i think of the flood
and the God who found need for it a mere eight chapters after there was light.
his certainty we’d keep faith even knowing we’d once been drowned;
of the gravity of those sins (censored) demanding our extermination (explicit.)
i think of the flood and the men who recorded it then;
a mass mercy killing at the hand of the all-righteous.
his singular solution set in a foreground of choicelessness,
framed by curtains of irredeemability, of future promise.
i think of God establishing a covenant never to destroy all life again
by flood,
an immaterial concession,
his chest full, his fingers crossed,
his strategy ripe for the mimicking.
and i think of those record keeper's ancestors,
how they're documenting our time right now.
whose unimpeachable evils they're scrying can be excised in no other way
whose absolutely necessary evolutionary era have i found myself born into
reading the history books eons from here
they'll be satisfied -
the good guy definitely won out in the end, that's for sure,
but
they're all damn glad they weren't around to have to survive it.
Category: modern
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genesis.
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typical.
the sun is out
my father digs in the garage for some passed-down or possibly over-borrowed yard tool
my mother preempts her cooking with asterisks and winces
my brother breezes in as my husband sneaks inside jokes into another conversation
we laugh at it all
the surety of the impossibly perfect gadget buried somewhere in those steel chest drawers
the richness of the excellent meal, the ridiculousness of her apologies
the way the weatherman gets off scot-free even when he's plumb wrong
today there'd been no bad drivers on our roads
no cells dividing imperfectly (to the best of our knowledge)
our old dog runs underfoot, scolded for nearly toppling visitors
the visitors still come
they're all still here
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American values.
justice stands slack-jawed and stymied.
temperance storms off.
hope and faith break into a screaming match,
drowning charity's sobs.
prudence folds her hands,
purses her lips,
knows her sisters,
their sacrifices - ritual, cyclical, sometimes strategic but often shoddy.
their brothers have grown unwieldly of late.
her eyes land on fortitude.
the room silences in the weight of decision.
they return to themselves, encircle her, this patron saint of last stands,
nothing left to do in the face of such deadly sin
but to simply go on.
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even more ado.
i am a cat surrounded by gotten tongues,
struggling to herd myself.
every wanderer greets me disoriented, the lot of us,
pillared by the impulse to look back,
borrowing against time's already threadbare rope.
i reach the end of mine.
so i set out, sore eyed, scorching each bridge i cross.
a little bird tells me to see a man about a dog having his day;
i find him barking a chased goose up the wrong tree.
i disentangle a horse from a cart to get a good look in its mouth.
is it a gift? or just the straight truth - a reminder to be grateful
that this horse isn't beaten dead like the last one?
i burn all the oil trying to build a two-ended candle;
dig up the hatchet when i notice the chickens' numbers have dwindled.
my empire is small enough that i watch every sun set,
biting the bullet out of pity for the barreled crab.
high water hasn't come, this much i know for certain.
can't be as sure about hell.
i try to be deliberate in my deliberations -
to talk about timing at times quite unlike these.
they tell me
a watched pot never boils but boy
it'd sure be nice to feel your cup runneth over;
that Rome wasn't built in a day but my,
it'd sure be nice to build something
wouldn't it
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on the precipice of doom.
in my mind we sit on the stoop
always quiet and comfortable and together
peer across the precipice between our worlds - his i’ll join eventually
and mine which he could no longer stand.
we sit inside the weight of all that i cannot know
in all that he's missed since
and we wonder of one another's dooms.
i try to find a verb for his - wanted? felt? did?
he finds he is not envious of the complexities of mine.
in my world i move to sit on the roof, circle "the precipice of doom" on a sheet of paper
i think of the way the cortisol flood must feel so similar between someone focusing the scope of their gun and someone waiting for the perfect moment to grab a person before they jump -
the way a trigger and a shirt tail can somehow feel the same in the body.
are we already there, on the precipice of doom?
if not individually certainly collectively,
what's another inch.
a frog allows itself to be boiled, slowly.
there are no poems
only things that are real that find a way to remind us of ourselves.
i think about how jumping and shooting another person are in fact two different ways of killing yourself.
how pulling someone back saves you both.
we are already there.
another inch is everything.
