What is mine

It’s a mine field
Of yours and mine
An incendiary device
Of language
An improvised explosive
That renders me
Silent

Walking

A human walking among
Grass blades and whispers
Where time is not measured
By seconds’ relentless beat or
Google Calendar’s bleating
But by the light’s falling on
Water as it ripples away
By the morning glory’s offering
By the warmth of your skin
On the creases of my hand

Fireflies

In the night of dark skies
Stars scattered across the meadow
In their flickering June ritual
Wood frog woodwinds freezing mid-measure
The conductor stilled by
The trance of the mating lights

When we were innocent

My grandmother shredded boiled beef
— Knife silver with a truncated blade
Rust at the fracture site
Straight cut replacing the curve
Handle a heavy funhouse mirror —
For my grandfather in his bed
Paralyzed, mute, eyes piercing, whiskers sharp
Smells of lye soap and resignation
Coarse in the living room

People pour into our communal flat
Whispers, vodka, stuffed eggs,
Salami with pickle wedges
My mother’s late-night battle
After work and before suspicion
Towers over me with no eye contact
A brush of fingers a silent “no more”
(Walks in park, fishing)
At seven I know the rules
Such things are not spoken
In those days we were
To remain innocent

Tea

With a twist of lemon
Squeezing your tongue
A cup of tea — a shallow there-there
True like a cut when the skin
Bleeds its invisible wound
A beheaded ritual
Comforting as forgiveness
Delivered grudgingly

A promising start

Dancing this dance forever
Question, expectation, answer —
Satisfaction, closure, sigh
Each one’s investment in survival

Satellites around this kitchen table
Rarely crossing orbits
Still here in this same conversation
The start was so promising

Poetry has to wait

She didn’t know how to speak poetry. Her words were concrete like buildings, heavy, poorly proportioned. She wasn’t at home in this language.

The architecture of her life didn’t allow for more beauty, though she craved it. She often felt like she was locked in a dark room without any air circulation, that she could suffocate there, choke on the syllables as they passed her throat.

No matter how much she kicked the door or shook the handle, they were as unyielding as her thoughts, dense as cement.

When she tried to scream, only a chime came out, tempered, timed, controlled. She could hear the faint sounds in her head, but couldn’t figure out how to vocalize them — they got stuck on the assembly line of her family, education, life, in short, a life she built deliberately and with purpose.

She wanted to take a wrecking ball to it all, but she couldn’t recall where she had put it. For now, poetry would have to wait.

Return

Once again we climb. We are not the shrinking kind — we face and we persevere. We claw and bleed and claw again. And sometimes there is a breath that leads us to ourselves.

Where does the truth lie? Is it nestled between the blades of grass in the ancient dirt of my homeland? Is it in the dust particles swirling in the setting sun onto the piano keys?

Tears and toil and terror are all guides. They blaze the path with their specific signatures which we can decipher only after we have seen ourselves.

Glory be to those who walk this path recognizing the mountain and the tree and the wind. They will inherit the earth and the heavens once they have tasted their solitary return.

A fleshy return

Branches nod their assent, the leaves ambivalent. What if you find yourself in a marble statue or a tile or a Grecian urn? The ink isn’t even dry yet, but you are.

But then again, here is proof of existence. Ashes and bone living side by side, blurred borders loitering freely. Is this ecumenical justice or just poetry?

What is the smell of eternity? A sea breeze punches me in the face and I am smitten by its transparent ardor. Memory falls off its hinges and gets trampled by stampeding pachyderms.

This mud is slippery and abundant; it is like cement. I am reborn, occiput anterior, an ostrich doing its job. What flutters at the limit of this chaos but a fleshy return to an idea?