All These Rooms

Pigeons watch, as insects thaw under fall-leaves,
stoop in window wells to collect hasty mice;
small creatures, curious, vivacious, following
noses and motherly instincts. “What happens at night?”
when melting under a full moon and 40 degree weather.
“Ask an owl” a father replies—shoveling through the depths
of memories, dead gophers and summer tent-stints, measuring
widths for jars that might fit the size of half a chicken breast.
Even the fish are starting to get anxious, slapping the river surface
with their fins, breaking frost for the un-knowing
house-fly, or baby humming bird; merchants
of old creek rejuvenations. 5 Squabs screech, hoping
their bellies will be sleep compatible. They stretch back—
confused, like Icelandic orangutans waking from afternoon naps.

How flowers will bend to the sun;how the night wakes a racoon

and the coyotes circle and bow

before crawling out from under

the brush and bending their noses

to the ground washed in the crescent

moon; how a child will shake and spin

circles until she walks like a drunk;

sometimes how a colt with a sock foot

will turn and buck and look wild

eyed at the others ruminating

and then buck again; even how the earth

will be still but the deer will turn and run

and the geese and finches-the crows

will all fly up and call

and in one quick moment the ground

will shift as if a few million

buffalo were rioting through the land

and the rivers flow backward;

how our dog rolls on the snow,

kicking out her paws behind her

and dragging her stomach then leaps

up with play in her eyes; that is how I love you.

7.1.06

Waiting for the sunrise
I’ve decided today
I’ll be the brother
who has died
and you can be the one
who fills his pockets
with rocks. You can throw
them at the parked cars
as you pass the open mouthed
mansions in Ladd’s addition,
as their windows dart
and twitch with that last
burst of dreaming that comes
just before waking.
Today you will glare
at the joggers insulting
their dogs with their slow witted
voices repeating words.
You can stop on twelfth street
to watch the ten year old
who has gotten up
before his parents to come outside
and smash ants against the sidewalk
with his thumb. Today
you can run through traffic
across MLK Drive and up over the Willamette
onto the walkway that clings
to the Hawthorne Bridge as you try to break
the simple ease
of coming and going.

i wanna be so rich…

if you say my name on television

you die of homosexuality.

she is an emaciated leech

who slid down to the toenail of an economy,

sucking and slurping.

they hung her and mutilated and burned her.

the mouth of a savior

with human teeth,

masticated, pulverized and

swallowed her into the lord.

a tongue:

not just for rhetoric, but passing food

back and forward in nashing jaws.

whispering it was her fault for exciting their intrest,

screaming harlot as they rape her…

or she shoulda got a man way back before she was a slut.

either way it is her fault,

they rest that on her like a boulder to crack her contempt.

then they ask our thanks for their mercy.

it is given with downcast eyes,

like thanking a cop for not beating you.

her swaying tattered beauty,

a languid tree branch in a translucient dress.

thin and solmn, with ferocious eyes in a soft face

old with knowing too much for a young girl,

living too hard for a godess.

too proud to fight the whore they’ve hung on her

and falls in love only rarely.

saying passively  after a kiss,

“never tell the guys you’re in love with a skank.”

they can rub their weeners into a rage,

cursing the world beyound the bar,

reestablishing their dominance over and over.

“I’ll wear my tarnished reputation as a babge

before desiring their nonexistent affection.”

Some people love being poor and dirty and destitude.

yes we are tramps and fools. we are groping the world

for reckless secrets and exhilaration.

you molest innocence’s young, firm body,

then discredit it and destroy it.

turning up incensed to snarl at your own reflection.

we’ve seen this.

she is silent.

I’ve known her many times, I cherish her sin.

it is a powerful grace.

Your jealousy is understandable, it’s still unjustified.

compared to love.

when you’re out, sell your lucky one
so no one can leave
don’t you like what you’re fleeing
enough to keep it?
only hope till your coffin’s warm
don’t hardly speak
time a little time
and you clutch to the heat

**half credit/ inspiration to J. Vernon**

Here’s my contribution to Worsty’s monthly challenge, which I neglected to revise like I thought I was going to.

It starts how it ends,
or maybe there’s no beginning, no stopping at all.
Either way, when I walked on all fours
and my dreams at night were lifting my hands, were
faces making faces,
I don’t think I was what I am.
But when have I ever been
what I am? Maybe yesterday,
maybe the day before, lifting myself
up off the cement, my legs asleep,
stumbling while I waited for the feeling
to come back. It came back,
tripping on the level ground as the rest of me still felt like I was sitting
on the cement, like my legs dreampt
of the day before, carrying my body into the air
forgetting what I am. Maybe yesterday
I was what I always am.
I don’t think I am what I was,
just faces making faces
and my dreams scratching up the night with my empty hands, air
taking both ways, walking on four legs,
finding some beginning without even knowing, not stopping, too small
to notice it starts how it ends.

Call for Submissions:

The New Plains Review is seeking stories, essays and poems on the subject of writing workshops and MFA experiences for its fall issue, devoted to the theme of how writers grow–or not–in educational settings. Submit original work by email to Editor Douglas Goetsch at douglasgoetsch(at)gmail.com

(replace (at) with @)(as Word attachment or typed into the body of the email);

or send hard copy to:

Submissions, New Plains Review, 100 N. University Dr., Box 184, Edmond, OK,
73034. Deadline is Sept. 24, 2009. Note: We will gladly consider previously
published work if the author owns the rights to it.

Everyday a fair amount

of risings and of knocking down

still unbending as she wore her crown - the one she did not know before -

she wore and wore and pimped and whored

and went to battle both with and not-so-for that little bourbon body

carried her through the streets and up

and up to touch the tops

of mountains and such. She did it all

and all was done before.

nolovernobrothernokeeper.

In a land where grass won’t grow

this is a field

imagine the grass is knee-high and touching

the grass is the wind tuning

this field.