Start Here

We are traveling.
Milkweeds caught in the wire,
a river overtopping the banks
after a long wet winter—

here you are made smaller.
I’m going to tell you what happened
right away. And then
we can talk about it.

There is something
everybody knows.
From too far away, your voice spilling
into the corners, grief-

we are already here.
Leave the shadow, leave the glass,
there is something.
Start here, right away.

Firefly at the Experimental Jazz Concert

Look at a distance and it makes sense.    

Everything said, everything felt,  

all made sense.  

So much need 

to be set apart from the world.  

This is the song

you didn't know you wrote—

locked outside the music,

desperate wild blinking

toward the lights.

This is so unlike you,

laying there dying.

7:40 Mark

Watch Sacramento police officers shoot Stephon Clark dead

The Herald Sun, Mar 21, 2018

WARNING: Graphic content. The Sacramento Police Department has released body cam footage of the shooting of Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man, in his grandparents' backyard. This footage is from camera 1. The shooting occurs near the 7:40 mark.

After the long wet winter,

all that time didn’t find me

an ending. 
Do you remember?

I was forever, that dark reel

stalled in space

still alive at the 6:20 mark,

I can’t tell you what 

and then

something is spilling

urgent, my eyes

let me be

brave

from far away, running,

Mom-mom’s backyard

the grass I laid, giddy, as a boy

some summers

                some fall

tapping on the window like,

member we found that kitten?

sliding to the ground like, 

how we play, waiting to wake​,

already here.

alive at the 7:12

28 seconds left

unexpected, terrible
ordinary day

tiny eternity resting
in my childhood

as if there was a shelter

                8 seconds

shiny screaming hole

red faced.           tears, no sound

that quiet kid

                splitting, insistent, I am




--  --  --  --  --  --  --  --

The Story

On this day your time has come to take the story. This is the story of us -- of who we were, of who we are, of who we will become. Every child must learn the story. Every child must grow and tell the story. Take the story and give it to everyone you see. Tell the people they must take the story, take it and give it away. Put your words and poems in the story, so that when it goes you go, too. Tell the people they must put their words and poems in the story, so that when it goes they go, too. Tell the people what I have told you on this day -- your time to take the story. The story of us - of who we were, of who we are, of who we will become. Tell them the story. And the story is:

Before the Tide

Many silences,

circling back into sand

by the glass

by the window

this is how you land.                      

Plunge the dark where

all the fine beasts

dive towards sky.

Say more than you have to.

Each pebble a witness

promise and music,

here you are made smaller.

Eating our language,
the song gets stronger.

So much common magic,

an ocean is dreaming

of washing

into the graveyard
to find it’s flower.

Surrendering the Horses

A stranger, delicate conversation,
first sapling
sweet yeast,
handmade corn tortillas.
This moment,
a terminal demonstration
12 minutes from
childhood,
                                 
                                           all the fine beasts
                                broken. Soft eyes close
                                in 10 fragile ways.
                                The pony's bridle, cart
                                a cornered, tattered toy.
                                Try to imagine it.
                                The great plunge
                                foundered, finally.
                                Hard to keep
                                the last mares
                                from bolting forever into the fields.

Sadie Dreams of Her Mother Walking Into the Ravine

I agree: it must be the seasons.

You think you are seeing,

But you are not.

Hard to imagine either of us that young,

yet it happened.

Listening to her family in the next room

while laying twisted in fever,

never again to hear a bell

without hearing the bell.

The package left, suddenly in the night,

unopened--

with some relief, you watched her walk away

and knew not to stop her.

Soft and letting go

            through the moss to the leaves above--
easing into the water, eyes open.

Take it Easy, Take it Hard

For Bubba

In the winter I wait for summer.

In the thick of summer, it seems like cooler,

more tolerable weather will never circle back around. 

