? Don’t be—
Craarrk!!—a sap. You’ve got no chops, no
future playing ball, but considering your memory, your
indefatigable mouth, I smell
a meal ticket, m’boy, m’boy.
Ellipsis, Spring 2010
That’s The Answer! My Aunt
happily exclaimed, more and more often as
senility advanced, until her brain shut
entirely down. That’s
the answer, my wife and I
announce to each other and then
we laugh. The answer brings
us close—whether it’s a week
of rain or a newspaper
typo.
Amarillo Bay, Winter 2011
Santoka Having Visited
the station and seen them off-
loading soldiers’ cremains from
China finished
life on his own
terms Oct. 1940 after decades spent
trying
to die: fell
asleep as usual drunk and never again
witnessed the tea
blossoms of dawn or what Japan
summoned onto its own
turf. Sake
his favorite koan got him
in trouble and then got
him out before the bent
nail of his personality
was pounded
flat. He left
behind that image
of Mom’s self-
drowned body retrieved
from the family well when San-
toka was eleven. Left his
poems. And sake’s still
here for who-
ever wants it.
The Carolina Quarterly, Summer 2012
Tsunami 2011
Hokusai demonstrated that any Great Wave
worthy its name needs something more
than mere dynamism, when he made his Kanagawa
exemplar so splendidly clean—the crisp
blues and whites of nautical dress
uniform—and sculptural, with snow-
capped Fujiyama’s background
triangularity pulling together
his 1826 composition. The Sendai seawall
event by contrast resembled Uncle’s filth-
laden gut spilling
over his once-neat leather belt, bathetic like
the denouement of Midway, another Imperial
project scripted to illustrate Murphy’s
law. Downright ugly: salting the tidy
fields, then harrowing them with
new-minted rubbish—every constituent
of civilization broken down into toxic
sludge stippled with drowned cars and busted
ships—an image to ban from one’s trashed
living room to spare
the honored guests.
Interim, Volume 30, Issue 1 & 2
Top ↑
