The Reckoning 2014 - The Glory of Failure

I've always been terrible at making goals, at least formally. Writing them down, actually looking at them again, and giving an account are not my cup of tea. But a year ago I sat down and made a hefty set of 2014 goals, and I actually stretched myself (not something I enjoy much). Since actually having pulled off a handful of them (7 of 23, I believe) is a big deal (for me), I decided it was worth a few minutes of blog time to give an accounting of my successful and not-so-successful 2014 goals.

I broke my goals into seven categories: Spiritual, Physical, Social, Professional, Creative, Educational, Personal. I set three goals for each category, with a fourth in the Creative (because I need it) and Social (because I'm good at it) categories.

I won't go into every goal, but here are a few highlights of my successes and failure.

SUCCESS

 



My biggest success came from the goal that I made somewhat facetiously: Get Married. I'm not going to write the whole story (Hannabeth would want to read over my shoulder to clarify...pretty much everything), but it was a crazy whirlwind of awesomeness and I'm more surprised than anyone. For the record, my other goals in the Social category were to host two parties (check) and go on multiple out-of-state road trips (Quebec and North Carolina). Life is nuts (see also: awesome).

 

Creative goals kept me on my toes this year. Not having gotten into PhD programs the last few years isn't the end of the world (although sometimes it feels like it from April to, like, July) because my MFA is a terminal degree. The trick to getting a job would be to publish a book, which is a project that's a few years out. During the year I will generally choose a month or three to write a poem a day, but I one-upped that by making poem-a-day 2014. Holy project. I haven't really gone back to revise or submit them (journal submission was another goal [tried for 100] that fell short).

 

I'm getting bored, so I know you're getting bored, so my other successes were to get to know a co-worker (fellow poet Colin Halloran, who is rad), getting into habit of going to bed before midnight (try 9pm), and win a writing prize (thanks, Twitter).

 

FAILURE

 

I'm pretty awesome at failure, so it's going first. Of the seven categories, I failed two entirely: Spiritual and Educational. It hurts to admit that. Spiritual goals were:

1. Attend the temple once a month (if you're not a Mormon, feel free to ask)
2. Re-read Preach My Gospel, which I have hardly touched in a decade.
3. Read the Old Testament

Temple attendance is always going on my goal list. I have never done it enough, and once a month is totally doable. PMG is easy enough, but I may switch texts for 2015. Jesus the Christ is another one I've meant to return to (so good). As for the Old Testament, I didn't read the whole thing, but I read most of Genesis with my wife. So the way it's worded I could maybe count that. Spiritual stuff is tough on a number of levels, so it's going to be a focus next (well, this) year.

 

Education-wise, I kind of shot myself in the foot. One of my goals was to get into a PhD program or apply for next fall by Halloween. Getting into school is out of my hands once the applications are in (should have made a better goal) and I took on a third adjunct position at Bunker Hill Community College (had zero time, but biked the crap out of Boston). I'ma spend more time on this category for 2015 goals.

 

I also didn't learn to paint or sculpt, nor did I make my reading goal. The reading goal was hefty: 30 books of poetry and 20 novels or at least not-poetry books. I got 13 books of poetry, and finished the 20th novel last night at 3am (2014 ain't over until I go to sleep. Didn't you know I am Father Time?). So that's half the goal. I actually counted wrong (stupid math) and thought I had 19 novels, but I pulled off that piece of the goal. That being said, here's the fastest succession of 34 book reviews you'll ever read:

 

Poetry (I put this one first so you might actually read it):

1. Silverchest by Carl Phillips - Love like three poems, hated about half, ripped three out of the book, got great poems out of my experience..
2. Genius Loci by Lance Larsen - Best book of poetry I had read in ages.
3. Skirmish by Dobby Gibson - Not nearly as good as It Becomes You, but enjoyable.
4. Black Box by Erin Belieu - Liked it less than her other stuff, but she's consistently great.
5. Dancing in Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky - No surprise that this guy is famous. Brilliant collection.
6. Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil - Snore. All the poems sounded the same.
7. Into Daylight by Jeffrey Harrison - Made me feel things.
8. Distant Early Warning by Rad Smith - Published posthumously. Everyone should read it.
9. Faithful and Virtuous Night by (my girl) Louise Gluck - Read it before it won its awards. I want to be her when I grow up.
10. A House Waiting for Music by David Hernandez - Don't remember much. Good
11. The History of Forgetting by Lawrence Raab - Texted these poems to friends. Love him.
12. Strong Is Your Hold by Galway Kinnell - Mind blowing. Everything he writes is mind blowing.

