5 am, I79
wreck. talk radio. hope-wrangled holidays in scotch-tape
and latex gloves, sailing incubators
we ride these ill winds cross-country.
over the river and through the woods—
it’s baked into the very bricks of these houses:
you smell the cigarettes before anything else.
my dad reaches for his medallion, tiny in his rough fist.
“I still get the urge sometimes after all these years”
St. Christopher, be our lungs, these faithless martyrs from the dead sea
be our house on these hollow hills with foundations crumbling
buried brother, be in each boarded-up window by the bridges
holy son be here, fugitive from all these plaster angels
all these buried altar-bones
the remnants of the cars wail past
in the rotting tunnel
the sea of brakelights part and
this bleary miracle sings in my marrow:
migration or addiction
returning, returning
after all these years.
geode
I wish I could tell you these fissures had
lined with gold by now
that they seeped amethyst and glow
were windows into something blooming
But I am a cavern, still, with sickness dripping
and things grown used to lightless days
feeling their way along the shore
I am duller, still, a mausoleum
of nascent shinings still in their cradles
this fracturing has borne nothing but
ravenous daughters
who eat me down to my roots
When I was a kid I took a chisel to my kneecaps
hoping that all the kneeling would carve
something precious from
the dull ache
the rough constancy
but, unhollow, there was nothing to unlock
Now I look at her, holding her head in her hands
like it will crack open
and the precious will pour out
and I want to tell her that no moss grows on silver
and no meaning ought to need a knife to come true
that breaking catches us in loops and alchemy is always delayed until tomorrow
that I love the dull ordinary sweetness of what is whole
more than I could ever love priceless shards
the bell tolls (fidelity)
the sparrows flow like tributaries of
a river, veins from the heartland
back to the island
no matter how far the journey
like once from ancient river valleys our mothers
took their broken hearts to know
another sky, but
show me the way to cross a continent
a love to swallow whole, it will
sustain me, swear
by hollow-boned fidelity that you will
return to me, break
your promise with the shifting wind
vagrant prophets of the Washington highlands
who turn tail for the Azores as soon
as the onset of winter
knocks their broken compasses aright
sparrow, for thee, for thee
all charts and maps are the soft curve of these
headlands, the grassy bluffs
the stars in the basin and the
sucking, spitting tide
the constellation calls us home
and the island is unforsaken
abundant, enough
Comments