she hit twenty, a claw or two
remaining behind when she
stepped off army blankets
from WWII, into 2001—
everything in pieces.
1973
Things come full circle, back to where they started.
That’s Revolution. —RUSSELL MEANS
It was war by any fine-toothed measure.
When hunkered down in Grandma’s belly
culled prickling quill resistance shuddered
bunkers filled with fifteen-year-old horsemen
shielding her tongue like any warrior would.
When it was over, the tanks and troops shivered
their way back to doom. Manifest licked wounds.
leciya o iyokipi
SOLAR FLARES
solar flare
noun Astronomy
a brief eruption of intense high-energy radiation from the sun’s
surface, associated with sunspots and causing electromagnetic
disturbances on the earth, as with radio frequency
communications and transmissions—
At work, everyone smiling bellicose
through teeth staked together
jutted over clenched knees
all knotted there.
The Platte poured over choked
in ice jams, floated past
blocking all exits west.
Droid compass
stroked message spelled:
Atypical Electromagnetic Field Detected.
My finger near my ear
gestured south, so still,
turning was the only way out.
Somewhere in this,
I posted:
Wisconsin Aid:
To supply protesters with WATER contact
Capitol Center Foods at 608-255-2616.
To supply protesters with FOOD contact
Burrito Drive at 608-260-8586,
Silver Mine Subs at 608-286-1000,
Ian’s Pizza at 608-257-9248,
Pizza Di Roma at 608-268-0900,
or Asian Kitchen at 608-255-0571
on the union listserve.
Seniority tuned-up
lodging complaint
“misuse of internet”
knees, mandibles clacking—
Me, I watched
Which Way Home
dreamed more for the children there
and isn’t that why we organized, anyway? This flaring?
FIRST MORNING
for Nancy
DC STR #1 Adams House Suite
In a room facing chimneys
over the place Nancy Morejón rests
between sleeps lining free lines
she whispers to hearing DC:
Obsidiana, Vilma en Junio,
Un Gato Pequeño A Mi Puerta.
Morning is birdsong
in an old Spanish town.
Though the chief
in his acquired misery
echoes Kenya until he breathes
life into malady, or at least compels
us so to believe, she sleeps with
Africa, Canton, and other points slavery
turn Cuban in her bone breath
bringing love, embrace, freedom from
whatever holds the rest of us in weight.
The lifting is simple, yet
without it how sad we all be.
Embargo=fear
Yet here she is!
Sugaring our boughs before we break.
BARRIO TRICENTENARIO, PLAZA DE BANDERAS
Wading footsteps of murdered
in the barrio Juan calls home
we sing our songs, tell stories,
cry a bit when conquistador
reenactors dance in color.
Botero blasted away refilled
with forty sculpted doves,
in the city where from here
I love you deeply and from
there it was but a night.
Butterflies fill streets
verse winging ways fluttered
by faces middling dark hours
leveling light.
Here you held
my hand, urged I follow, let
Bogotá beckon while we
played our voices for victims
recalled by lovers, grandmas,
niños still swimming Escobar wakes.
NIÑO DE LA CALLE
A few coins? Can I leave you?
Can I walk by without leaning in
holding you close, telling you
stars’ pathway beyond this math?
Niño de la calle, every evening
moving from the huffing voom
to isolated despair, translucent,
like me once, and I love you, I do.
They tell me nothing can be done,
the boys, gone to glue, abandoned here,
believed gone. And I know the boy who
left lockup for reservation home who
returned to us his mind half-gone, so
the asylum brain scan shown. I know.
Yet, here, your eyes, damn it—
Can I not leave this duty, the state, reach
down, lift you, remember my own soul
starved, muffled, what then?
Each boy our son.
CAMPOS
In the camp, children
suckle popsicles, ice cubes,
turn tops same as every era
sprawling north picking
someone else’s money,
handing it over in leathery
balls, in tiny hearts, in stiff
shoots they cradle, held there
reverent to tastes, savory,
clutched, cradled, caressed
for someone else’s table.
DUBLIN CROSSING
for Jill
Gulls call over black pool morning
stout night, still sleeps.
The Blue Boy, The Magdalene Laundries,
everything echoes past, passed
across waters black robed, anointed
colonial crime.
Two days ago, on Pearce, past Trinity
a young man on his stoop, adjusted himself
to my eyes, then vanished. The door was 146.
Tricks the dead give when we move with them.
In life, we bridge rivers, charge ha’penny crossings,
trade things, abandon—
In the end, each child crucified splits scenes, bides.
