Poetry
The sand rabbit tells the desert cow:
I want to lie beside your open bones.
The rigid spurs of your joints
pressed against my fur.
Shelter for your sacrifice.
I’ll hide in the hollow
where your mind once dwelt
and sleep until the sun
quells his angry shine.
What I found in the earth at Brierfield:
shards of white china, a deer bone knife,
a slave mother’s beads carved by hand,
and what I found in the earth at Tannehill:
two thousand iron nails, door hinges,
hearth stones still scented with rain and earth.
In the clay, I even excavated myself.
Even when the mornings are cold,
I enjoy watching you wake: I enjoy
your spine, its stretch and curve,
your arms reaching out so far
you might be trying to grasp the air
and pull it on for a shawl to clothe
your bare and goosebumped shoulders.
Your round mouth greets the world.
I enjoy your naked legs, heels to hips,
slinking out from tangled sheets,
across me, smooth and straddling
and then I enjoy watching you walk,
every morning, as if your small toes
are excited to touch the ground again
because they have been too long from it.
There is nothing harmless about inertia.
Inertia is doing all I can
to keep from crashing into you,
and crashing into you anyway.
It is pouring love like cement
into a sidewalk crack that won’t fill up.
It is being rooted to the spot,
unable to grasp your hand,
when I ought grasp it.
It is words spilling out when I ought stifle them
and words not said when I ought say them.
It is being unable to love an unfilled crack.
There is nothing harmless about inertia.
Bodies in motion stay in motion.
Bodies at rest stay at rest.
I keep finding you like fossils.
Brittle dusty relics unearthed
from the bottoms of boxes
and drawers. A pair of your
shoes in the trunk of my car,
still petrified with dried river
mud, from that time we hiked
along the Cahaba.
We hiked the river years ago,
but chip away the clay and the shape
of your foot is in my hand again.
You recline in the moss,
pale flesh settled in among
cool rugs of lush green,
and a small blue snail
creeps across your shoulder.
You seem at home here:
forest spirit, conifer dryad,
rooted into cypress and cedar,
spruce and yew. The sky
fills up with droplets that want
to fall, but don’t, out of respect
for the moment shared between
the snail and the snowy shelf
of your shoulder.
I.
Birth by fire.
VII.
For eleven days
we three men
leave our Mother’s
arms but never
her reach. Earth
shines; the Moon
is far away.
VIII.
Mother’s reach stifles:
the nest cannot
hold us now.
We do not
go far: just
to peer at
the dark side
of bright Luna.
XI.
Luna welcomes us
and Mother’s heart
breaks in pride
and wistful longing.
My dusty footsteps
will linger here
for decades, but
Earth begs us
to return. We
leave flags, boots,
and predecessor ghosts.
XIII.
Birth by fire.
Oxygen is our
lifeline and our
fiery garrote here.
Luna falls away
and worried Mother
stares in horror
at her floundering
children. God beckons
but Mother won’t
let go. She
pulls us gently
to her breast.
XVII.
This is our
last love affair
with bright Luna.
We slink away
in black night
to touch her
and we linger
longer than ever
before, filling our
eyes with her,
our dusty lover.
We orbit her.
We orbit her
but Mother calls
and her call
stirs our souls:
Earth waits, children.
I.
This heart is rusty.
It creaks, it clanks,
it crashes and rattles
and bangs and it breaks
down without you.
II.
I don’t know
what is happening
to the brain in my head.
It’s like it’s full of straw and
I can’t think I can’t think
I can’t think I can’t think
of anything but you
and every time I do
I catch on fire.
III.
You rumble up
like a roar from my chest.
I’m frightened of these sounds
coming out of my mouth
but I like the way they sound
in my teeth.
IV.
Pay no attention to the man
behind this curtain of words.
There’s no place like you.
There’s no place like you,
and I just want to go home.
This is our first kiss as I remember it:
I squeeze the wool sponge and trickles
of milk, steaming white brooks,
pour over you, spill into the bright seas of
goat-kid’s blood smeared on your breast.
My thighs and my belly burn at your touch,
I wash you; you wander me.
My skin craves to be wandered.
My hand is yours: you wind the februum,
the strip of flesh the goat has given us,
the strip of flesh my thighs and belly are
striped and stung from, you wind it
and wind it about my wrist and your wrist
until I can have no thought of pulling away:
you have made me yours to wander.
My skin craves your wandering.
My skin craves to wander you.
Your tongue is in my mouth.
We are milk and we are blood.
Some days,
I think you are
a vased lily set
on a corner table
and I am
a patterned rug
beneath you.
I am hoping that
someday,
a cat will brush you,
an arm will nudge you
or the quaking earth
will upheave you.
Your white blossoms
and fertile water will spill
over the table’s lip
onto me.
It’s not that
I wish you turmoil:
I just want you
as a rain of flowers,
however unexpected.