Month: April 2021

The Great Red Mouth, The Tooth

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

I dreamt of you last night.

Not you by name or you by face,
but you as the fever under my skin knows you:

The great red mouth opens wide,
the tongue works at the loosened tooth,
the tongue writhes in the brine barrel,
the tongue nails itself to the deck boards,
the cats pace hungry on the porch
for a mouth of meat.

The great red mouth
yawns down a quart of honey,
yawns down a quart of molten salt
what are you trying to cure?
what are you trying to preserve?
you end yourself trying but try —
I’m done trying.

In this dream of you,
I am the tooth; I rock in the gum,
declaring myself
with the copper not-blood taste of error,
with the bent angle bite,
with the wrong cradle, the wrong dock
for the incisor me.

Let me leap loose
from your great red mouth;
clench your jaw and I swear to god
I’ll crack and splinter; I’ll myself shear off
even if I leave my goddamn root behind.

Great red mouth
spit me out, wrench me out,
let me berth off in a bite of red apple
or I swear to god
I’ll abscess myself. I’ll eat you alive.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Build the Soil

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

I’ve been thinking of how to fix the earth.
The front yard of this house is only sand,
an acre of desert where nothing grows up.

Rain runs off, elopes with the foundation
of the earth of my birth,
a river that eats
from doorstep to driveway,
and I wonder how long
before it takes this house with it,
how long before it takes me with it,
how long before we are swept into the street.

Today, I read a book about compost,
about eggshells and nitrogen,
about humus, pine straw, rotifers,
how broken things decompose
to bind themselves back together,
how decay has a health in it,
a secret science of lignin and bacteria
to rebirth the earth of my birth.

The book tells me patience
is the earth-tender’s friend —
take the slow years
for redworms and food scraps
to grow the soil before you
grow the seeds of grass and flowers —
but the only patience I have
is reserved for my own molder.
Anyway, rich soil won’t help
without a way to keep it in place.

Landscape is just as important:
gird the property line with stone and log,
tuck the trees into their beds of mulch,
clear storm drain and ditch so maybe
the next downpour won’t drown me out.
Erosion control takes retaining walls
just as much as it takes healing.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Family History

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Lately, when I cannot sleep
I catch myself trying to inventory injury:

My mother as fracture and seizing,
as the snakes beneath her belly
that hissed holes in themselves,
as weariness that never seems
to leave her even after rest.

I log my father
as sunken lung and lacerated brow,
as miniscus gnawed by a wolf of bone,
as arthritis and achilles,
as apnea,

brother as gout and tension,
sister as cracked calcaneus
in her tiny foot,
as body and brain
betrayed by birth,
and further back
the lungs of grandfathers
and a grandmother’s heart.

Here are my own contributions:
gallstones and poison
that ground up my gut,
panic wails in my throat,
wheeze and night sweat,
and under it all, a deep unsettling,
a squid in the murky gulf,
suckers fanged into my ankles
until I grow tired
of kicking towards shore.

Here is why I record this witness
of wounds: I remind myself
that even all these traumas
cannot frighten off laughter and love.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

The Special Dinner

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

I wanted to cook a great dinner
for you tonight, so I went to the market
and bought armfuls of fresh ingredients:

new herbs and ripe bright vegetables,
oil and wine and fine cuts of meat,
everything I needed to make a meal
for you.

I spent an hour in the kitchen,
I chopped and seasoned and mixed,
I seared and sauteed

and then somewhere between
the asparagus and the tarragon,
the muse put her lush lips against
my ear and seduced me off
to write another poem.
I lost track of time.
I burned everything.

This is what happens
when you are loved by
a poet who plays at being a chef.

Now the house smells of smoke,
of the stinking charred mess
at the bottom of the trash can,
but we’ll open the windows
and order Chinese takeout,

sit on the living room floor
and eat lo mein and egg rolls.
When you open your
fortune cookie, I’ll hope it says

Don’t run. He is a good man
even if he is easily lured away.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Apaches

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

The Apaches whirl low and loud
over the house today. They rattle the timbers,
they quaver the trees, shaking off twigs
and the empty nests of last year’s birds.

