Heraclitean
In goes the cafeteria worker in her hairnet.
In goes the philosophy teacher
explaining the theory of eternal
return, and Anton Stadler with his clarinet,
still owing money to Mozart. In
goes Mozart. Everyone flopped into the creel
of the happy fisherman, everyone eaten.
Every river is Lethean,
so why should we care
if it’s not the same river? I hate
how everything changes, tree
to failing term paper, chatelaine
to beheaded plotter, drug dealer to narc.
The heart softening faster than cereal
but then hardening to a relic
which turns into another line
of depressed poetry to recite
to the next eager trainee
anxious to be more than lint.
Going up, you’re also going down, so either
way, as your mother said, Be nice.
When she went in, she was very thin.
Earth, air, fire, water, mother.
Fish pulse slowly under the river ice.
NOTE:
"Heraclitean" is reprinted from My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits, Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2014
Pima Canyon
Do I look scrawny? Elizabeth asked, on her miserable Parkinson’s diet,
no more foods she loved, she wasn’t supposed to drink
but she was drinking a little, red wine, because you can’t forgo everything,
and in any case, you can’t secrete a protective layer like a tree frog
or stay still as a cottontail or pretend you’re a stick or rock or flower
to keep yourself safe, the world seeps in no matter what.
Plastics in rain, microwaves, x-rays, all the invisibles, dry-cleaning chemicals
damaging cells in your brain. My whole childhood, my brothers and I slept
under cheap electric blankets, we could have erupted in flames.
You can’t go back to being a girl, having a smaller shadow, running shirtless
through the weedy yards to dodge whatever’s waiting for you in the dark
beneath your bed. Here in the desert the mountains glow every evening,
the saguaros grow spiny and upright, pocked with nest holes. On the trail, quail rustle
in the mesquite, a shy coyote trots away down a dry wash, stopping to look back
with its yellow eyes. Poor coyote, it won’t live very long in the wild.
Ask the canyon how long before my friend’s tremor worsens and she can’t
write her name. Ask the planes, painting their dirty contrails on the sky,
one headed for the airport, one droning toward the military base.
Maybe we should let our hair go gray, Elizabeth says, stopping to adjust her hat.
Her black hair looks wet in the sun. Maybe, I say. But not yet, darling. Not yet.
NOTE:
"Pima Canyon" first appeared in Rattle.
Cigar Box Banjo
Blind Willie Johnson could coax
music from a single string. God plucked a rib
and found a woman. Concert aria
in the gypsy song, long groan
of orgasm in the first kiss, plastic bag
of heroin ripening in the poppy fields.
Right now, in a deep pocket of a politician’s brain,
a bad idea is traveling along an axon
to make sure the future resembles a cobra
rather than an ocarina.
Still there’s hope in every cartoon bib
above which a tiny unfinished skull in
its beneficence dispenses a drooling grin.
The heart may be a trashy organ,
but when it plucks its shiny banjo
I see blue wings in the rain.
NOTE:
"Cigar Box Banjo" is reprinted from My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits, Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2014
