The Poetry Marathon

Going to Winter Jam with My Fellowship Group Who Only Befriend Their Pasts & Everyone in Them

I press my spine into back porch, snow-snakes
spindling on dry avenue, a windscape. I try
to lock the door behind me to a house that is not mine.
Within there’s the stale mingling of fuck & cheap
light linen & friends I don’t want anymore. I cop out
the shakes until one,
where they all exit tailoring a stream of hugs & love & God blesses.
I tell them I went to a show over the winter in town
where kids bore the heavy mauve of knuckle & mosh
on their skin. They just go to their arena worship concert.
I stare at single tiles long enough that the vapid scuffs
look like rain swung by wiper blades. They praise air & light
the way I fight the air. Maybe my parents hate-fucking is
the only resurrection of myself I’ll ever know.
I’m trying to find joy without my cardinal senses,
& not taste words or & hear the tingle of jugdment
over my shoulder.

Bloodletting

I ladle the
somber eyes of saskatoons,
the pucker of summer raspberry
in the blistered lattice of my palms.
Rotten teeth of sunrise
swallowing poplars like dancing cotton candy.
Pommels of dark trunks growl under their breath
along the cherry hallways, splashing leaves
in hurled gusts.
A stained purple on my hands,
sweat-laced in the shine
of blackberry taste buds,
sheltered thorn & the burnt bitter
the juice mingled in slight thumb bleed
sizzles steel on my lips.

I think of Northport as a tightness
in my eyes, how the lake tapers
into itself on the drive south, home,
a brightness intensified by my smallness
in open sky. I pluck the rain from its
furrowed brow & am drenched by
its rage & prayer. This year
we have to cut back the plum trees’
lanky branches, uproot Russian olives
before their shallow zeal crowds
the mountain ash.

A father’s limbs go sullen, dejected,
tomatoes along the barn where concussion blood
sprinkled the soil two years ago now.
Glasses grow wider, eyes narrow & dimmer.
I clutch sodden wood chips under toe
where wild turkey have clawed at the garden.
This could be my last year to touch
with nervous fingers the dewdrop coals
of cherries. While I haunt myself
in a place never to be mine,
I hope to return, with the
rise & fall of a season’s empire
as if I were just blinking.

For Robbie, Who Lost an Arm

you used to lay your arm
around her
amidst The Evil Dead, theater dates,
and everything Nicholas Sparks.

you used to catch one-handed high school
wide-receiver. your knotted spear of elbow
thrust into my stomach mid-moshpit.
we wrestled in sixth-grade and your half a foot difference

pinned me to the sheets. your hand misspelled
university essays, fingers forgetting grammar.
i can still see your old muscle, that sinew taut
under athletic arm. i can still see it mirrored from the other

and i forget the metal thinness and how it
connects to your shoulder. i forget the pictures
of recovery. i don’t even know who we are anymore,
and more than just an appendage has lost its life, its function.

Florida Poolside

She
is a pale toothpick,
then crescent moon,
slender & seamless
in February sun.
I am gathering
her brightness
with slow unblinking eye,
how, for a moment,
she touches her own
fingertips, & cascades
into herself, enveloped
like a torn napkin
in shattered water.
I know when her
eyes surface to mine,
clear the chlorine
with her hand’s heel,
I will never
see her again.

i want to lose mine in yours

hands hold shudder, force in a fist.
hold air & indecision, cradle blade & flower.
hands tight with work & wear. they
hold you.
they hold desire.
hold in hand & heart
the cast of seedling warmth.
hands curled inward with the steadiness
of blood-drip, the marrow of youth,
the music of a nervous system. hands
clasped & tucked away from shiver,
clammy with nervousness.
play ball. fingers twisted around pen.
hands hold healing, the kiss of fingers
dancing on skin, &
the words you cannot with tongue
or lips
or eyes.

My father tells me how they

suffocated the lake

by dumping autumn’s aborted leaves

from blue tarps bright as the sky.

Took them at least a decade

of raking the raw red bodies,

scythe-like, of white oaks,

the yellow aspen bells,

to see progress peeking its

blighted crown from the dark

kettle waters. How the rotten polish

glistened with sog & murk.

How you could see the thin memories

hanging onto each other like

puzzle pieces, even in death.

How there was no forgetting

the staunch wall of disgust

& masking of noses. At first,

on the boat, then on shore,

finally the cul-de-sac.

My father tells me never to go that far,

stay away like how you keep so quiet.

How he shouldn’t have harbored

his silence deep in his belly.

Migraines stay with me the way

killing millions ended up killing one body.

At the time, he says,

what issue could have surfaced–

not even the trees

would keep their children.

still

i exhume no worry when i see

sun spears glinting around your head,

poised to strike us down. on bear lake

the wind got so heavy our boat drifted

off with two anchors down.

i would dash your name

in the dust-film of old countertop,

clutter the air with specks of scribble.

the cottage sleeps all day long, while

we him in its belly.

against

the driftwood spine of boardwalk,

you sit,

legs flowing

off the edge, twin

waterfalls paused at toetip

before they collapse into shimmer.

how can you

still

hold my lungs taut in fear.

how can you

still hold me with your voice,

when to close your lips

is to let go.

Gull Island

To think that the chimney on Gull Island

is the only remnant of history left

on the shore that has forgotten sand or soil.

To think that its stark whiteness is just

the shining of shit & rot & feather

from where I stand underneath a tall willow.

To think that is home to so many makes me

wonder if dominion in freedom can be enough

to forget about what the damage done is.

To think that the gulls would fight so hard for

their home that they would ruin it in turn.

Dayton

we don’t even have to talk behind his back,

fourth hour history snoring, a safe haven for snickering,

a table’s distance. talk shit, watch the teach

smile, shake her head, filter through her powerpoint.

we’ve got to purge this rage from our minds, post-algebra 2,

pre-homeroom. let’s watch him slump over, then wake

from his roadblocked nostrils. we have conversations,

finish daily projects. the room divides itself as in mitosis,

except we’ve left behind a chromosome. he could wake

and believe no time had passed. hard to believe he could stay up

weekends staring at a screen, never looking down with tired eyes

to the controller. if we had wondered back then, it would have been

our brand of strained concern,

but the room never noticed,

just went on taking notes.

In the Morning I Found Myself in the Right Place in the Wrong Time

last night i dreamed of earthspin

in different time zones. in raw pool

of black pupil i know

we are one air.

i sleep during a london lover’s clock in to work.

i want to get spring sick with you & aim

weak eyes at dependence.

tread naked the shoulder blades of appalachian

cloud muscle,

your turbulent stare from beneath. we

are ants & specks & dots to each other.

i would change the alarm clock

to your time zone

so we could be in the same place.

i look at pictures everyday; you move

in none of them. i carve my name & another

into my winter, snow bank page. we

melt overnight. time forgets

itself.