All These Rooms

IN THE PRAIRIE GRASS

The library is well lit but a fog (here I need a word for how the light is caught up by the mist, how the vapor is illuminated but dark) the light. The books push in. Clouds gather. Rain. Thunder but no lightning. You work through the wet but the words don’t grow. You plant half phrased lines into the desktop. Nothing. Wildflowers push up from the scattered papers at the edges of the desk. A tree has rooted into your laptop and plowed the keys so that they lay at odd angles like slabs of disheveled sidewalk. You become convinced there is no other world but this. You get up, push your things onto the floor, knock over your chair. Then you place them back, stand up your chair again and sit. You think of your dad telling you God is here, shining out from that computer screen. You usually laugh at what your dad says in your poems. He must not feel as alone as you do now. A breeze pushes through the window, stirs the fog and the papers, assures you that you have forgotten the land, that if you were the person you pretend to be

you would walk out of here, follow an electric line

out into the mountains felling the power poles one by one.

GOES TO CHURCH

I feel a touch of current as the congregation floods around me and for a moment it seems we’re spilling through a dam. I’ve told people God is electricity. Most just laugh. But when an August thunderstorm comes ripping over the Bridgers, God

is the lightning downing the power poles, spreading

over the Rockies and all the way to the coast, it’s God flashing in two foot wide shafts from earth to sky. If God is in the world He’s rippling through neurons and drawing water to a cell, blinking on and off

at the tops of the radio towers as people wake,

turn on a lamp, brew some coffee, as they lay down to face the night,

moving with a touch of a finger

between God and darkness.

BACK FROM THE WAR

Hit a curve going 70.

Go sailing off my bike.

Cut through the air with a kind of grace: arms out, legs in line to the slope.

Over the bank my fingers are feathers

reaching for the willow tips.

Hit the bank

ready to be earth again.

SWEEPING OUT THE LEAVES

I’m dead: not like a leaf, not like the run

over kitten I’ve watched gathering crud

in the stuff seeping from its ears. I’m mud,

the come and go of traffic. I’m a blown

out fraying tire the ravens toss around.

I’m dead like smog, like the orange and red

night sky, like lycra tights, asphalt. I’m dead

like I’ve never been up before the sun.

I used to think a simple job just meant

my life was good. For shits I’d eat an ant,

I’d wipe my ass with weeds, my hand, a fern.

But now I sweep the dirt from my apartment,

hunger same as then, but somehow can’t

keep from listening for the leafs to turn.

A BREATH ON MY FACE

I heard a coyote yipping and woke

up afraid. I was young, sick,

and I had to piss. I got up and the tent

almost touched my nose, then

I was inside a mountain. I stepped

over my cousin, a lake, but the flap

was as tight as a gopher hole.

Outside I could see my breath

making clouds. The sky was throbbing.

Seemed like the earth and clouds might meet,

that the seven sisters could step

back onto ground. And there

was coyote. He was close,

he was far away. He was dragging

a deer leg by the ankle.

I knew to be afraid, I knew

not to look at him, but I also

knew I had to piss. “Pee,” he said,

so close I felt his breath on my face.

USELESS

If I make noise when I smell

the chicken frying He comes out

and beats me. I ate all the grass

so now I eat the circle of dirt

where I’m tied. Maybe it’s that I don’t

know the sounds. If I could use the sounds

then maybe it’d be all right

for me to eat. He wouldn’t kick

me anymore. Those sounds aren’t

like the calming song

I can hear after He’s gone to sleep

and I’m looking deep into the sky,

listening hard in case

there’s something loping quiet

and steady my way, tongues hanging

hungry. The other sounds

don’t do. I think I could understand

the sounds but He

hasn’t tried to show me. Still,

I know a few things:

“Sit the fuck down” means

do what I’m doing now, “Shut

the hell up” means stop trying to use

the sounds, though sometimes

I try harder, and “Useless” means me.

MISSOULA

In the dark of the shower she combs out the knots in her hair and sticks the loose strands to the wet tile.

The apartment is filled up with the sound of the water.

The window in the bathroom is open and her body steams as the wind comes in off the snow.

The tips of her hair freeze. Her scalp tightens.

The kitchen smells of cold air through hot water

and the fried plantains in the salad you’re making.

This place has come to taste of you. You go to the shower, slip your hand under the skin on her hip, trace your finger up her stomach to her armpit, pull it free like you would undress a deer tied to a rafter by a chain in the garage.

You stand there and look out at Missoula, naked, watching

over the orange sky, the odd buildings tacked to the valley.

