April 29th, 2008

Darkroom: Waiting for Meaning

You write in the air with a flashlight
words only long-exposed photographs
and I can understand, though some only
take significance in your thoughtful twirling.
But your eloquence knows more bounds
than pen or marker or crayon:
the intonation of your pupils in
the low light: open, for a moment
echoing the swirl of the W in
your left arm swing, as you write:
Wait for me.




April 20th, 2008

How to make a paper auto:
1. flatten boxes:
soft-drink six packs
powdered soap
refrigerator carton
cereal wafer square

2. lay papers parallel:
off-grey newspapers
glossy half/3quarter nudes
textbooks on cell theory
photocopies of photos

3. weave
colors
textures
two ply
three
a breast    toy fire truck

paper shredder refuse

then
la-
-min-
-ate

poly-{picture}
fiber-{story}
blend- auto
body

chew-ing-gum-wheels-venus-fly-trap-engine





April 19th, 2008

Grove

Cicadas buzz sun rays up
crisp leaflets
yellow-speckled sun spots
edges curl:
Jesse grasps a fallen orange
yellow in green/brown
hairy summer grass going to seed,
and turns to me.
Eyes violet in cumulonimbus shadows
say, “I am this citrus.”





April 25th, 2008

Ode to seeding grass and rain-thick breezes;
algae blankets on fallen logs that block
spring flow, drawbridges over the Sewanee,
Ichetucknee, or the Nile; and tiny toes on
inner-tubes deflating;  a whitewash one-room
sells peanuts boiled dipped from a warped
metal tub that bathed children before water
ran out to this county, if it does now.

Here, horses playing in the pastures
under the pecans and pines and live oaks,
they out number people, but the better
to see the Milky Way spatter the center
of the sky.





April 22nd, 2008

Tourism

I scratched my name into the wood,
but by “name” I mean letter.

“Leave only footprints”

Eroded grains break free of weeds
and blocks and condemned bungalows
with walks over seawalls into the air.
And the blackeye-suzans breathe up dune swirls.

My letter rests among others, years, splinters,
and I jump the last two feet between
the approach steps’ end and the dried kelp,
wave-flattened earth, littered with broken periwinkles,
nautilus, and the back swirl of a conch.

The overcast waves beckon my footsteps
with a gentle rush that drowns the jackhammer
of a new high-rise shadow.