Just got this in the mail. Some real great poems from some great writers. I was lucky enough to be included. Here are the three that they chose from me, thanks editors!:
Big Idea
He clutches the gas pump
nozzle in his hand like a gun,
swings it carelessly.
She thinks he's pretending
to be an adult, an adult
cowboy. Perhaps he doesn't
know how to drive, even breathe.
She watches the woman in the
far parking lot put her child in
the car-seat. The wind comes up
from the California grasslands
and the whole car smells like
gasoline, one easy-strike match
away from orange salvation,
one quick-lit wish to make
a sound so loud even the dead
could hear her booming.
Diagnosis: Even the Stillaguamish River Cannot Stop Time
Your cat has dragged a dead bird onto the porch again.
Fragments of its dull wings still hang in the air, the real live
wind brings a cold rain up from the Sound. Your hands
are wet; time moves too fast. Things were easier earlier,
when the Snow Goose was open for business and the sun
lay its original light all up and down the Stillaguamish River.
Everything, now, is an interrogation. Why this bird? Why
this interruption, soaked to the bone? The river is still there—
steady and cunning with current. It does not answer,
but it loves the conversation; it is both the cat and the bird.
It is at once your body dissolved in this rain and your
beautiful wet hands trying to hold onto water.
The Barer the Bones
Centered in the streets
under clouds of miscalculation,
I’m taking off my creature-drapes
for the record. The primary
animal is not as upset as
the one we are told to be
(the electronics we are tied to—
our sudden lack of atmosphere).
Be a doll and get the door,
remove the cross from its hinges.
The mountains are all gone
around here, all done and gone,
even the sea is trapped in a plastic
bag stuck in a tree, some flawed
trash-bird we have made
of our own poor boredom.
Let’s go find the unusualness,
the great giant wonder,
the lasso that brought down
the last remaining metal mean.
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