by James Welsh
my mailbox. And in a way
the poor mailman became Atlas,
having to drag the world behind
him in his brown canvas bag.
Through pictures,
I walked the mountains with her,
saw the Northern Lights
with her, and we both
swam through the blue
sea and saw the coral
that was burrowed deep
beneath.
And I wondered if she would like
postcards from around here –
of the crumbled highways,
of the railroad tracks,
of the flat lands that have
looked the same since the last day
she saw them –
postcards of a lackluster town
that we’ve been condemned
with since birth, from
which she somehow broke
free to see the world.
But I don’t want to give her
more reasons to stay away.
Tricycle Worlds
I became a god by the age of three,
my hands, my sleeves choked with
chalk dust as I drew a house on the
sidewalk, the concrete drunk
on the simmered summer day.
They told the parents that the boy
was clumsy, dropping and breaking
English as he walked the floors of his
home. They told the parents that
the boy would never learn his Rs
or Qs or Ss or Ts or Hs or Zs,
all this while they sat and watched
the boy play alone.
And the parents could do nothing
but sit back and watch their son’s
dreams bleed through the slurs
and stutters in his speech – the other
children on the playground not so
willing to learn a foreign language just yet, leaving
him to play with his babble at the swingsets.
They left that young boy to
his mind and wild noise and so he
built within his heart a world of fighter pilots
and dinosaurs and all this
before he learned his phone number
at the age of four.
He was a muted,
broken trumpet until they noticed
that he could speak through his
drawings, his scribbles of a cup –
a cup dripping water on a tabletop –
speaking more English
than his foreign words
ever could. And so they told the
parents to let the boy write and
before the ink had time
to dry on paper, I learned how to talk.
Turn of the Screw
We pass around the three-faced shame –
those tricycle wheels
turned assembly line
turned push
because we’re frozen,
turncoat cowards against momentum –
Newton’s law-book is
on the shelf,
the title scratched off, forgotten.
It’s a game that just goes
on and on until we’re playing
grown-up in daddy’s three-piece suit.
April 15, 2011
Twist
You curve and twist with that
famous bluster of yours,
mustering thousands of storms
spinning in the distance, a distance
that wisps with steam in the summer
heat – it takes me back to my first
and last home in my mother’s womb –
how fitting.
You shout and scream and pound
lean fists against the lumber
table – making the wood crack
like trees in the mortuary
of winter. Your snarls break
like eggs, but instead of
birds, there’s words
like “how could you” and
“why won’t you”
and it feels rather marvelous to
wrap myself in the blanket
of all of this.
You could
be screaming because you care,
or you could be screaming because
you aren’t for or with me anymore.
Either or, it doesn’t matter because
I could feel the strength to your gravity
since you brought my head
in on a silver platter as if
there wasn’t any food left
from this winter frozen over
with vanity and pride and judgment
and – oh how the cold brings
out the clarity!
Umbrellas Swept Up Into Trees
We’re both umbrellas swept up into trees
on cold afternoons that forgot the sun
and when we forget what the sun looks like –
I like to think it’s the
orange pulp that crowds
the bottom of my breakfast cup
(the only time you could say you
were looking down at the sun
instead of up).
Instead, as we stretch out
like scratchy wool blankets
on the cold lawns of November,
we see the pale yellows murmuring
beneath the surface of the clouds,
the dull sunlight whining,
sharpening its claws on the
front door. He wants in,
but we’re about to sit
down for dinner anyway.
He can always come back later.
Perhaps tomorrow,
perhaps another day.
I wrap a butterknife blade
of grass around my finger
and try to remember
this moment out
from beneath the rug
and onto the
coffee table, using
the memories to
warm up conversation
in the moments before
our forever of dinners.
Under Construction
“To build all solid.”
Sylvia Plath, a journal entry dated February 25, 1956
This glue, this tape is déjà vu –
the wind reads the pages of
the instruction manual
as, for the fifth time, I pound a patch
into the roof, my clumsy hands
raining nails and screws into the
pail on the floor below. The holes
in the walls – “Who put holes in
the walls?” – the tired calls
to plumbers, electricians – the exposed
wires hanging from the ceiling,
the ends sparking like lures –
it reminds me of fishing…
I know there’s more to all this,
though, than yet another trip
to the hardware store.
The faucet’s constant drip drips
remind me of the honest slips
of “Well, maybe I don’t love you
anymore” or “Where were you
tonight? How come you never
pick up your phone?”…all this
is more than what another trip
to the hardware store can fix.
I don’t even know if I want this
pain and hardship anymore…
But I remember back when
the house was fixed, when
we never had to hold
a hammer, instructions,
or a piece of tape.
I remember a kiss
in front of
the kitchen sink
that we never had to fix.
And though the exposed
wires were still hanging
from the ceiling – even then –
we never thought of them
as f
ishing lures and lines,
but instead we used to flick
the light switch and wish on
shooting stars without
ever having to go outside.
Unfolded Maps Can Sprawl
The blood smears my television. The
blush dripping from their heads – a leaky
fountain of life.
As these lotuses raise their
fists and shout, more of their strength
runs down. When it hits the soil, it doesn’t
puddle – it becomes stars that streak
like the bricks from the roofs, the whips
in the streets.
It streams with the shadows and pavement
into their flag. They say you
would need an atlas
to find the Nile, but you can read their country
off that flag like a map if you want.
And with that map on the street and with
you at your height, you cannot help but
to look across it. And then you cannot
help but to rise above it.