There are all kinds of birds
in the air here: the broad black wings
of bickering crows, the silent gliding circles
of hawks, distant Chinook and low Apache.

My father would know the variations
by the shape of the nose or the rotor’s whoop:
D-model from A, but I know them only by lazy
or rushing, by swoop or hover, when the sky is blue.

Day and night, when the weather is nice,
you hear them call to each other:
the stutter and cough of the gun on the nose,
the singular boom of rockets on the range.

No where else has these kinds of birds.
No where else feels loud enough without them.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Bare

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Her feet in my lap are bare.

Smooth white arches,
pearl crescents of her nails,

warm in the artificial summer
the fireplace creates.

The frozen ghost of December
scratches at January window frost
and that puts her feet one month closer
to prickle grass and caterpillars,
cahaba lilies on an Alabama river
like white and green fireworks
on crystal flowing canvas.

For now, she’s mine,
tempted to stay with me for
the honeyed words she coaxes
from my tongue, for the flicker
of firelight in the black iron stove.

I wonder if Hades mourned the approach
of April’s falling rains; herald of
Persephone’s departure —

I know I do.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Cinder Man

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Do not open the window
when you wake up.

All night
you have been sleeping
and I have been burning
myself alive in the bed
beside you,
white hot blue
chewing up the sheets
as kindling.

I am ash and orange embers now,
I am barely lit now,
and if you open that window
the breeze will whirl in
and I’m afraid I might just
blow out.

You need to know
how easily
you could snuff me.

I do not want you to lose me;
I do not want to be lost.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Brierpatch

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

Press your ear close.

Sometimes you can hear the breath
rattle in my chest like a bone shrugged
its moorings and ought to be tied back down.

It’s the sound of a canyon
trying to expel a marsh:
hear the stones tumble down,
clatter and splash,
the stiff reeds scouring the walls.
Stuck bristles. Sticks.
The marsh is dauntless.
It can’t be pushed out through
the canyon’s narrow mouth.

It’s the sound of a cave-in.
Press your ear close and
listen to picks and shovels
plinking on the rock.
Soon the oxygen gives out
and all the miners go to sleep,
or they punch a hole through
to the sky and breathe,
mouths pressed to the breach,
gasping a little at a time.

It’s the sound of a brier patch
growing in your lungs.
It’s the sound of a brier patch
someone has set on fire.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Supercell

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Years ago, in school,
I swallowed a secret,

but it hasn’t settled well
on my stomach.
I am older now and
I’ve learned what indigestion is,
and now this secret
comes back up:

My heart has always
beat thunderstorms
instead of blood.

I am all whirled up now.
My cheeks are puffed up
and I cough up
craggy tree branches
and uprooted stop signs.

I walk into coffee shops
and all these startled people
look up from their lattes
to hear the shutters
smash in my gusts.

They scramble.
They are trying to stay dry,
trying to keep the rain out
of their cups

but I can’t stop myself —
I jerk umbrellas out
of the wrinkled hands
of old ladies,
I flood parking lots,
I topple garbage cans,
I blow down birdhouses
and scrape them down
the middle of Main Street.

My thunder was quiet once,
just a rumble,
just easy to swallow,
but I am booming now
and I make the windows rattle now.

I make the earth shake now.

I am severe now.

I am a red band on radar.
Tornado siren out my open mouth.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Not An Hour Ago

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

I kissed you
not an hour ago

and you have left me
so distracted
I can write of nothing else.

My lip is tender
where it met your mouth.
I cannot help
but probe at it with
my tongue and my teeth

and test the swollen burn
of your kiss, a sore,
a sweetness

that tastes of your laughter.

I hesitate to kiss you again.
I rush to kiss you again.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.