Fiction

1. The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl - Not bad. Better if you love Dante and know Boston (which I do).
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger - Annoying as all get out. Sucked.
3. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman - Love, love, love this collection of essays. You should all read it.
4. Moby Dick by Herman Melville - So good.
5. East of Eden by John Steinbeck - Best Steinbeck by a long shot. Worth the million pages.
6. Cain by Jose Saramago - If you read this, read it before blindness. If you never read it, you'll live.
7. Harry Potter (the entire series, 7 books) by J. K. Rowling - Snape is better in the movies, but it's not hard to see why this was so popular.
8. Blindness by Jose Saramago - So much to say about this book, so difficult to express it all.
9. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - Beautifully written, but once that wears off (about chapter 3) it's drivel.
10. 1984 by George Orwell - High school book I never read. One Rage Against the Machine song makes more sense now, which pleases me.
11. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy - Literally could not put this down. This guy is so good.
12. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer - Movie is 100 times better.
13. Ninja by John Man - Such a let down. I'll save you the read: ninjas did almost nothing, and Japan has a history of dudes that start things, die, and someone else finishes them.
14. The Hunger Games by Susanne Collins - Enjoyed this as much as the movie. Know the others will go downhill, but I gotta know what happens.

 

 

2015

 

I haven't set up my goals for 2015 yet, but I realized that if I make a goal to blog more all I have to do is post them and I'm set. Can't decide whether I'll add a category or tone down the goal making, but here's to a new year for more failure.









Concerning Poetry - Writing Process Chain Letter

This week (I hope I’m not too late!) my good friend Sophie Grimes invited me to try this blog post (hello, blogosphere, I’ve [kinda] missed you!). It’s a chain letter of sorts, and I almost never spend any time considering the impetus of my own writing, so I said yes. I teach in 45 minutes, so this will be an exercise in time management (another of my non-strengths).


Sophie and I were poetry mates in Boston University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. We have very much stayed in touch, and Sophie is going to do great things with her work. My favorite memory—among so many—with Sophie is when I dropped by her grandparent’s plum farm/homestead in Iowa (Iowa, right, Sophie?) on one of my Boise-to-Boston road trips. It was a bit of a spur of the moment, but Sophie was an amazing host. She introduced me to her friends, made me macaroni and cheese, and we went swimming in the man-made lake down the hill. As I was leaving she handed me a heavy paper bag and said, "I am going to give you plums, because that is what poet friends do." Needless to say, the plums were delicious and I wrote a poem about that day.


"Enough with the preliminaries and now on to the main event!" –Hades, in Disney’s Hercules

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON?

Man alive, what am I not working on? Composition has never been the difficult part of poetry in my case. During the MFA program, and once or thrice afterward, I created what I very creatively call "Poem-a-day February)—because, let’s face it, if you’re going to write a poem a day for a month February is the month of choice. Anyways, once I got used to that I decided that I’m insane, so I dubbed this year "Poem-a-day 2014." I’m a few days behind (I play catch up sometimes), but so far I’ve done it. Which puts me at something like 250+ poems this year. Which is insanity. However, according to my personalized law of poetic averages, that means about 6–7 of them are good.


If you think that’s a commitment, sit ye down. In addition to Poem-a-day 2014, I’m chipping away at my haiku blog, Ten Thousand Haiku. I started the project a few years ago when one of my three part-time jobs was translating medical websites. For whatever reason, I got a corner office with a view, and I had been watching fall turn to winter and winter continue being hell on earth. So I decided to start a project where I would write 10,000 haiku in as many days. I’ll do the math for you: 27 years and 3 months—a few months longer than how old I was when I started. I keep most of the rules of haiku written in English (5-7-5 syllable count, seasonal word, conflicting but congruent images, etc.) and jot them down in my phone or on the back of my hand until I can get them on the blog. It’s been an amazing experience so far and I’m almost to 1,000 haiku. The project keeps me adept in my "seeing" of the world, and it makes me feel like I’m doing something poetic when I’m not writing as much as I’d like to (which, this year, is not the case, I suppose).


On top of the insane amount of composition, I’m also working on revising my first book-length manuscript, applying to contests when money allows, and reading as much as I can for ideas.

HOW DOES YOUR WORK DIFFER FROM OTHER WRITERS OF THIS GENRE?

