All This
You’ll miss all this—
But first some coffee
Kinda scary, that cake-
Walk on the catwalk
In the morning out of bed
Your small eyes wrung red
Smell may be the last memory
To go—but also the first sense
You said you’d pry my thick
Skull from my scream
You halt your way to mid
Sentence, comparing outcomes
We should have____much more—
All that settled like farm dust
That fungal happiness
Hand in hand in the graveyard
Sometimes everyone is found and
You are responsible but not needed
The way you said revision’s the best part—
To find the music amid thought and feeling
Not only straight boys play games—
How that shrapnel shapes you
So sculptured, so life-like, the moist
Butchered meats remind you of someone
They said “suckles,” not “sockless,”
But either way they were cold
And all their skin was bare
And all this, too, you’ll miss
Blessed Day
If we own it, where do we store it—
In our shelters or in our carts?
Blessed if we do, blessed if we don’t.
Half the time we bless somebody
We’re accused of talking to ourselves,
The other half to someone who’s not there.
There’s a difference. Makes a difference, too,
Blessing or being blessed. Could be that
“Have a blessed day” is less a command
Than a hope, a hope that something about
Our day takes a blessed turn, that rabid rats
Won’t bite, that the garbage scow of the
Streets is dry, that grates deliver heat, that
Waking up from our dreams won’t sicken us.
We’d like to live on dream material. We’re the
Biters, nothing’s bitter. Wet doesn’t get into our
Moldy bones but down our parched throats. The
Olfactory isn’t industrial. Dirt not dirty, damp,
Dented dumpsters hosed out, not showered,
Heaped full not plated. Today we licked milk
Rings off an outside table, the savory wood
Topped with notes of old ketchup and bird crap.
We gave thanks for it, said grace, asked for a
Blessing, a blessing on our days, that there be
Music in them, a way of dwelling in them.
Whatever the rest might be, what’s left over,
Fragrant lifeboats, wishful words, you can have.
The Latest Call
Prison windows look out on prison windows. Glazed
riot glass reflects glazed riot glass. Televisions blare
old movies that carry codes that can be heard as far
as the other end of the line, the sing-song secrets of
surviving being buried alive with pressed laundry over
bare lungs and skin that howls. Life-like visitors are
papered over, hence death as well. This zone is dusk,
as crosshatched and thin as the hope books in love
offer. It’s possible to sleep all day playing dominoes
drowning in fire pebbled like fine-grained gravestone
and heavier. No wonder the calls slog. Only the code-
cracking background, photos of music, clouds of bugs,
queasy shrugs that may earn a pass—remind that the
windows are not the acrylic nails that once grazed scalp.
Hugs were not always accomplices. To sit side by side
in sight of far horizons: give that mystery the last word.
After/Thought Literary 