4.05 / May 2009

IT’S A SHAME

that this rake’s rusty teeth refuse to bend
back like new, that on the first November day leaves
shiver before they die, & that to live in autumn is to die
slowly while the children cartwheel on your front lawn
which begs you, just begs you, for a leaf blower.
It’s a shame that a man paces endlessly, back & forth
in front of his bay window, the wide pane revealing enough
books to last the century, that centuries are only windows
onto our great-uncles’ milky skeletons, that spaceships only know
our future. It’s a shame that to touch time
one must stop it & its hard truths etching their way,
each day, a little more, into thin hard lines
on your wife’s face, & that your wife taught you to love
scrapple & maple syrup, & now you’re left
with a plastic squeeze bottle that reads ketchup. It’s a shame
that each small loss takes us one step closer to cruelty,
that each step in your lifetime would cover only half
the Great Wall, that such a monument to men
is no longer seen by the men who built it. It’s a shame
that there are less than a thousand bones in our hands,
that our fingers can’t stretch to the emptied oil drums
of stars, which may be dead, which may not be
a winter or an ice age, a child or a mammoth, it’s a shame.

ICEBOX CANYON

I flail the sandstone rock face
& crash a ledge wide as a queen bed.

Bottom’s three pitches. Top’s a mystery.
Tibia protrudes blossoming contusions.

Last night, I saw my newborn,
Jaundiced & flat-jawed, stare back

From beneath a dark, snow-flecked
Stream. I screamed, stopped peeing,

& scrambled to my tent. I thought
About my wife’s skilled hands: the moon

Of mud-sunk tract homes we fixed.
Each morning, intricate mounds of fire

Ant colonies erupted. We put down lye
& weed-wacked the tops. By midday,

Inches deep in worker corpses, we
confused survivors confuse the carnage for food.

THE VALUE OF VIOLENCE

Moods are meant to erupt: a shoe,
A shovel, a belt—
In the late-night TV glow,
On the red end of my cigarette,
You arrive in your bathrobe, mother,

And let it fall to the floor.
Tsetse flies form your mouth.
Shake your dandruff: lava
Scrim. Where will you go

Once you list boyhood failures
And electrocute that rowhome:

Follow the duck
V. Wave to the rifle.
The river a thin, cauterized vein.

Where I live now, the timberline
Is an afterthought. Rain stumbles
Here & there, the elk stare,
Parched, at cracked mud beds

And you’d think they’d learn. Down
The foothills, brushfire laps
The pinyon—

In a future of ash,
Their roots gnarl deep.

HEARTBREAK RIDGE

Dry heaving, pitter-pat, shuffle up
The switchback, I am not
Ore-clay dirt.
Dammed lake
From here ribbons out, its brown trout
Dart & dodge, & dangle from hooks.

My lungs expand. My chest erupts
A wished-for self—a deer, an owl—
Who dissipates.
Black flies herd
The sightline. Clouds gather, unfurl,
Drop to my waist,

Lift me: Dotted grid
My hometown; my street faint black—Ash
Explosion, rip cord cut, oh look
My roof needs tarring…
Knock Knock.

Enter the parents, point to the crib. Walls
Unglue

And the house, a play’s stage, falls.
Pan left.
Cardboard trees, industrial
Fans. The actors’ tired faces;
Their stuttered, botched soliloquies—


4.05 / May 2009

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