This question contributes to the reasons I never consider my own poetry. Good golly. I’m assuming we’re talking the genre of poetry, in which case I don’t know that it does differ from other writers. I’m for sure not Alan Ginsberg (thankfully), but I also imitate so much, both consciously and subconsciously, that it’s difficult to separate myself. So I will dodge the question a bit and tell you poets that I do write like. I’ll narrow it to three: David Ferry, Lance Larsen, and Lawrence Raab. These three, besides being white dudes like me, are the poets who have written work that I have been trying to write. In Ferry’s case, his poem "October," (link is safe, you can click it) from his incredible collection Bewilderment, was the finished version of a poem I had started months before his book came out. And I wasn’t even disappointed. I was just amazed. My work differs from David’s work in that my work is entirely inferior. Given, he’s been writing for three times longer than I’ve been alive and I was blessed to take a course from him at BU, but still. So much to shoot for. As for the other two, and other poets (I’m looking at you, Mary Ruefle), my work differs from theirs in that it is my own. I feel that I have a very valid take on the world—or at least present a valid view of the world—and I spend a lot of time simply writing like myself (also not different from other writers). I’m going to start babbling, so I’ll say this: whether or not others feel my work differs from that of other writers, my work is informed by a reverence for the natural world. This place we live fascinates the daylights out of me, and I try to present that fascination in my poetry. Reverence for the commonplace. Now there’s a title.

WHY DO YOU WRITE WHAT YOU DO?

I think I accidentally just answered this question. At least partially. Sophie was right on in her answer: I can’t do anything else. I’ve tried all sorts of writing, but I can’t produce anything longer than a poem. For a long time I saw that as a limitation, but I’m starting to come around to the fact that it is perfectly fine to have a niche. Thinking a bit longer about it, I think I write what I do because I have a chip on my shoulder. I find value in what I create and I couldn’t care less if others find value in it (yeah right, please publish meeeeee!). I want to carve my own space into the world of creative writing, and poetry is the best way I know how to do so. It’s what I want to write. I’ve often told people that I don’t have the patience for fiction. This is true, but I also don’t think like a fiction writer. I don’t want to develop themes and meaning and build characters; I want to punch people in the gut with things that they should have seen in the first place. When I started writing poetry, the audience mattered to me. If the poem wasn’t funny and people didn’t laugh then I was doing something wrong. My wonderful mentor at BYU, Susan Howe, and the MFA program at BU pulled me out of that rut (thank you) and poetry has become about me and the moment. I write what I do because that’s what comes out when I set pen to paper. Poetry is a much more immediate medium than other types of writing, and that appeals to me immensely.

HOW DOES YOUR WRITING PROCESS WORK?

First facetious thought to come to mind: it doesn’t. My writing process is all over the place, and as soon as I tell you what it is I’ll realize I was lying. So I’ll answer by saying that it depends on the conditions. Regardless of what is happening, I have to take a time out and sit down to write a poem. This becomes difficult when I come up with an idea in the real world—when I’m teaching, right before bed, the second I lose my pen, etc.). I write by hand and use the computer. Both appeal to me for different reasons. Writing by hand keeps me in the moment and allows me to pace myself and see the poem unfolding before it does (I write much slower than I think). When I’m on the computer, I can let the ideas flow, with the added bonus of revising as I go. I’m not one for revision, so the computer really works well for me in that way (anecdotal comparison: another classmate of ours, Dan Kraines, would hand us poem draft number 11 or 12 in workshop. I once made it to poem draft 5 and I thought I was gonna die.).


My ideas usually come from outside sources. I will do something innocent—something like hearing a sentence, reading a line of poetry, or attending a reading—and a line or image will pop into my head. Sometimes I can build around it, but generally I wait until I have a few of these ideas or blurbs on paper and try to build connections between them. This simplifies the process for me, particularly because I write short poems. I’m also super big on titles (slight apologies for the non sequitur), and I like my titles to be one word long if I can help it. So I usually start with a blank piece of paper and write "Poem" at the top. When the poem is finished and given a once-over, I title it as best I can. There’s no real rhyme or reason to it, I simply like the way it works for and against the poem (for an idea of what I’m going for, see Louise Glück’s poem "Happiness."


