I keep looking for dragons in this country, and not finding any.
-Ursula K. Le Guin
First, eat the damned elephant taking up too much space. Eat the windows and the walls, the sundry items in the closets and the cupboards. Eat the computers and the phones. Eat the houseplants and the gardens. Eat the chickens. Eat the pets. Eat the hummingbirds and the butterflies. Eat the poor, the cold, the huddled, the hungry. Especially eat the hungry. You’re hungry. You’re cold and tired. You’re huddled all by yourself. Eat the rust on your belly. Eat the mold and grime webbing your claws. Eat the raw data oozing from your pores. Eat the invoices and the taxes. Eat the tithes paid in kind. Eat the churches and the truck stops, the airports and the junkyards. Eat the billboards. Eat the casinos. Eat the prayers and the spells and the songs. Eat the receipts. Let everything else burn.
{first published in the American Journal of Poetry}
Holly and Molly are identical twins. Even their mother can barely tell them apart, the only way being that Holly smashes every spider she encounters, while Molly, either leaves spiders alone, or relocates them to more suitable spider places.
– David Allen Dickens, Holly and Molly Save the World, Book 1
After another shooting,
my 5-year-old nephew told me,
if somebody is lying, it’s impossible for them
to say rabbit three times in a row without laughing.
This never fails? –I asked.
No, it doesn’t, he assured me.
I said, prove it, say rabbit three times,
which he did with the straightest face I’d ever seen.
It never fails.
Like how it rains right after you wash the car.
Or how full moons amplify the crazy.
Or Murphy’s Law or Xanax bars and Irish whiskey
or blackout or only knowing a semblance of balance.
I smoke a joint and wonder
about strident slogans and bumper stickers, wonder
what Jesus would do or what Walt Whitman would do
or what Bob Marley would do or what Frida Kahlo
would do or what my mom would do
or what I should do.
I climb the basement steps, with the spiders
webbed into their corners, and imagine this is like
the way an asteroid hurtles past earth—the spiders’
regard for me is like my regard for an asteroid.
O beautiful asteroid, today I’m again walking past
the news, past the only parents
I’ll ever know. The spiders are ignorant or apathetic
or spiteful. Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.
{first published in Cirque]
Pickling Song
She’s washing Mason jars, cutting dill,
scrubbing cucumbers, bringing the brine
to a boil. It’s a process. A short season’s
worth of salt. A sea of apple cider vinegar.
She’s hearing the song. I peel the garlic
from her mother’s garden. Fat, earth
encrusted bulbs cling to thick fibrous necks.
The largest cloves slip from their papery skins
polished white jade wet with green light.
She’s puzzled the cucumbers into their shells,
and now, in flows her brine. I twist on the lids,
flip the jars and line them up along the edge
of the great countertop. The hum of an ancient
mantra presses through the half-smile
of her lips. I’ve almost made out the melody.
{first published on Ink Node}
Northern Flicker
The snow whispers a lesson
in letting go. The leaves
are shouting
from brown and gold
to green and greener. They fall
clear up into the sky. The flicker
flares so brightly I can hear
in my dark the flame he carries
underwing, diving from pine
to ash. I drink myself dumb
on the back porch, wait all
evening for the spark to leap
from that damned flicker.
When it does, it lands
in my cocktail hissing
against the ice just as you call
to say you wish
I had driven over. Temptation
speeds across the state, slams
head-on into my slur.
Now hear me search for and
curse the landmarks in my dark.
Listen to the radio signal
break apart. I’m roaring off
into a midnight blackout.
{first published in Paper Nautilus}
The Fish
Bukowski started it, got drunk and picked a fight with John Muir. He didn’t want to fight for any ideological reason—it was just somehow what he needed, to get drunk, be an asshole, and pick a fight he wouldn’t win, didn’t want to win. But he supposed if he was going to get all pretentious about it, then for fuck’s sake, this was his ideology, because while it didn’t make him feel better, it was exactly what the 9-year-old boy trapped in the empty well of his spirit needed to feel. He was doing it for the kid.
Dick Hugo was driving down the gravel road when he saw the ruckus. Much like Bukowski, Dick found the thought of any drunk winning a brawl too much to bear. So, he postponed the destruction of the old town he was heading for and pulled over to see if he could take a few punches.
By this time, Bukowski had already thrown in the towel. He was sitting in the dirt, panting, legs outstretched, serene. He was as base and ugly as always, and he felt renewed. Muir, on the other hand, had won the fight, but was sporting a nasty gash over his left water ouzel.
Hugo loaded Muir into the passenger seat, threw the Buick in reverse and flipped it around in a cloud of dust, speeding back up the road to Whitman’s.
Whitman dressed Muir’s wound and sent him and Hugo on their way, with fresh bread and coffee, and warm hugs and kisses. When his guests were down the road, Whitman wrote a long letter to Neruda declaring the astonishment of his love for Hugo and Muir, who were off to find Bukowski. They were going to give Hank a ride to the nearest tavern and make him buy them both a pint and a shot.
It was Sunday afternoon. Neruda had just finished straightening the house. He was reheating some leftover fish (salmon with a creamy lemon-dill sauce) while he read Whitman’s letter. He ate his lunch, which was delicious, and thought of writing a poem about the salt in the saltshaker. Maybe the spiky haired salt crystal had joined with the peppercorn to make creamy lemon-dill love to the fish on his plate. He laughed softly—that was a poem he wouldn’t be writing. But the fish he ate for lunch had already turned back toward the sea. Less than an hour after eating, he was ill, barely making it to the toilet.
{first published on Ink Node}
We try not to encourage cats ‘round here.
– The author’s neighbor, Cold Front: Confronting Hypermasculine Attitudes Toward Animals, by Mugg Stubbins
I believe when we die—when we’re sacked
and kicked and drowned,
when we’re beaten and shot,
flayed, smashed, tossed into the icy road, fed
to the rusty trucks—then soon after we’ve endured
that extravagant winter of pain,
there will be stopping
a taxicab—yellow as the scent of dandelions—
to ferry the roughest, toughest, best of us
across the wide expanse of gravel and asphalt
to our own private versions of paradise—brutal
life’s antidote—warm and personal, no imitations.
{first published in Pinky Thinker Press}
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