February 6, 2011
Van Eyck
She painted herself into a canvas,
canvas as smooth and soft as
jazz notes tumbling down
the king’s mattress, canvas
as smooth and soft as she is,
as she was.
True, she’ll sink in time –
her eyes diming from
a sharp noon sky to a
moonlit sea where the seaweed
rots and lies. Her face will
wrinkle at each new worry,
each wrinkle just
another line for her
life’s story. Her midnight
hair will snow with flurries,
her youth further buried
in the pages.
This painting will survive its
inspiration – it’ll stand guard
over this gallery, soothing the
rally of tourists’ eyes.
But when the portrait
begins to curl its corners
into a skeleton’s grin and
the canvas ghosts away
as dust into the day,
not even van Eyck or
even van Gogh could
put life back into
such a painted ghost.
Vintage Dreams
I seem to dream in black and white.
You always say you dream in greens
although it’s night and there’s no light
in which to cast your meadow lights
upon the bedroom filled with screens.
I seem to dream in black and white
like ancient movies without lights
or cameras, without Wilhelm screams –
although it’s night and there’s no light
and shades grow monsters out of sight
beneath my trembling bed unseen.
I seem to dream in black and white.
However, you are rolling right
through creamy fields of Irish green
although it’s night and there’s no light.
You tell me sleep’s a gorgeous machine.
I want to dream your dreams…but see,
I seem to dream in black and white
although it’s night and there’s no light.
Warlord
This singer’s cherished, although he
hasn’t yet been snuck out through
the exit, with the funeral sobs
an understudy for the mousesqueak
of the door hinge.
He’s praised like some saint,
an ant given picnic instead of
squished into orange by
some misplaced footstep.
This is the part where it all
becomes clear to the singer –
the world becoming picture
under the wide-lensed empire
focus, the mountains flatter than hills –
or at least it’s as clear
as night-hidden lion roar
to the singer, drinking his
cigars like whisky until
he gets his train pass –
first-class I might add –
to wherever his god is (probably hidden
in the pond in Narcissus’s backyard).
May 20, 2010
Warm Saint Monica
Her husband picked her scars like birthday gifts,
her fullmoon skin ripped like scrap notebook paper.
Her mudhair’s ruffled against the flatscreen
TV. I can almost – almost – feel her pain.
She doesn’t lecture a word – it’s hard
to scream against a crowd of cuts
he drumbeat on her with a five o’clock rhythm.
She’s silent as dam, her minutes pooling into
hours and days and months. Years.
So now the raining of
fists against the damwater
is drops too weak to startle her.
But we can see the murky water
sloshing over, slashing through
the cracks in her wood.
She still doesn’t cry still,
so I flood for her.
October 5, 2010
Water Stilled
The daughter was born royalty
into purple tides, where the waters
churn pink like flamingo wings.
The river herself was dazed, shallow
breathing, under the spell of
chemical daydreams that can kill
and yet still make memorials of memories.
This is where herons flew away from,
their wings either vagrants or settlers.
This is where the fish are little more
than forgotten flashes of silver
spilled in the indigo waters.
Still, just like silver, this wildlife is pure –
just like silver, these fish are still valuable.
The river’s trying to mine the fish
for their shine, growing them up
like cornfields, above the irrigation
and into the sun. The writhing
silver is brighter than any sun.
The river’s a mother trading
breaths with her child –
when mother exhales,
the child inhales.
And what if the daughter
has the same color
eyes as her mother? What if
the moment mother
shuts her eyes to sleep,
daughter opens hers to wake?
Would it be less of a death
and more of a blink?
October 30, 2011
Wear Thin
Your arrogance is starting to wear thin
like an old man’s walking-cane grin
or the blue in the lake
where us as kids used to swim.
Your arrogance is starting to wear thin
like a cloud that skates the wintry evenings
when the leaves have fallen and the
evergreens are heaving, seeming to stand
proud while deep down they’re freezing.
Your arrogance is starting to wear thin
like faded wedding rings that show
that although the years pile on
and the decades grow,
that lovers still remember their poetry –
no prose.
Your arrogance is starting to wear thin
like a clown whose painted face
starts to wane and fade, his life
showing through the curling smile –
if only he could trade
his kingdom for a game.
Your arrogance is starting to wear thin
like the gears inside that grandfather clock
you keep in your living room. A clock that
used to kee
p the hours, but now chimes
at ten past noon.
Where Fireflies End, Where Lightning Begins
I could never tell where
the fireflies end and
the lightning begins –
they’re all blank, jagged
splatters crowded
on the deep night
canvas. All an origami
landscape creped
around this world – our world.
We can goodbye
across continents
and still the sunset that I sleep to
is the sunrise that wakes you up.
Our dusks and dawns
all look the same,
each a chord tight on our
black-and-white nights
and days – all songed together
into a sun that weathers down
as rains of rays raise up
the cornstalks while at the
same time raze them down.
All these things are different – like you and me.
All these things are the same – like us.
June 23, 2010
Whim Sea
I row
my boat
across the Whim Sea.
I heave
the oars,
wiping away my
sweat with my sleeve.
I can’t tell
if the salt is from
the sea spray or from me.
My boat’s crushing
against the waves;
my good
arms lift and wheeze.
But it’s no good,
so now I share
my name with that sea.
Who Holds Your Hand
Who holds your hand?
I hold my own in
applause forever,
the clap clasped
together like love’s
last kiss against the
glassed December.
I transform into a
closed-circuit in those
common moments,
the static jumping
ship between the fingertips.
It’s in those thens that
I become less wiry
and more of a wire –
my nerves twisted together
in a fibromyalgiac crush
that could raise the bald
