six months round II

updates on poems coming soon. here's the second draft of "six months" but there is another one in the making:



Six Months



—when you woke me up midmorning,


put a pot of flowers on the nightstand,


set down two humble cups of coffee,


and handed me a mango.


It was hard and I held it with the same grip


I hold dreams when I awake to feel them


miscarriaging inside me.


I don't know how to pick them, you said,

but it smells sweet, we can wait for it, I know

it will take you to a place set deep in your eyes.

It was firm and unready, protected and sapless, waiting


for the right moment to immolate itself, sacrifice it's


sweet juices for my need to taste.





In its thick skin, its tart flesh, is the moment


in Couva just before the winds, Laurence the bus driver

and I
beneath the mango trees, hungry, picking


the hanging red and green bulbs with our eyes,


watching them bend those thin young boughs.


By our feet are mangoes bruised, rotting,

tree sap dripped on them like fossilized tears.

We do not dig through these; we wait—

knowing what we want will come.





The mango is ripening now on my nightstand.

I will wake you up early tomorrow, when the sun crisps


in the far eastern angle of my room, almost shadowing us.


We will not use knives. We will not care


about the white sheets and the yellow mess of death,


the memory bitten into, the skin peeled back,



Laurence and I under the mango trees in the wind,

fruits falling like stars or dreams or shoes kicked


off the side of the bed. Laurence and I


catching and laughing and yelling. You and I


laughing and biting and sucking. We will not worry.

Place of Trees

Place of Trees a tarot card poem

for Mary


I didn't believe you when you said

these trees are hollow.

"They stack the little ones inside the big ones, that's

how they get their rings."

When I disagreed you asked me if I'd ever

killed one myself, swung this axe I carry

like a trumpeteer carries his instrument, and struck

one down in a blow. I hadn't.

But you gave me flowers anyway, to remind me

we are simply mermaids ventured too far,

that neither of us know a thing about bark, leaves

broken roots rebelling against this dry earth.

I throw up my axe in thanks and it hums

as it reaches to cut the blood orange

from the sky. In this place of trees

everything casts a shadow. Some are big,

hard, full of air and sorrow and unknowing.

And some, if we let go of all we have,

are the sweetest gifts we can give.

burn collector, and elegy

Burn Collector

elegy for Devon Risley




I've been asked to write a poem about food and I think:

Blackbean burgers. Devon. The desert.

I think: That first night, dancing around the kitchen

to Billy Idol, realizing over pots of beans

and fried vegetables and mush that we are doomed

to a sad, inevitable friendship. The kind that starts

and ends in the same place, with the same existential

mantra, the same cheap, sustaining food. The kind

that chokes on a gunshot hallucination

with my feet quaking in a kitchen

in some city 3,000 miles away

like a fisherman feeling a coming tsunami.



I'm supposed to write about food and I think:

can they make liquid smoke out of any smoke?

Throw a bag over to catch, condense,

would they filter a soul out of gunsmoke

and soldered skin before bottling? I pour anyway.

The vegetables pop and sizzle in the heat.

I can sense their sticking in the pan but my hands

are filmed with bean paste and tonight

I am cooking alone.



This is the loss I never prepare for—

three a.m. in a kitchen in Pittsburgh, liquid smoke

spilt on the table, Devon evaporated somewhere

I can't taste, and I just wish there was another

set of hands to scrape the vegetables, patty

the burgers, fry and stack.



I can't think about food. The burgers

aren't spiced right when I make them alone,

some vital hot is gone. The roasting

green chilis turning and crisping in a nearby

parking lot, flavoring the early autumn air

cannot be replaced by some bottle,

some synthetic effigy. I leave the mess

on the table and pull a chair for it to drip onto.



I think: I'm losing my mind. Devon and I

sat for hours that first night, this last one,

two drippy messes sitting at a table eating burgers,

writing poetry. And one of us is thinking too much

and the other isn't doing enough.