Talk of wiping them off and staking teepees

into the shadows along the hills.

GET UP GET UP

Hear the water. Get up.

Get up.

Trip myself and roll and

Get up.

Something

was wet

is dry.

Hear the water moving. Water.

Smells dry. Fall again. Get up.

Wet on my face. Wet on my neck.

Move to the noise.

Rain.

Can smell the rain

hitting the river.

THE OLD MAN

He puts me in the back

of the truck with His rifle

and has the older kids get in front.

I’m hungry and it’s hard

to enjoy the wind’s

smell, but I try to look happy

so they know I like this

more than being alone

outside, tied to the dirt. We’re going good

when we slam to a stop

and I’m thrown against

the cab. The rifle hits my back.

They’re laughing. I can’t

stand up. We speed up again. I slide

to the back. It’s hard but I manage

to crawl forward so if we need to stop

sudden again I won’t get hurt

like the idiot I am. We stop

slow at the crossroad as a truck

pulls up, rolls down the window.

He uses the sounds with the driver.

The other truck smells of wool,

of warmth and pine smoke. The old

man’s looking at me, “Where you heading

with that mangy thing?” His sounds

are soft as fine rain. “Her? She’s useless.

I’m taking her to the dump to put

her out of her misery.” He said

my name. The old man tilts his head

at Him a bit. “Huh. Well if you like

I’ll save you the bullet.”

A BROAD ARC THROUGH THE SKY

The water steams from the hole I’ve dug

on the hill and I sing

to myself as I sit and watch the stars

step-turn through the sky. The song

comes in and out like the heat

that waves off the highway those summers

when if you move out the shade

you blow off with the rest

of the dust. The moon clears

the ridge line and stops. The headlights

on the highway cut into the night,

frozen, a great cone and then they stream

again through the air. They blur.

The sun comes, now the moon,

making a broad arc through the sky

and I move over the land, taking

great strides, touching the grass

and the trees and the rivers,

leaving no track. There’s a jumping hunger

in my chest but I’m so full I cannot breathe.

GOING TO THE BATHROOM

I go to the bathroom thinking

of the rain pushing the snow into the hills and one

by one they come through the silence

to bite at me as eager as stray dogs.

They tell me I’m a waste,

a tumor, and I catch myself

believing them. Believing myself.

I can still feel and I like thinking

that makes me less of a waste.

Somehow feeling helps. For one

thing I can close my eyes like dogs

do when they push into a breeze, hear the silence

in the constant sound of the wind. That silence

buries the talk in me. I wipe myself,

flush, and go outside. With a dog’s

indifference, I stop thinking

and can forget the miles of asphalt around me, be one

with the wind on my scalp. That’s not wasted

on me. But then I do waste

nights like this sitting inside in silence

alone but for the talk in my head. One

minute I tell myself

I should clean, the next I’m thinking

most people are more worthless than dogs.

I whistle to rile the dogs

down the hill. Nothing. I go back to waste

another night inside and my thinking

dulls the world to a shade of iron. The silence

covers me. At the window I stare through myself

at the dump trucks crisscrossing town. By one

AM I’m writing a poem about one

time when the smartest of my dogs

opened a sliding door. I want myself

to smile but then I remember him in the black waste-

bag. I’ve just had him put down. Silence.

“Sometimes they leek,” the vet says. Thinking

like that vet is why I hate myself. The dogs

bark at a waste-truck crawling up the slope and one

turns all my thinking to silence.

GOES TO WORK AT THE POWER CO.

Some people don’t need as much sleep as others. I go to bed at midnight, pray, get up at five and watch for blown fuses at the crosses of the power-poles on the way to work. I used to chat in the hall. Now my boss doesn’t live in my state. Some mornings I daydream

that just before 8 AM the janitor

in the Dakota office unplugs

the extension cord from between my boss’

shoulder blades.

Used to be when cattle didn’t feel like moving on to the slaughtering house they’d rub on a power pole until they grounded the line. Then, one after another, they’d carry God for a quarter second. He would pause, remake their centers and stream out their hooves. I’d come out

and wrangle that snaking copper with reverence.

Then I’d put the cash to cover the dead cows

in the hand of the rancher.

Today, after the conference call, my ear is sore like I’ve just had a tag punched through. I sit in my office waiting

for the ranch hands to storm in

brandishing cattle prods, to pen

everyone up and drive us

to the shoots. They’ll force us up

the long ramp and then one by one

we’ll fall down the slide and wham!

with the sledge hammer.

I think I’d rather get washed away fording a river.

