Killing a garden
Does not require a shovel.
Just stop watering.
Category: Poetry
How to Use a Rotary Phone
Paint it white. Remove the bottom and peer into its whispering guts. Lay out the parts in a row and dare your child to build a robot.
Make it ring.
Hang the dial in a sunny window. Measure spaghetti with the holes. Braid the cord into the unruly mane of a wild pony. Replace the numbers with photographs of monuments and dead jazz singers.
Walk through a train station talking into the receiver. For dinner, serve a bratwurst on the cradle. For dessert, a cannoli.
Put a tiny baby down to sleep. Ring the operator and ask for a line to Newark.
Scroll down.
Plant rosemary in it.
Call off the Enola Gay.
Scavenge parts to fix a radio. Smack an intruder in the head. String it across the door to catch your teen trying to sneak out.
Speak into it all the things you wished you’d said.
Hold it to your ear and hear the wheels and waves, Coney Island, Venice Beach.
Carry it into a small closet and put on your tights and cape. Fill it with birdseed and set it out after the first thaw. Open the front and store inside a tiny book filled with photographs of switchboards and phone booths.
Replace the dial with a mirror. A clock. A contour map of Mt. Kilamanjaro.
Stack tinder into its corners to prepare for winter. Stuff the seams with the names of those few still alive who knew you when you were young.
When you have lost your way (or maybe when you’re most sure of it), lift the receiver. Listen for the voice of an absent god.
Learn more about the Alternative Uses Test and divergent thinking.
Image: Trendhunter
The Age We Are
“Toss the word rain to her,” he says.
I do and she catches it
on the chin. Drenched, she climbs aboard
his shoulders and returns six drops
to the sky. A boy cheers
as his dog digs in the sand
for a smell long severed
from its host. Wild-eyed,
the two wear matching
grins on faces bright
enough to kill
or ignite
or like us
both. We try on hats
now that we see
we could have worn them
all along. Felt
and ribbon and feather, like the grandfathers
of other people whose everyday
days are like our holidays.
Our patriarchs wiped sweat
from their wrists with stained handkerchiefs
before their fingers slipped.
Some had one arm
from forgetting this. Some left our mothers
orphans even after returning intact
from war. We never hear the ones still here
say, It comes to this?
That’s some sick joke
because they only whisper such things
to a sagging ceiling, the most sympathetic ear
for miles. I toss the word blindness
next time
but no one sees it land.
Image: Justin Brown Durand, “careful now, don’t let me fall”
Unboxed Shadow (Hirshhorn)
In the drawer, a tiny bundle of newsprint
waits for paper fingers
to untie its secrets. Inside
their China cabinet coffin,
glass eyes almost
see. I tilt
towards a convex wall
where iron and bronze
sculptures anchor those
who forget that the absence of corners
can lead to infinite revolutions. Continue reading “Unboxed Shadow (Hirshhorn)”
Everything is Music
He points to Sting and Bob Marley,
his eyes hopscotching sideways
over walls of worn bright album covers
all the way to the ceiling, lighting
up for the first time
as salsa music and hissing milk
steam the room and warp
corners that squeeze
us into the proximity
of firsts
and nexts. Shots
in hot mugs clank against laughing teeth.
He slides forward in his seat
back again. When India Arie
escorted Stevie Wonder to the stage
he tells me, she kissed him on the cheek. Continue reading “Everything is Music”
First Taste
I tear from their stems
leaves as big as elephant’s ears,
dino kale, mustard, Russian red.
Friends came
bearing this plastic sack of plants.
I hugged close
the friends then lifted out
one giant collard leaf
and pressed it against my cheek.
These succulent greens grew
in a stark suburban yard
stripped bare of topsoil
and shade. It took a few years
and the season’s first frost
to draw sweetness up through veins
threading bitter lamina.
The tough, cold fiber
yields to a tug,
its surprising suppleness
as porous as my own
skin, as ready
to give.
I did not want
to cook something new. Dinner fuels
me, most days that is
enough.
In the pan, oil spits
at the intrusion
of garlic and broth.
The spatula’s flat wooden blade
gilds ashen leaves
and they shine with the sharp scent
of roots, ice, chlorophyll, flame.
The flavor makes my mouth
ache like when I’m close
to crying. I eat
slowly, marveling at how far the comfort
of routine has carried me
from pleasure.
It is wonderful to see you
is what we say. It used to be the other way
when sensation raced
to the side of the bed, bouncing
on its toes,
get up get up, come look.
Taking notice comes first
now. This is the shift
that marks the start
of growing up. We wake
to walls and grab
at threads of hunger,
at any texture that can mimic
or at least stand in
for wonder. We pause
still hoping for a surge
until we surrender and step out
as first light
splits the horizon and say
It is wonderful
to see
you.
We learn to lift
ourselves towards desire. We learn to proceed
with our hands
extended, feeling
through weed and loam, inviting
something to stroke our wrists
and yank us over
into the bright fat flesh
of the world, the place
all around us
where explosions as fleeting
as one leaf
against tongue, skin,
or sky can make us catch our breath
in a thrill of awakening, breaking
us open in gratitude
for a visit
from that part of our heart
that left home
we thought
for good.
Shelter
Numb is a verb
posing as a state.
It shelters a pupa
from the abrading throat
of daybreak. It allows a wing
to knit
itself
into itself.
This is how to stop
time
while time
ticks on
until sensation returns
which
incredible
as it seems
it always
does.
—
Photo credit: 6legs2many
Still Move Through
Put it on ice
at first
to keep the swelling down.
Pain masked
is the absence of pain. The mind
is both
trickster
and patsy.
Play.
It’s game. Continue reading “Still Move Through”
Whispering Wild
A boy is digging
his hands down under the surface
following one root
after another to a place
that gives. Finished here, he moves
further down the bed and I follow,
raking the mulch smooth. Except
every stroke combs free
what the boy missed, one green stem
after another gripping hard
to life. I squat and pull
a trowel from my muddy pocket
then cut through, feeling
for a soft joint, a pop. Shoots
thick as fingers, long as limbs.
Down there they go on, snake
through a warren of tunnels,
drawing towards each other
and together, to their source. Continue reading “Whispering Wild”
Vigilance
Eggshell is a shade
cool as pitted milk-soft carapace
and searing as canker, rope
burn across yoked tongue. It strains
against the unspoken
inchoate
yet swelling
power to rupture
the membrane
that keeps us
separate
yet nested
together. Caution fails,
a crack forms,
unleashing the wind
now hissing across
this uncrossable divide.
—
Image Credit: Still life by Jo Bradney
Shannon E. Williams 