WAS MORNING CALL
for Ibrahim & LeAnne
It was morning call streaming some emic encoding, ceremonial invitation, invocation mood-altering song, stilling wanderlust premise into meditative contemplation, into internalized presence, familiar. After the first dawn, we awaited every other, from hotel rooftops or friends’ balconies, juxtaposed there against sky and sound in shared sense no matter the difference. There is none, in that place. If you are in. We came to it. My son and I scan the edges of courtyards, alleyways, between building spaces for cats looking something like we haven’t seen in cats before. Something specifically natured Amman, or anywhere else cityscaped we happened to move toward. It was figs, olives generously let into our armholds by Basma smiling or any number of wonderful soulful women who were so happy to meet us, thrilled we attempted language, fond with memories of attending schools in North America, back not long ago. It was whistles for children, clicks for calls, weddings every night in the lobby and ballroom, music, music, music, and song. It was Sufi chanting away angers and misunderstandings when other people from our countries grieved them with inconsiderate proselytizings, demands, or senseless banter. It was feeling funny when called a sa-vage and responding that’s what they try to tell us about you, too, shared laughter echoing back, o Indi Ahmed. Art stunning apartment walls around Ibrahim Nasrallah and more writers’ union poets. Wine, Palestinian, opened just for us after being bottled for so many decades discussion ensued to recall the variables. It was hum
us for pennies, oil so soft, the scent of it, fragrant, endearing. It was qahweh for free and chayi for almost nothing. Bits of fruit and desserts given as samples simply to celebrate someone attempting to order in Arabi, like me. It was cab rides through asthma for fifty cents when others were charged so ridiculously we all gathered round to laugh at the foolishness. Camels and Bedouin camped on the road just outside town. Bedouin, calling us Bedouin, too. King’s crows, hooded, black, white, black, hang around King Abdullah’s grave, longing for royal handouts, tourists tolls, guilt debts, manners of monarchy. It was morning call streaming some emic encoding, invocation, mood altering, stilling brought us home in some shared known never faltering despite the bullets streaming, in spite of ourselves. Stilling for a song, singing.
HATCHLINGS
for LeAnne
Here we hatch like robin eggs split shells
lying near tree talking base, creaking,
clearly knocking out loud through ovaled trunk
into split shoulder blades as you stand singing aside her.
She a mother tree, matriarch like you, Anitsata,
hosting half-dozen daughter-sisters surrounding her.
You with your Southern head above grass, leaves, waters,
under skies ripe with Wampano/Quiripi in a place
skated in poet-wielded canoes, some standing balanced, rowing.
We both know—
Here, l, n, r, y dialectical embrace
asunder a, b, c—z notions child’s play.
Nothing near Mercy Nonsuch, nothing
Nehantic left to this Old Lyme section, or is it?
We muse lingua franca, 1658 catechism, pidginized—
rudimentary ruse relishing our retreat to this river shore,
where, here, we note loss, burning undergrowth forgotten
steering deer ticks toward their painful human pleasures.
In this place known for speaking grounds, knocking things—
This place of Borrelia burgdorferi, mimicking Euro-gifted
syphilis, from white-footed mice, sure-footed deer—
Like Little Deer who punished with rheumatism touch, back
where we’re from.
For those who had no reason—
Here we are hatched into this place ripened with paper splitting
shell language
loss lingering long, limbs lifting hatchlings into lingual-tongued
blue shell shaken skies.
PEANUT POND
Under poplars, maples
between turtles, black bass,
beauty between pollen
skimmed waters,
Canadians, two pair, lead
at least twenty-four goslings,
creep in from human worry
nearer peeper lives.
Heron swoop dailies,
kerosene-lighted nights.
Sometimes duty fails academic.
Poetry, practice of everything else:
paddled waters, lilies, samaras,
pine needled, caned sprigs,
some sweet vine
wraps hollow maple
flowering while I pen
over your writing
in the base of this canoe.
Mooring for a moment
over waterworlds below.
Only shift, paddle dip.
To still, straighten.
CARCASS
for Ceca
Carcass kindled like a rucksack
jerky-filled snack for Crow & Beetle.
Split skin stretched over marrowless cage,
encased dry tomb, like those strewn
through this loess reach, cradling past
ever present here, and now you come
walking riverside, bringing sensory thrill
into daylight much like this Cervidae
culled morning each waking before
demise. We move this way, catching life
until death captures us, where we rot
into the same dust holding multitudes
before us, and welcoming those beyond.