They’d find me at a bend,

just a hand or whatever the coyotes

hadn’t eaten before they went to sleep

in the prairie grass, their stomachs

quietly working to give

me back to God through the afternoon.

BUTTE

Occasionally old miners will sift

up to the topsoil and patch themselves

with leaves. They’ll head to town. You’ll see them gutting

deer in their garage or digging gardens,

trowels crusted to their hands. Some night,

late, you might wake up to one hucking bottles

at your door. He’ll be shouting. His rage

will choke you like the taste of mercury

through skin. As certain as the urine smell

of Fall he will demand that you account

for his stained skin, for why he has been treading

water in the loose soil, for why

he’s struggled even as the earth took him.

TAKING OFF MY DRESS

I see myself in the window

watching the rain that melts the snow

and wets a jogger on a run.

As the streetlights go out, a lone

dog pisses on a tree below.

I take off my dress as the glow

of morning bursts onto my slow

ascending arms. Lit by the sun

I see myself:

my body’s ill at ease with blowing

winds, my traffic’s stop and go,

my sidewalk steams where children

play lost-boys and indian.

Encircled, the girl lifts her bow;

I see myself.

GOES TO THE WINDOW AFTER LOSING HIS JOB

I close the door and open the blinds, look out the window at a branch waving

like one long line of people

brush against it as they walk south.

I’d forgotten there’s a rhythm

between the wind

and the branches.

SHEEP

The old man kept trying to touch me,

but I’d raise my lips

and he’d drop his hand. After I peed

on the floor of his cabin

he put me outside. I felt more

at home there. The next day

I wouldn’t let him untie me. He brought

me food that smelled better

than chicken grease. I was eating

so fast I didn’t hear him

come behind me and untie

the rope. He walked into the hills

and I followed him where he couldn’t

reach me. I heard the worried sounds

they made before I could see them.

They stood bunched together,

so at first they looked like rocks

on the hills. He kept saying sheep

until I knew what their sound was.

In a few days I learned how to make

them move, how to push them

into the hills. I learned how to know

if one strayed, how if I do something

he likes he says “bad dog”

real soft and nice. “Hokahe” means

let’s go, and “you filthy thing,

you have no soul” means that he feel

about me like I feel when I come up

and run my head under his hand.

A HINT OF SMOKE

The three of us wait in the purple

light just before dawn. We’re wet to the knees

from the dew on the thistles as the sun

starts etching out the mountains.

A hint of smoke from the forest fires

is enough to make our eyes twitch

as we strain to see. One Jake packs up

the tent while the other sits on the gravel.

He reaches into his pocket, brings

out a pipe and scratches a match on the tan

VW. Smells like cherries. The sun creeps

through the heavy smoke, drapes itself

across the glaciers, falls on

the limestone, the lodge-pole forests, sweeps

up against the rusted VW and idly

melts the frost from the windshield. The light

fills the valley, crosses the highway,

the clear cuts. As the sun climbs the smoke

moves in, filling the gaps between the peaks.

The Jakes set up cameras and the mountains

disappear. We head into the brush.

Six foot pines grow so tight they lift

the felled trees from the ground. We hit

a granite stream bed. Jake and I strip

as other Jake takes his camera out

of the bag. We jump into the cold

like it’s a womb, sliding on the slick bedrock

with the fur needles and dropping

into a small pool. We crawl from the water,

our skin smokes in the frigid air, polished

by the stone, and dance

like a frozen dragonfly waving her wings

in the first of the thaw, like we’re you as the sandy

hide of a colt that’s gotten loose and is bucking

his bare ass along the beach, hooves

kicking up leaves and the wind

taking them out over the ocean.

FRUIT OF THE FIELD

Slip on wet leaves into the river.

In the sky a fine mist.

Climb the bank. Walk through a sandbox.

Melted GI Joes. Step over the gate.

Red paint flecks off the window.

The living room carpet butts

into the prairie. A river. Buffalo. A steady

loud drum, a high lone song. Me streak their faces

black and red. They strike camp. One holds a pole

before him as they ride. A circle of teepees. A crowd

gathers. Whooping. Children

meet the riders and race them back.

Sunset. Next door. A chunk of stone missing

from the ear of the marble lion out front. His mane

flows into the emptiness, emerges again. Inside

is a streetlight in the branches of a tall maple. Leaves

drifting down.

In the alley. Frat boys knock down a man.

They stomp on his head. Blood. They scatter.

The body peels itself up. He is torn. I can see his imprint

on the cement. He closes a knife,

gives space to the corners, staggers off.

