Category Archives: Poetry

Things your father gave you:
Eyesockets. The bones that frame
bottles full of the grey white ocean.
Black hair. Tangles like kelp.
The shape your foot forms in
the wet sand beside conch shells.

A sand dollar, a fish hook.

A memory like fog: cold salt,
wet hair on a man’s long legs,
white teeth in a black kelp beard.

A nightmare: a ship on the horizon
that never comes to harbor,
even during storms.

Especially during storms.

It runs from neck nape
to tailbone –
a ripple, a tremor,
a shudder and shake –
and your kiss
the pebble that skips,
the faultline that slips,
oh my oh my
your kiss
the zip and the break.

You run right through me
every time
every time.

You were beautiful,
and I spent hours trying to decide
how to dispose of your picture.

I could have burned it.
I could have thrown it in the trash,
or left it in a gutter full of old rain.
I could have chopped it into confetti
and thrown it off the tallest building
in town, but none of those seemed
a fitting way to end you.

I didn’t hate you enough for fire.
You didn’t belong in the landfill
or a grimy wet sluice, and
if I’d tossed you into the sky,
I’d just have to see the pieces of you
when I came back down.

So I bought a packet of flower seeds.
Himalayan blue poppies,
and I crumpled your picture
and tucked the seeds inside
and I buried you.

In an empty lot beside a thrift store,
I buried you,
thinking you weren’t so beautiful after all,
but with a bit of rain and sunshine
you might be.

I am not very good
at telling you how I feel.

I write you love letters
in the sand of the shore
but the sea keeps
washing them away
before I can sign them
with I love you I love you
please stay with me.

I write you love letters
every day I tie them
to the legs of carrier birds
but they go in circles
they get lost in transit
they get blown off course
and never make their way
to you.

I write you love letters
in languages
you don’t know how to read.

I write you love letters
you don’t read.

If you were a random house
on a random street
in any given town,
somewhere in the world,
I would want to be a postcard
sent from the San Diego Zoo
delivered accidentally,
anonymously,
to your front door

Some day soon
I’m going to drive out of this city.

Out to where the roads
shrug off their asphalt
and go back to gravel and dirt.

Out where street lamps
haven’t yet outnumbered
oak trees, and the only
moving lights are fireflies
instead of high-beams.

Once I’m there,
I’m going to pull over
to the side of the road,
look up at the sea of stars
and scoop up a bucketful
to bring home to you
and show you what you’ve
been missing all these years.