Day 7 (because no one needs to read Day 6's poem)

Thought Experiment

Delinquent dinner, pesto mozzarella. I believe I have gone to the edge of the film, the firmament and gone back. This is in prose only because it has to be. Because the hour, the slow molasses of the bulge of my eyes, digs into the rock of the brick house, the plaster moulding and the possibility of hornets in the bright day of sunlight coming. I have visited the time. I have been ill. I have rested and sat up late, like now, and weasled away a good enough try. Have you taken the pill yet? Has spring bottled its smile and then opened it like a fire cracker or a buzzing rocket? Where does the question mark lay when it tires of figuring itself in the air? I am almost certain it is too late. I am almost certain that, in the moment when the lily pad, like an outstretched calla lily, bursts into tears--and it will only do this because of the morning dew in combination with the pellets of water careening into it from above--the sun will wake up again and feel its right arm flex, then its left. And it will be spring again. And there won't be any sirens, any longer.

Day 5

The Ground Round

Finally, in the effort and effrontery, in the wake of ceremony
and lack luster buster, thistle and thin, butt of the joke
pickled quick, tickly wind: lift up the mouth and freeze the thought
lock the effort in the colon: preface to the period,
a jocund moment—where is the flyer, where is the youth
of the mind, the minute difference between the infant
and the toddler, the spring magnolia and the flower-petaled
sidewalk—it is easily hide-able, a hyphen’d myth
the disappearance of it is inside the between-space, the figured
circle, the ouroborus of space and minutiae: have you seen
the figure of it standing on the snout of the rock in
the midst of thought—be bigger than thickness, round like
a boast at midmorning, fingering the tingle between finger
and thumb. I am gorgeous in the morning. I am a felt feeling.
I rub the patterns of the index and lines of excitement wave
frequently out of my mouth. I believe they are sentences.
I believe they have rounded the corners and gone into the world.

Day 3/4

Sound Poem (33)
Passover, Night 1


Platter as a sound: trussed and spooned, three
syllables of meats, vegetables: what would be pickled
what would carrots amount to at a single
notice. I am careful to ring my finger around
the glasses, design wings and floating careful
things that composite like jellied candies
this meal this laughter like a clarified soup
beautiful the smell of pleasure and
ruffling conversation: a choice of two kinds of kid
and the questions of a child, of a child
of a child, of a child: all of these are the rolling
clicks and clatters and the ones that hang
above waving at us and calling us justice.




Sound Poem (34)

Delivered again like the previous. This time faster. This time
I am searching for memories. This time pick
me up higher I am the child I am the wonder, fuller:
the crook of my arm the infant yawn sound
like the back of a chair parting the air behind.
What beyond this: the crinkling of body of face little
arm like new plant and almond skin
pin me to this one pin me to this thin wonder
something newer is to come. To feel her:
to breathe breath of expectation, lemon in water.
How like a tail this all feels. How like balance
in water: a ripple, once central, nothing single.

30/30 2015: Day 1

Facing It
after Yusef Komunyaaka

I look into the bulge of my wife's belly:
there is no reflection, though there is one
inside: this pregnancy, this moon
with face and arms and kicking
in it, shifts me. I cannot
let it go: it shifts me. I turn--
I am contained. I turn once more--
still contained. I am flesh. Inside is flesh.
My wife brushes her hair back,
licks the tips of her mouth
and her eyes are stone fires, golden
brown. She is my teacher, she shows
me how to hold myself, to hold
the belly. How we hold each other
like leaf in wind. How we
need to clasp against the other
to prop us up when one
chooses to fall.