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at her.
poison comes from an old french word meaning magic potion
venom comes from an old french word meaning
poison
such is the fantastically etymillogical treasure map tucked under my arm;
where moments ago i was a poet, seeking precision,
now i am headlamped, machete thrashing, tracing some legend's circular roots.
Diana Jones and the Synonymous Sisters.
i find them
peering silent through the mist of history
the misery
and mystery.
aphrodite stands with her hand on the shoulder of her twin,
venus,
this goddess of love,
name soured, spat,
gone from injecting veins with the addled haze of lust
to now
the adder; a dark curse, a death knell.
in a way i'd always known i'd find some 'her' here;
XX marks the spot.
feminine wiles
to guile
to guilt.
in The Dictionary of Fine Distinctions
a page clarifies
poison is when you bite it
venom is when it bites you
and oh how i cycle
through all the things men never needed be afraid of
they simply needed to let be.
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what are we even doing here?
maybe it's a hall pass
a gasoline can
a trapdoor.
maybe it's the thrill of collusion,
a firecracker that wouldn't light,
a pocketed twenty discovered years later.
maybe it's the zodiac (killer or birthchart, both are relevant in their way) or
an inside job or
an inside joke or
a nutcracker.
maybe they're portholes or periscopes, epigraphs, business cards,
flipbooks, cigars, a safety deposit box.
a stranger wordlessly giving up their seat on the tram,
a fiftieth floor railing that couldn't possibly pass inspection,
a traffic light that flashes yellow after midnight.
maybe their calls come from inside the house.
oh,
okay, sorry,
you just wanted an answer.
what is a poem?
well
a few are a thumb on your cheek.
they are all two fingers on your neck.
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a prayer.
magic, the way the backseat bench can never quite hear what the front cab is saying.
we were packed into the car like sardines
fivefriendssuitcasesbackpackspurses
snacks held out, passed around, remnants scattered between us.
but i heard you
even on the diagonal
my knees propped against the drivers seat back
chuckling softly “we’re really livin’ now, eh?”felt you say it, more like,
same as the hush that falls when all the windows are rolled down.
never came up with a new term for that, did we?
what a legacy
those Oldsmobile knobs
hitching, always in the same two places, against the strain of leather siding
as if they actually coiled glass onto itself.
magic,
if you let yourself believe.
“sure seems that way” i said, distracted,
imagining the windows rolling so far the car transformed into a topless Wrangler;
the wind whipped wash of calm,
the inextricable undercurrent of terror.
the sudden awareness of how fast you are moving,
of how little there is to protect you;
the hesitant trust placed in every passing stranger,
the blanket of zen, however meager, that no matter what so much is outside of your control.
“oh shit! got it back!”
the satellite gods had finally found us weaving between the mountains,
rained their manna, databytes, reassurance we’d survive.
curiosity my well documented master, i pulled myself up
wrapped my arms around the driver headrest.
together we watched the map reload on the center console,
some fortunetelling talisman with a modern mouthpiece,
“for-ty – min-utes – to – des-tin-a-tion”
“oh. we’re halfway there.”
i met your rueful smile with a nose scrunch, my lips sealed against the crook of my right arm, longing suddenly
acutely
for the uncertainty of the last half hour;
the disorientation of feeling lost in varying degrees
already logged nostalgically as some mad adventure.my chin rested atop my elbow now.
“yeah, forty more.
and even that’ll take some luck.”
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din.
if a forest of family trees fall
and we hear every single beat
is there such a thing as sound, after?
is there deep sleep,
good judgement,
wise investment?
is there trustworthiness,
reliability?
is anything seeworthy any longer?is there music?
singing?
or only the roar of an Amazon slashed-and-burned,
of ancient Redwoods a hundred meters high,
toppled,
roots splayed to the Heavens –
all the Wonder in this Natural World
scorched,
rotting,
silent.
musée 