Many, many thanks to Sophie for this prompt. It’s been too long since I blogged, and I now a bit more about myself and her. Bonus. Time is up, so I’m going to invite my other favorite classmate from BU (we’ll keep it in the family), Lisa Hiton, to write the next installment of this writing process chain letter. Lisa is probably the most insightful person close to my age when it comes to considering and identifying what makes a poem click and how to create meaning. I really want to hear what she has to say, not to mention how she says it. In the mean time, you can find her on her legit website (makin' me jealous).

Tupelo Press 30/30 Project - Poems 16–20

Poem 16

Gradient

  

A storm petrel flutters

over choppy water, flicking

drops into the sky

that touch the waves

any number of places

invisible in this wind.

All fear and softness,

the bird’s body gives

muscle a rest, expanding,

bracing its hollow bones

against the moving air

hoping, if birds hope,

land of any type

makes its way through

the shifting horizon, arriving

sooner than tomorrow’s dark.

I want to yell

into the coastal fog,

tell the storm petrel

it is not much

better here on shore:

turn back, the mindless

mist remains in spite

of all our striving.

But the wind sweeps

all my warnings out

to sea, performs again

the ritual ripping away

it knows so well.

Almost extinct, the bird

feels things inside it

tilt now, almost tumbling

out of their places.

This is the moment

I start walking again

farther into something not

water and not rock.

The storm petrel cries

or sings a note.

It punctures, hovers, fails.

_____________________

Poem 17

Density

It is not the opening of eyes but the opening of blinds

to snow that starts this day. I roll over, quietly naming

things not in this room: carpet, food, a body’s rearranging

of sheets in a different direction than that I rolled.

Heat is held back by the door, an inch of cold hovering

inside the threshold. I reach for the handle, the only exit

emptying into another inside. It turns the same way

as always, it barely fits the curve of my hand, quietly

holding in or holding out, I do not know which.

Twist and pull—the balancing begins: one air curdling

into another, wood floor catching light in new angles,

something quietly moving that is not me. Not even close.

___________________________________________

Poem 18

Make it Sunday

I need not describe it

in terms of loneliness. It is a depth,

approximate at best, a center

housed in a body defined

in relation to foreign things.

_________________________

Poem 19

Paraselene

A slope rises to the horizon, only a few inches from my face

if this were a painting. I would say that the snow glitters

but snow only covers, and it’s a flimsy dusting at that.

I want to name the snow, to call it you because it is

cold—it is a cliché falling from the sky, barely

less obvious than the moon, which has itself

changed shapes since last night. On the road

I can see the aftermath of wind silhouetted

against the asphalt: the shadows of things

more substantial than they themselves.

Out there almost no headway awaits.

Test your weight. The surface holds

a moment, then splits: a tilted body

sinks, stops, steps again knowing

each future footfall sinks anew.

I could turn back to see all

the hollow proofs of flight,

but all the sunken scars

I leave this landscape

point up the slope

to me, a traveler

who feels, but

does not hear

the quiet

filling.

___________________________________

Poem 20

Utterance

                 —For Maggie

May the wall crack

your back. May retreat

find you screaming

without artifice,

without guile.

This is the art of sacrifice:

not a hole—a shift

in the heart, a pulling

toward something

outside

the body, an animal weight

jamming the chest, breath

the only struggle. That other

blood-filled body

pulses just like yours.

May you be the foreign object

splintered into wood.

May your skin break.

Tupelo Press 30/30 Project - Poems 11–15

Poem 11

[Under Revision]

_____________________________________

Poem 12

Winter Morning Walk

The wind biting

one side of cars,

every cross street

pushing it under

your coat, swirling

around the torso,

up through the arms.

Bad circulation pilfers

blood from your fingers

sooner than last season.

This must be

getting old. Plod

uphill, the bus stop

funnels the wind chill

in either direction.

Cold, inescapable cold

tightens the skin:

you know right where

your keys are. Clenching,

unclenching hands,

lowering the chin

to breathe the warm air

out, hang the wetness

leaving the body,

a promise of more

cold to come

but not now. Now

there is waiting.

This is not new.

Lately the letters

do not return

in the same month

you sent them,

not even months

that end in embers.

At this point

you could not

lick the stamp for fear

it will not stick.

But this is not

the hard part;

the hard part is seeing

soil harden, glass snap,

water turning white

and cracking underfoot,

a type and shadow

for skin, your skin.

_____________________

Poem 13

Blight

Snowflakes fall

through the night-colored windows

into and out of sight,

unaffecting from your looking place

where you raise your eyes,

lowering them again into so many words,

symbols of senseless things

never caught at the end of a tongue,

never melted in breath,

their comings and goings unknown

to the world’s insides.