We lift this measure. Toss casing, frame to
wind over shoulders, swaddling human
in ruminant mammal rim, softening intake
in sleek steps alongside rivered bellies
like stones turn time back into brink.
Here, where I find you dovetailing wind
into hoofprint, your antler turned away
as if to sway yourself back. Me, I follow,
wrapping myself, enclosed interment, where
we peek from time to time, huddling here,
heaving morning, lifting once more, dense
fog from repository remains we quicken
in paint, punch key pummel. ’Tis the nest
of this that brings us here. ’Tis the hide
we wallow. Carcass veil blanketing morning
like this foot feels split hooves, now
knuckled deep between us two. He’s
with us all the way to page, leading,
death propelling promise, revisit, renew,
rekindle—’Tis the seat of it now. ’Tis the life—
River come clean carcass, makeover mad
rush with insight, first dawn taste—take.
MAY SUITE
WEATHERBAND/FM/AM
2013, Moore, Oklahoma
After a while you can’t hear about it anymore,
switch to something more melodic
shift to something Heart & Soul
92.1/1140 KRMP
Cowboys of Color Rodeo
soothes you wind blown
when the Teacher of the Month comes
grade school disciples shield
fixurlifeup, fix your life up.
WE WERE IN A WORLD
We were in a world, in a world, in a world. Sure, we had our glyphs, but we were providential. Once, some alphabet believers, glass purveyors, Ursus Arctos killers, sent all bailiwick on cursed course far faster gyration backspin, birling intrinsic angular momentum—boson melts. Spinning, it careened away iceberg, iceberg, iceberg; glacier braced time traced yesterday unshakable base—all below flushed alluvion torrent, Niagara pour, special spate, flux, flow, until their coastal citadels moldered from cyclone, tsunami, hurricane gale. Tornadoes tossed turf wherever they pleased. Eruptions molded Her back into something She deemed worthy. Not to mention quakes. And the people, the people, the People, pushed into cataclysm, a few generations from alphabet book imposed catechism, soon were calamity tragedy storm splinters, fragmented particles of real past, in a world gone away from oratory, song, oraliteratures, orations into gyrations reeling. Soon hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. Hot, dying mangroves, disappearing Waimea Bay, dengue fever, butterfly range shift, meadow gone forest, desert sprung savannah, caribou, black guillemots, bats, frogs, snails—gone. What will sandhill cranes crave? Winged lay early. Reefs bleach. Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, snow, snow, snow, fires flaming fiercely, fascinated in their own reflecting glare. Marmots rise early. Mosquitoes endure longer, lasting biting spreading West Nile. Polar bears quit bearing. Robins, swallows, enter Inuit life. Thunder finds Iñupiat. Here, it is said, glyphs left rock wall, stone plates, bark, branch, leapt animated into being, shook shoulders, straightened story, lifted world upon their wing bone, soared into Night, to place World back into socket eased sky—stilled us. Some say the soup leftover was worded with decolonized language. Some say the taste lingers even now.
IN THE YEAR 513 PC
In the year 513 PC—post-contact, post-Columbus, post–cultural invasion—In the year, 513 PC, we heard fluting sounds from southern feathered, feathered never here before this rhyme, never here without zookeeper logic trace. Never. No. Prior to this vast erasure those sounds fell way below equator, left us here without the slightest notion all along. Now robins sing early, leaving them hungry for later worms. Now no bird’s leaving, tides receding, waters capture sand like evening fog: Virgin Islands, Ga
lápagos Islands, Cook Islands, Belize Barrier Reef, Red Sea Reefs, Great Barrier Reef, Tokyo, Jakarta, London, New York, New Orleans—we’ve seen it quarter blown—engraved. Big Easy slipping far past fate of no return, her trumpets flaring. We’re all a jazz funeral display, singing, dancing, masking ourselves to crypt enclave. Banging drums, sounding horns, driving ourselves while making faces leap from costumed weathermen; back to wards, social clubs, quarters. Not so surprising in a place where nothing counts, unless it’s Creole singing. Looking back, signs gave taste to trepidation, foretold all ten years to known. If we’d only seen the writing, bird tracks left etched on earthen wall. 513 you’d scarcely remember until it had all been drowned. Someone still calling, “Saving the Earth is not a competition, but an essential collaboration.”
TWISTIN’ THE NIGHT AWAY
2013, Oklahoma
How that man in evening clothes got here
well, you know, feel much better.
Sometimes dancing’s all we got.
Sometimes move with it, we rock.
Sometimes take off, see him go,
just like any other show,
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