Baby and the Bright Machine
We sing and strum another round
––bees, cows, the shepherd’s stars––
it’s not taxing, not like expounding
toxins on the whiff of new carpets.
Folk-talk is tainted, though, by bubble sheet
and super glue, the chink of heavy metal.
A filly, a folly. Old MacDonald weeds
by aerial misting, a suitable cocktail
for risky exposures. Lace up the shoe.
In the dale, the fiddle, the flute
and all my colors––green, red, and blue.
A medley of symptoms, delayed and acute.
We clear our throats and finish adroitly
with the cat in the snow, A-B-C, a drift-away.
Reading at Night
in a house in which no one stirs
warlords come and go
a detainee recants a forced confession
women bring solar lights to the village
a father waves a hand
irrevocable
earth spins its flustered cities
snow squalls and deserts
scent of lilacs––
wind knocks the house
where we breathe
the wanted and unwanted words
Hungry Ghost
Noting that hunger has stalled before his atrophied
mouth, we want to say, “Eat and drink. Take the food
set out in the leafy courtyard!” But
how do you feed hunger?
And the man shuffles
to his office. (Did we
hear him scream?)
Anatomy of Song
It’s neither box nor cord, but vocal folds
that waver and constrict. Tones nitch
into skull and mandible, each bone’s
aspect sensitive to vowel and pitch.
When sound turns public, voice is heard:
its timbre offers lesser resonance––
the outer voice estranged from what emerged
within the body. Air columns balance
on a taut pelt, the diaphragm skirts
the thorax for laughing spells and ululation.
Breath turns inside out in small spurts
of utterance, aims for an aria’s intonation,
a purer interval––but vocal folds are fretless,
compromised. So, ease it into air––a passage.
Thinking Potatoes
French Fingerlings. Magic Molly.
In a shallow box by the window
this year’s tubers warm to the thought
of growing. They understand fertility
as a sequence of moves. Fuzzy sprouts
push from the dust-shriveled skin,
eyes urge toward an opening.
Obliging, I will place each tuber
into the soil of their dark-days
like others before me––a line of planters
who have bent over shallow trenches,
who have hilled and watered
and in summer marveled at elegant plants
bearing white and purple blooms.
The strength of these earth companions––
to burrow down and resurrect.
In the Andes, the world-mother is offered
a meal and a sprinkling of chicha.
Does she fathom the depth of our hunger?
Cradled in my hand, this nightshade
offers something like a future.
