After the Abortion
He’d given her an orchid
That swam on the mantel
In a cheap glass vase.
There was a framed nude
He’d done of her before
They got married
That hung where it watched
Him as he crossed the room.
She sat in a wicker chair
Reading a Rolling Stone,
Her beautiful face darker
Than the one he’d drawn.
There was a mark he’d left
Below her eye yesterday
With a fist
Instead of
A pencil.
Frankincense and Myrrh
I felt like a fraud when I stood
In front of a class as I
Do when I am reading poems
Or talking over baseball
Pictures in a slideshow that
No longer surprises me
Except in the fact that an
Audience was coerced to
Watch it instead of pecking
At their phones—do we all live
Past nostalgia, I wonder,
As my dad’s face flashes on
The back row of a ball team
And I no longer mention
Him in his blue coaching cap.
Or that he was so sure of
His belief in what he was
Doing and where he was going
That he transcended fraudulence
When he spoke about the Lord.
Poem for Michael Rumaker
Angels and fairies were dancing together
In the blue moonlight until you couldn’t
Tell which was which, on the head of a pin
Which was a lonely old man’s glassy eyeball
Which was a warm planet circling death
Which was a yellow marble on a red dirt playground
In a finger drawn circle, surrounded by
Boy monsters and pig tailed jump rope girls.
Panther Winds
The poet with the false voice
Is laboring to be true as the
Blast of a truck horn
On a foggy morning
Crossing the Jacob Fork River.
True as the motionless cows
Grazing on tick weed by a
Sour gap of stunted maples.
Panthers are just one of
The things he doesn’t believe:
Existence being the better part
Of blood proof he also applies
To gods and any holiness
A man might assign
To beer kisses or
Half fuzzy shadows,
Convinced he has found
Himself in the distance
And the absence of light.
12.51
Surprise grows over the path
Through the woods where I became
The student of close history,
Of the great floating orchard
Of vines and shadowy snakes.
Let me window the morning
And mound the best afternoon.
Let me stand the dead like this:
Rabbit, lizard, coyote,
Crows nesting up in the pines.
I have nothing else to say.
There used to be something known as a long distance phone call.
Before Substack philosophers.
Before algorithm mode America.
Before the thousand-year flood of knowledge.
When I stood in an evening hour
In the Overton’s Grocery parking lot
282 miles away from my foothills home
Dialing zero, area code, and Dad’s number,
So that the operator would intervene
Pleasantly, mechanically, till I’d
Say, awkwardly, collect from Tim,
And I could hear Dad interrupt
The operator with a breathless yes
Before she could finish asking, will you accept?
The minutes were so precious on
The long distance phone call that
Mom would pick up the auxiliary phone
In their bedroom so that she could share
In whatever calamity had made the call
Necessary: unexpected money owed
The university, a failing grade, a breakup
With a girlfriend, and though I might be
High on weed or recovering from a party
Or an all-night test prep, I would manage
To whittle down the chit chat to what
Seemed essential and dad would stop Mom
From telling me every detail about what
Was going on at work or at Dad’s church,
Because they were frugal and they could feel
The charge climbing quarter by quarter
Because a long distance call was like
Riding in a cab with its running meter.
Then mom would say her I love you-bye,
And Dad would try to end on a high note
With a something Paul Harvey had said,
Or a nugget he was proud of from
This past Sunday’s sermon, and I would
Have to hang up or the homesickness
Would overwhelm me or the guilt
For though I had reversed the charges
I felt I was somehow paying for the call.
