The big melt: the icicles
we marveled scare the cat
as they come crashing.
Barefoot under the pergola
as the mountain lurches
toward spring, and
my parents’ Christmas
wreaths remain stacked
on an island of snow.
The path hides patches
of ice in the shade, and
the birds still roost
in the evergreen,
flap at my passing.
When the snow came,
it stopped us, and now
that it is going, we tiptoe
past the patches toward
the green. Winter bows out
only after our surrender.
Icicles I cracked for stirrers
snap and drip from gutters,
and sunlit evenings
are on their way.
I pick sage barefoot
in the garden in snow–
serve fried eggs and polenta,
my father’s Italian toast.
The sage keeps its leaves
as evergreen, but the tree
in the living room is dry
and dying. Furnace-heat
and incandescent bulbs.
Of the seasons,
winter is coldest.
We sleep three
to a double bed.
My father toasts
in Italian: to friends dead
and dying. An anniversary,
a balanced scale. Long
Night Moon.
In a bloated jacket like the yellow of Easter
peeps coating the body of a child.
Hides behind his hand and smiles at surprises
that unzip from youth’s sweet cushion.
Chrysalis of sugar and young teeth dying. In time
they will attain the hue of an Angel Shade’s wing.
Never blushes at piddling in the middle of a public park or
sitting like a king as he passes gas on the bottom stair.
Here with pudgy gesture he practices the
aim through camera shutter or crosshair.
Skin of cheeks redden in the chill before the holiday,
like sudden cheer or complaint from a mud-wasp’s sting.
He is terrible and fearless, but then there will be dogs,
lonesome fog from screens, adolescence, knives by the bed.
Reading too much between the lines of random shadows
in a photo. But every space remains open to him for play.
Bent in the bleach-out of day as one of many buds back in
the distance ripens like the bumpy climax of areolae.
I do not know a soul among the dead. Try my best to cause a fuss
for the living—auto smash-up after shots at the Rowdy
Buck, sobs and smiles then wailing more for the Wiccan girl
behind the bar, bottles of Cabinet Son of a Gun knocking
against the innocence at my temple, the weight of spirits
coaxing me to my knees like prayer and then a kowtow to the
fire. It does little to impress. My ego, all swollen ankles of the
gout, is surpassed in precedence only by homesickness hissing
at strangers when it really just means to moan. Ghosts hear me
mumble through the blotches of sleep. They come much as
you might expect. Fragments—concentrated blue of halogen
lamplights for eyes, knot of a necktie and shoulders fading,
mist or smoke or draft caught cobwebs hanging like beards or
bonnets above the guestroom bed. Often window-wrought,
within latticed frame. This is all so obvious. But somehow I
cannot abide this undue attention, the phantom glances from
drunken brides, not when all who have loved me remain alive.
Only when the cancer and the age and the hidden sadness
finally flourish will I find a cause for correction. Try my best
to impress the onerous expectations of those who have nothing
better to do than sway above the bed like lynched ambitions.
Nerve of a drunk dancing and crooning for little more than air.
The birds are screaming again.
I spend most nights in an antiqued dining room.
My feet are twisting. I resemble the frames
with their cracked corners. The chairs,
they are always breaking. The birds
are black, and the cat watches them.
I can hear them from the bedroom
where I spend my days. She brings me
bowls full of weak broth. I made brodo
better. I plucked chickens; they never screamed.
scattered as ash from angry fires into crooks
spots along the stage at the old Shaboots
later the Eclipse where headlights died quick
women local as mud pies or drugstore robberies
danced and met in cars until the state got wise
syringes found tucked among sweaty debris
places shutter then reopen with different names
then close again in this constant condition
of retreat and hopefulness
but everyone sticks around
the bonfire burning a confusion of knees
taking pulls and fixated on something changing to smoke
hands tucked in sleeves like larvae
hidden in their cocoons until a better day
gossip over the other ones wherever they may be
bottles of beer and a jelly jar filled with hard cider
talk on coldness and the past like chasing deer
passing around the hunting knife in a hoopdy bed
the county sheriff firing a pistol at a birthday party
then later into his mouth
motorcycles and muscle cars rattle panes
a reminder of what is up around the bend
everyone on the mountain born beneath the blood moon
everyone claiming the same blood
the good and the bad
everything in relation
the hand helping to heave us over post and rail
pulls us to the dried timothy of the other side
the jaggedness of another’s hips
sweet stink of manure and booze on lips
we cannot flee because all roads turn to gravel
when we leave it is only for return
it is long winter and we are in the dark
we only know faces by the light of fire
big barns burning in the night and naked
idiocy of panting and crumpled jeans as a pillow for the girl
night grows darker until headlights strafe
another piece is added
embers darting like troubled moths
I am learning to negotiate
the space between days—
where the seasons reside,
sit idle while frozen daffodils
and cracked terracotta speak
words like cold and chill.
In the waiting room, spring
bets against the dealer—
loses. I walk with bare legs
to every worn out destination.
Check it out!
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