This skinny-dipping moon
rises yellow
(Neither he nor she)
reminds me
light can change in a moment
from red to orange to yellow to
Luminous bright
crust, iron-rich this
Grey mantle
Why shine so?
Whisp of rock
Floating in the dark,
So dark-it makes the pale naked
Appear so bright
In this sea of sky, always
borrowing light.
Long line
characteristic of this
big box store–
A lady with pitted prunes in her cart
First in line
to get something adjusted,
Married couple buying matching
Timepieces
Keep the receipts.
An older man who claims to know
exactly what he wants
And the young mama with the baby
whose tiny, perfect
ears will soon be pierced
and me–
Squandering time
on overpriced trinkets
Entombed behind the
so-called jewelry counter.
We all wait so long
scanning synthesized treasures
cheap, yet still
…overpriced
Discount baubles
draw the eye
but for the sake of the sleeping child
I make it quick,
buy the thin band
reminder of the old promise
Tell myself
Buy a boat, stow your things in
the gut,
sail into sunset.
for seven years
in the back of my head
there has been a terrible
Terrible story
started a long time ago
When a 15 year old boy
hurt his little sister
(Bad)
and then…
Our paths separate at this point.
And I only know the story of the other 15 year-old-November-16-2009-boy
Because I talked about you, Charles, my-used-to-be-son
All the time
Until tonight I did not know your doppelgänger’s name–
Jamar Pinkney, Jr.
Or the queasy details
No, not the terribly private awful
…the public strange
—don’t call a child molester “Teddy Bear” or put his face on your t-shirt
Ask instead–
How in God’s name…
Is his little sister?
A basket full of deplorables:
they say love is in the eye of the beholder
Whatever the heck that means
But what about deplorable?
Is that open for interpretation as well?
Or is it etymologically and irrevocably anchored to hell?
To white, doughy, affluent men who use their power and money to force themselves on teenagers?
Or white, doughy, affluent women
Who malign child rape victims to
Free the perps sooner,
take their campaign donations by the hundred million
Buckets full of baby parts
Littering the sterile field
Capitalizing on
the saline burn, scissor beheading
Of minority
disabled
And female fetuses
Deplorable
Basket
where there should be babies
I walk into the house just as the smallish bandits, pirates, and cowboys dash through the living room brandishing colorful weaponry.
Some tend to be softish, others–bullets made of foam, none lethal, although all inspire the requisite awe in the dogs, certainly held at bay.
There is a formal request for pillows to be requisitioned for a fortress. The Quartermaster readily assents, asserting that a fortress is a fortress is a fortress.
Suddenly every camp, garrison, base, castle, encampment, barricade, stronghold in the annals of history forever bound to this laughter, this moment of joy, this pillow…
Fortress.
they say you should not
look directly
at the sun
ignoring the real possibility
that it is the night
that has already
blinded us
To the scared, cold,
Ordinary child
In each photograph
Owned by
This oddball monster
While the dying sun,
Claw-handed scribe, failing light,
Scribbles justicejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejustice…justicejusticejustice
Into one kind of eternity
Or another
these stories we tell
of bartering children for the status quo
are older than the Minotaur
dark, iconic monster
who most resembles our complacency
As long as the child sent into the labyrinth is not my own
we mutter, a sotto voce offering
To the god of what it would cost to save them all
He, unlike the Minotaur, is a natty dresser
With advanced degrees and a split-level colonial
He tsk-tsks about the rising price of safety
Rams our collective shame into his artisanally-crafted
Italian briefcase
pets his children and standard
Poodle
with the same idle indifference
Ignoring the growing sport
Of hunting children
In the labyrinthine
minds of men who have traded
The suffering of this human child
For their own eternal
Souls.
you search for a word for this kind of thing–
boat lost at sea
balloon gone untethered
the appropriation of breakup
…songs
we used to sing as lullabies
now ectoplasmic
only you are the ghost in your own
skin
house
grief
rolls this monster
wave over you
grief-stricken mama
trapped inside this Chinese box
feel the wounds born into
each wrist
howl, howl, howl
hours before dark
the lines we draw in the sand
between alive and not as blurred
by these arbitrary atoms
configured into blood or bone
iterations of shell
crushed and altered by
lunar whim
the two abuelas lift la vieja
Under her
Right and left pits
she, swallowed up whole by the big
white shirt
all three women lay on hands,
Lean in
As we shield our eyes
Look up
Beneath the sun
the kite snaking ceaselessly over our heads
Paper-thin, it whips back and forth
Surely alive?
“Kite” is just
A name
Predatory bird with a haunting call
No more than a child’s toy
Perhaps we are all kites, then
The wind moves where it wills, but…
The old woman rises suddenly
Twine hastily tied to her waist
As the wind pulls her up
Those she loves
Upturn their faces
Squint to make her out
Paper-thin
Unspooling toward the sun
“Poem”
would be a
Beautiful name for a child
The kind of child
You must imagine with
Ringlet curls,
Head bent over a book
Or just the small legs dangling
From an open-armed tree
We forget that the word itself means
Create
Like fiction or the epic
Story of lost children
We created, engendered, if you will
Then destroyed
Through shear absence
Of imagination
Carrying Light 