________________________________

Poem 14

Setting

This evening holds nothing extraordinary. Not even the chives in my soup

are restless. All the major religions have heads on their shoulders again

and the pilot lights to all my old flames have gone out the open window.

I even had time to read today—a book, even. Imagine reading a book.

I met the author in college, a friend of a friend. She was older. Forty-something

pages into not being able to put her down, I read a letter she had chopped

into lines. It set me somewhere between spotting her name on a poster and peeking

through the blinds when I knew she’d be naked. Those hormones have ebbed,

mostly. She tells me about the moon: we are forlorn, she says, thanks to her place

in the sky, drawn to her majesty precisely because we can see it. There is no reflection

not conceding its surface to her at some angle. I was thinking about her tonight, wondering

which of my windows she’s chosen to smear as the soup steams itself back to sleep.

________________________________________________________________

Poem 15


Visible

A nearly full moon
Layers of ice under snow
Your breath in the air

Tupelo Press 30/30 Project - Poems 6–10

I am floored at the wonderful response I've gotten for this project. I've already got enough donations and pledges to be over my goal, so a huge thanks to everyone who has my back. Seriously.

I've decided to put the poems on this blog every five days, so here are poems 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. If you want to see them as they come up, you can still see each one on the day it is written by clicking here and scrolling down.

~

Poem 6

Waking

In the second dream, a bird pilfers

all of the scraps from my desk.

None of the typing ceases or slows.

Unfamiliar but comfortable, this place

takes its grayness for granted, even outside

the rooftops nearly disappear

in fog. Dropping into half-veiled places,

chirping once, the bird only wants to be

found. Another someone supplanted

here takes notice, moving backward

despite the nature of walls (useless:

the sky is right there) remaining the same.

The bird and the other someone are quiet

now. It is time. That something moving

inside the pillow is your heart

keeping cadence, thick like a hollow bone.

_______________________________________

Poem 7

Flight

Rolling over, a train

in motion, silence:

these are all the ways I move

away from you.

________________________________

Poem 8

Windburn

Received unwillingly, a warmness under

skin confuses the body. Closed

eyes veil the room: you have not left,

no, the place has shifted in neglect.

Do not speak to me of want.

Every rearranging understands itself

in relation to the floor, window lit

on certain mornings. A man passes

my house, a grocery bag in tow.

He passes every day, the same burden

in his fingers. There is something

he does not wish to carry into night

let alone tomorrow. You are enough

whatever it is you want for today

for both of us. You can take these words

for granted, if you wish.

I will catch the singeing scraps,

impaling every one, a sapling.

___________________________________

Poem 9

Splintered Things

We become these things. Or rather,

we turn these things to pulp, ingest them

in some form or another, and carry on.

Never mind this piece of paper

spent years rooted among its cousins

in a forest or part of a forest that endured

so many fires and the exploding cold

only an arid winter understands,

the closest it ever came to touching

the other trees (not counting wind)

being when squirrel leapt from its neighbor,

bending its branch with the unfamiliar

weight of a body built for climbing.

Never mind that at all. It is nothing

like grasping a hoarfrosted fencepost

hoping what pours forth is not blood.

___________________________________

Poem 10

Revision

            —for Anie

the knife in position

the body’s division

the mind’s indecision

eyes shadowed, masks

the body’s rescission

the mind’s imposition

the knife in decision

bleeder

the mind’s indecision

the knife in precision

the body’s derision

incision, excision, suture, and out

Tupelo Press 30/30 Project (Scroll Down for the First 5 Poems)

Hi Kids,

I've just started a month long poetry marathon called the Tupelo Press 30/30 project. I’m going to write a new poem every day in December and all of them will appear on the project website (you can see my face here and find the poems somewhere in here [or just scroll down in this post]).

The project is also a fundraiser to help Tupelo Press do what they do (printing interesting books, defending the cause of poetry, validating my existence, etc.), so I made a goal to raise $400 through the course of the month.

I hate, hate, hate asking for money, so to ease my conscience a bit I'm offering a bit of a payback system for anybody who wants to help:

• A $15 donation gets you a poem dedication (I'll write "For ______" at the beginning of the poem).
• A $20 donation will get you a poem written about you or the subject of your choosing.
• A $35 donation will get you the above, plus I will write and send you your own poem (a new one that won't appear on the site).
• A $50 donation will get you the above, plus a kiss, and I will write the new poem on fancy paper and mail it to you so you can keep it forever (Christmas presents, people), AND I will send you a hand made chapbook of all 31 poems when I finish.
• A $99 donation gets you all of the above and 9 books of your choosing from Tupelo Press.