I trip. The leaves stick to my face. Smells

like urine. The rain eases. Wind comes up,

sails me into the air over the street.

BOZEMAN

The stream barrels into a tunnel

and right away the water runs thigh deep

and cold. After a while you give up

on pulling off the spider webs. To keep

your feet you move slow over the soft

rotting bodies of stones. Soon

you’ll hear laughter coming down

through the floor of the bar overhead,

then the traffic. Main Street. Then,

the noise of water pouring off a drop.

You turn back and slip, fight for your feet,

claw at the stones but they slide away.

You land in a shallow pool, bruised.

The tunnel beyond is wider and you can make

out the lesser dark of the stream

coming into a yard. You stumble out

covered in webs, wet, but kind of new.

The street lamps, the traffic lights,

even the lamps by windows of the hobbled

over houses all go out

and the sky falls open over you.

There are more stars then you had ever

before cared to see and you know

you are a part something

so alive there are no words.

A DEEP MARK IN THE GROUND

I circle backwards and watch

my breath coming white. I pull the cold

into my lungs and picture

hills made of the cropped off heads

of cattle too rotten to eat. I come back

to myself empty, colder. I dream

a fire to stay warm. I walk

into the flames where they burn

at the earth, circle and circle

until my feet are chafed. Dragging

them, I’ve made a deep mark in the ground.

SHOULD BE MORE NOISE

Am wet. My old girlfriend’s apartment.

Looks the same. The street glints,

stained in rain. Tears. Look for stars.

None on the horizon.

Inside. She thrashes at her comforter.

Gets up, heads for the bathroom. Goes back to bed.

Dig the hide-a-key from the mail box. Go in.

Lift the blanket with with a finger. Lay down

slow. She groans

and rolls over. After a minute

I almost hold her. Move close

to sleep. No stars on

the horizon. The buildings block the stars.

Almost morning. Buildings…

the stars. Should be more

noise. I move. She shifts away.

The stars. To hold her. The horizon. Buildings

not mountains. Morning.

There should be more noise.

GOES TO THE PHONE

He says nothing when he answers. “You know,” I say, “I’ve written a poem where you lose your job.” Silence. “Then you look out your window lost in the dull grey-blue of the sky and at that moment there is no one more alone.”

“Oh,” he says, “clever. I was just thinking

of calling you.”

When I was sixteen we were driving and I told him how frustrated I was. Genocide and Coke-a-Cola. I told him there was no god to fix our mess. I told him six billion people were too damn many and nothing could change that. He sat there silent, picking at the steering wheel

of his old blue Jeep, looking out

into the darkness hanging over the water

of the ponds where he’d parked to listen.

I remember him shouting at me to shut up when I had a sleep over in third grade. But he turned silent a few months later, after my brother died. My mom would wake me up at night screaming at him in the kitchen. All I heard back was the door shutting as he’d walk out

to the Jeep, the cranking of the starter

as he’d go to work five hours early, the first light

swallowing him up.

When mom called me from my room he sat at the dining room table with the afternoon flooding in through the big sliding doors to the porch. The sky was all blue, the mountains a deep purple, the day somehow gorgeous

as he cried. She told me “Dad’s moving. Just for a while. We need time to ourselves, some quiet

to sort things out.”

“Hey, you listening to me?” he asks. What was he saying? “Well, anyway, you know it’s true,

your poem. Me and everyone

in your poems we’re tired

of feeling so alone.”

ANATHEMA

The old man’s put me in a room

with a dark haired boy

and he won’t let me out. He knows

I can’t help but notice

the cute way this boy

points his ears, how he’s cautious

with his nose, that he has

the same dogged look in his eyes

as I do. We go at it

and it’s fun.

A few months later the old man

sets me up on some blankets

in a shed and I have three. Triplets.

But two come dead. The last

is so small I’m not sure how she can live.

Her hair is matted and sick

looking but I let her have my nipple

and it’s strangely comforting

like a half forgotten song.

He tries to pick her up

but I show my teeth. Mine

won’t be taken. Only after I’m sure

he’s sure she’s staying

do I let him hold her.

He calls her “Anathema.”

WAKING IN A FEW PLACES

One morning after I left home, my mom took to calling

the horses her kids. She’s always said motherhood’s her calling.

I got up before sunrise to make coffee and watch

for the first light. No alarm, just heard the sun calling.

As the light breaks on the ranch she counts off each

of her animals. Then she goes out with the feed, softly calling.

There’s an old cowboy that paints the sunrise, everyday. One morning,

he saw the world had shifted by a degree or two. That’s a calling.

