Books, Boots, and the Blank Page
We’ve been dumped unceremoniously
into library’s book drop
pages splayed, crumpled, exposed
left on airplanes in the pouch next
We’ve been dumped unceremoniously
into library’s book drop
pages splayed, crumpled, exposed
left on airplanes in the pouch next
Toes up—will I be ready to ascend?
The world of dirt and roots is at my back,
and though I feel my shoulders twist and bend
as if I have to carry it, in fact
I know I’ll reach a day to step away.
Face up, a shrug will loosen all these straps,
reversing all their gravity. I’ll pray
for levity, to dump all my perhaps.
When I rehearse this passage late at night,
face down beneath the blanket of my fate,
I wrestle with the darkness in the dive.
But mercy rolls me over, up towards light,
laid out like this and rinsed of all that weight,
when I’ll be hearsed, so ready to go live.
With no new information, only time,
I shuffle memories with a few old photographs.
The camera that we rarely took along—
or someone’s—caught us, here and there.
They wait in the fridge with sprouting garlic
and baggies of curry leaves, a season
trapped beneath their skin like a jinn.
No one eats them, yet we keep stocking up
Cheese dies, you know? Not like forever
as an entity. More like a family phasing out of existence
from genes gone awry, uncalibrated miscalculations,
horrible matches in matrimony, substandard maintenance,
perhaps climate change.
woven from threads of laughter
and acceptance.
The cloth has worn thin in places,
age, pressure and loss the culprits.
The moths of despair fed
on the weave of fellowship.
Somewhere between ‘oh, no’ and ‘oh, well’
the verdict falls: you won’t have any kids.
I watched a show on endangered penguins
that yearly breed in a South African town
Forget the trick of shading your eyes,
giving a half-whistle over your shoulder,
tilting your head a few inches to the left.
You will not be mentioned, not among
the fat and groaning with jewels,
The dogs of war sniff at our heels.
And every canine fang craves meat.
The bell of forgiveness rarely peels.
Streams run red. There’s nothing to eat.
I see you darn the autumn air
at the lake’s edge,
back and forth,
back and forth,
as if the fabric of sunlight