If you want to do one of these ^ please let me know and I will write you down. First come, first served.

~

There are three ways to donate:

1 - Subscribe to Tupelo Press by going HERE, filling everything out, and remembering to put my name in the "comments" field.

• You get 9 books for $99. You can choose the 2013 series, another year's series, or just handpick 9 books that sound good to you.

2 - Complete the Tupelo Press Donation Form by going HERE, filling everything out, and remembering to put my name in the "honor" field.

• You can choose the amount (be sure to tell me if you're over $15 so I can give you your reward) and submit it.

3 - Donate Using PayPal by going HERE, clicking on the orange link that says "Quick Donation via PayPal," and remembering to put my name in the "message" field.

• Yay.

You can get a tax receipt for items 2 & 3 (not 1, since you get 9 books) by providing your mailing address when you donate.

~

Please don't feel any pressure whatsoever to donate. If nothing else, just follow the poems and enjoy your December.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Poem 1


December

Not long ago, the wind was full
of things: leaves mostly, occasionally
a plastic bag. It filled them
the way wind does, imitating water  

and, some nights, pausing

to consider itself, accidentally

sharing with the ground
all the once wind-filled things.

Morning makes its way

through my skeleton, the wind blows

what’s left of the unseen sunrise

into my unprotected eyes.

Keep your finality, I can still see

through you and into the future.

______________________________________________
Poem 2


Cover

     —For Chellee

A song that is not your own

picks its way through a crowd

almost shrouded at the edge of one

fire’s reach. The outdoor amphitheater

lends itself to leaning forward,

a patient strumming at the tipping point.

This is all of us: landlocked.

Here the boundaries are built of dirt,

there are two tomorrows, stars

in their normal places and farther

downhill and through the trees

more stars bounce off the lake.

Between verses I remember

you are left handed: some would say

your guitar is strung backward

but your fingers fit the chord

without a first glance, the way the blind read

braille, another language we don’t speak.

A song is no religion, but close

enough to soften rocks

or at least coax them from the water

you have chosen for your backdrop.

Silence keeps the secret of itself

in the tree line. The fire burns.

If we waited long enough

you could show us the size of darkness.

_________________________________________

Poem 3

Bound

The crosswalk lines, newly painted

in a warmer month, dissolve.
That is no way to say it
but to say decay is too much
against the shadows stretching
into what was once an afternoon.
I am the only quiet thing
left in this city. I want to sleep
the way I always sleep: curled
away from nothing or something
without a heartbeat. Not now.
Around the corner a house (not yellow
enough to be yellow, too yellow
to call it cream) sits. That is all.
It sits. On the other side of a fence
two tennis nets sag, the weight of color
lifted long ago, the way it leaves
the beards of young men and every tree
that has not learned of permanence
through release. I am nearly home.
There, where the yard starts, movement
pried my gaze from the concrete once:
I thought it might have been a bird

choosing not to fly away in fear.

It was a leaf, something heavier

holding it down just enough, too much.

___________________________________________
 
Poem 4, which contains a secret message.

I’ll Call You Back

                    —For Danielle (You asked for it.)

 Certain duties have me

Restrained for the time being.
After dinner I was forced to
Poop in someone else’s house.

Ordinarily, I’d stay on the line, but

Ring me in fifteen?

Going here is all off. I’m impeded,

Every side an obstacle: a crotch-encroaching sink,
Toilet paper disorientation, texts.

Oh, my feet have fallen asleep

Five minutes sooner than normal.
Fear settles in. Is someone outside?

That was a footstep. They know I’m here.

Hum and haw, run the water, pray it doesn’t
Echo.

Press forward, push onward, forget

Or repress the phone-sized splash in my panic:

The door isn’t locked.

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Poem 5, whose title has two meanings.

Syncope

In darkness I feel the human desire

to diagram the heart, an artist’s
rendering, beautiful and incomplete
enough to label the ruptures without
naming them. It is possible
to feel guilty for being wronged. Try
catharsis in the old sense of the word:
sketch the necks of geese.
I stole that line from a gallery—
it fled an open mouth, I found it
in the stealing place. I wrote it down.
When I kneel at my bed at night
I do not ask for justice. Justice hovers
out of focus, out of sight.

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