We measure the weight of the new sun on the dew soaked grass against

the old mule’s settling bulk. He passed as if he’d heard the dirt calling.

I wanted to believe that the world had turned away. But I had turned.

Now, the morning wind and the bird songs have come calling.

THE VALLEY

On the last road you can see

the valley between

the mountains through the gaps

in the trees. There’s sagebrush

where you could sleep

through the heat of the day,

where you could walk until you grow

toothless, until you forget

your name. You stop along

a drainage, step out of your car

wanting to feel as the land feels,

to know every fold of those silk

hills, to lose yourself in the grass

that bears up thirsting.

You climb an old cottonwood

and leave yourself in the branches:

your hands are the paint brush

flowers, your back forests

of lodge-pole pine

rolling with the wind.

THE SONG

An odd song plays off

by the highway tonight and I walk

after it like you’d follow a person

I’d known all my life. The music

is picked up by my footsteps,

by the grass and the buzz of the insects.

At one moment it’s falls off, is only

the sound of the stars, the sky, the

wind, the highway, but then the song

is clear again, a low slow rising

in all the sounds. And it’s moving.

I close my eyes and run. I hit

a slight rise where the grass brushes

my face and the song is there,

on the other side. I spring for it.

At the top of the rise the grass

clears and a bright light charges me,

throws me into the air. The song surrounds

me. There is air, there is land

and the song and me, but we

have no start, no end.

COMING ON A BASEMENT FIRE

He’s screaming through the smoke

for me to help him. He’s screaming up

like death is there beside him. He’s screaming

so I know he’s waving

his fists like they’re knots

of wood. His fists are knotted wood.

His fists are crashing into his wife,

he’s throwing her to the floor. He throws her

like he doesn’t care no more.

His hands are wet

to the wrists. His hands are bloody

at the wrists. His hand sinks into her mouth.

He screams “You bitch!

How could you?” Screams “You dog! I’ll show you!”

He screams and it’s me

knocked out where he threw her.

I feel the hot wind from the fire. I feel the heat

of his anger. I feel the sweaty wind

as workers crawl from the rubble.

He turns over my limp body,

grabs my feet. He turns me over, takes

my feet and drags me off.

He turns into the bedroom, shouting again,

“Get help! Can you fucking hear

me? Get help! Hurry God damn you, hurry

get help!” I lift my dress

and piss standing down onto the bastard.

NO LESS THAN ME

You should know. Close to sleep the dawn comes.

Through the window, the gray. The light

crawls on all fours. Stops at the carpet.

Squeals and babbles and goes silent. The light

no less alive than me moves

up the bed and carries voices

like gum on the sidewalk in the rain.

They talk ravens. God. The wind

on a branch. A mist

in a library. They talk, things shift.

Echoes of gunfire. A man hits a woman.

I catch his wrist. He looks back

and I’m small. His uniform is starched

but wet. He slaps me. Everything

rushes together. We move apart. A redness.

I open my left hand. Another hand

types words on my palm. Open my right,

a little brain scrutinizes the left. Open

the brain: a hand opening

a hand. And this hand is you. Welcome.

My hand reaches for yours. We touch. Hunger

is not hunger. I press on your wrist.

Your pulse is no longer my pulse. You take

my finger, I lift you into the world.

GOES OUT IN THE RAIN

It’s 5:00 AM. Sunday. Used to be on Sunday I’d get up before church and get a some work done at the office before the service. But today I’m stuck

here with the yellow counters reflecting the fluorescent lights

and bad coffee watching the trees and brick work

buildings outside emerge in shades.

The daylight brings on the traffic, the cars pushing

the rain water into the gutters.

I’ve never felt for a storm before. It’s 5:37 AM. The sunlight

breaks and the street-lamps shut off.

I head outside, the wind catches the door

and slams it shut. The rain,

the static earth

lean into me

like a body long asleep.

A SUNSET ON A MOUNTAIN

As I wait for the sun to meet

the horizon I feel close to the earth,

close and whole. The sun reaches

the mountain. It’s time. I watch

him coming up the river

from the side of my eyes. His mouth

hangs open, his tongue roles

out the side. His stomach is fat

and he is gone. Now closer, now

gone again. I can feel them gathering

to watch and, god knows why, I sing

and keep singing. He comes

to me once the sun has fallen

behind the mountains and the light

is half darkness. He is there

and not there, blurry in the half

light. He faces his body to me

but his head stays in profile,

looking off as if he is watching

something of great interest beyond

my site. He glances at me, turns

and I follow him, singing. I’m singing

now to his children, and soon

the earth will take up my song.