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Two poems:
LOVE SPOON
Now I imperil your ear
with a tiny aluminum spoon I picked up
at the Korean pharmacy for $4.98.
Not quite the sterling tool my mother
suitcased to America, lost
now in some sofa.
Nor is mine the worn scent of her lap,
padded with the small pillow
of a twice-birthed gut.
In truth, only this seriousness
in wielding a deadly means
with such delicate sweeps
remains
..................sweet cat-
licks inside the ear, that
ethereal kissing.
White ear wax is greasy,
I surgically scrape.
Ours is dry and crumbly.
As once my mother sat down
with a lamp and a half-dozen
children from the neighborhood.
How else are we different?
you ask, unable
to see me.
But, alas, I come up
emptypalming
no secret kernel
from this body
I am learning
to love as deep
as perhaps only a mother
dares to reach.
No matter.
Smiling, eyes
still closed,
....................you roll
as if to offer another
pot of gold.
SAND CAMOUFLAGE ELEGY
Never mistake uncertainty for dawn
Or dusk as your life in reverse
The soul, sand-whipped at noontime, hides
from the self's sharper shadows
Unsuppered as any hot ghost in a bombed-out window
Step through night, dazed, yes
now
while your marrow is still sweet
from the earth's smoldering core
Mere lifea trick of time & light
stretching retinas like a mask
Somewhere there is a great invisible castle
with stories like this for its invisible bricks
Fused by tears, bile, puss & shit
Last week at his funeral, we all sucked
in & out a vaguely differentiated hymn
as if the Lord's littlest lambs
This is religion: we all
slide back down the shadows
of birth in our hand-sewn uniforms
It matters only
that in the final moments
you kissed the grenade
back
& never why
or where....
"There
No
Right here, yes,
still rawest
when I glow..."
Emergency
GI
Joseph Smith on North Korea, the Taliban, and Poon Tang; Sring Theory;
Fat
from Real Karaoke People:
Year of the Dog
Seasons
of Hair
more....
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