Days and weeks are spiraling past, while simultaneously the bus never seems to round the corner. My friend, you write: Innocents, awaiting the divine, suddenly propelled forward on the edge of an alien tsunami. Fifty years gone in a blink. 
Knowing that fifty days and fifty years can blink and drag and blink and drag... how can I argue? 

How can I deny it?

Instead I will say this:

Go get Marly, walk down and let him splash in the river and shake his natty fur. Sit in the garden near Phebe's witchy thistle patch. Sit in the grass, lay down in the grass. Rest your head on that smelly precious dog. Light a bonfire, drink wine from a coffee cup on the darkening porch. Dance until the record skips then tell jokes in the kitchen, mosquito slapping. Scratch your beard, take a swim and shake your natty fur. Let your grown son be a child. Take it easy and take it hard.

Go get Marly and walk down to the river,

I will watch for the bus finally rounding the corner

and find myself aboard.

Follow You Home (3)

Another thing,
it could be just a matter of evening.
An afternoon holding night at arm's length
before easing her into the ground.

A walk where dusk is coming quickly,
surrounded by plum trees. Fortune, a stray cat following you home.

Even if you don't believe
wisdom can be just what it sounds like,
a memory with a shadow curling into itself.
Familiar hands at the end of mystery limbs.

Consider the end a becoming dark,
not exactly, but getting there.
Forever falling, never landing. 

Letter To Fortune

Fortune, 

The alley giddy with needles, chamomile soap,

the old notes in hard pressed script. Four marbled strays remain,

everything is ordinary.

I write from under the tree where we met that strange blooming fall.

Do you remember me? In the ginkgo’s curling shadow, I was the one made small.

Though early, dusk comes quickly, still. I am traveling. The voices all spill into corners. 

My limbs are a mystery. It is exactly what it sounds like. I have never left.

Follow You Home (II)

 Ever recall a memory and there is a thing

underneath it?  Like a shadow,

Tonight, the ginkgos will lose their leaves

all at once.

The neighbor’s yard is drying, curling inside itself.

Streets fill with ghosts, all remembering.

Dusk comes quickly, leaves a shadow

on the porch.

A stunned rose has found herself bloomed,

right here in late October.

I want to be told something.

I want wisdom, even if it only sounds like it.

The tomato plants need to be broken the news:

Winter is an old man waiting,

Fall is a teenager following you home.

He may get to the end,

it will surprise him, too.

Each Port

Let’s begin again, at the end.

From the window, watching you

twirl into existence.

The pup chasing the bees

chasing the shadows, trees.

Urgent blooming

spun back like glass

crunch sealed, ice packed

the wind curling

into the corners.

Pipes grind to a halt

dry leaves tumbling all at once

the dark day, the blue morning

dusk comes quickly,

Ginko now bare.

A stunned rose bloomed

right here in late October,

we are saying goodbye.

Now the luxuriant rolling valley,

willow bowing into the creek

the long stretch of promise

algae on the pond, goose shit

milkweed wishes, sticky pickers and blazing

the sun

(Poem Longer Than One Line)

The Hermit Crab Bought on a Weekend Whim
Lived on for years. No one expected this.

Summer’s Lament

The spring I like

is summer. Obvious

her clinging ways,

pawing at your neck, your thighs,

climbing your back

for the walk home.

Summer is insecure.

It’s true. Though no one

admits it. She’s anxious,

moody. It’s in the genes,

can’t be helped. A true beauty

who will smile

then hurl a wineglass

at your head. She’s sorry,

she’s hot, has no idea

what got into her –

except the humidity.

It’s a lot of sullen shit happening.
Nobody antsy for her, like

that bitch fall, who gets

ovations just for showing up.

And people so afraid

of winter, they just keep

their mouths shut.

Shuffling along, beggars

clamping down, baring cold

like birth duty.

A trip planned, summer,

                           never taken. 

Things Written Down to Cassendre Xavier's Voice

Listen to the song that inspired this poem.

So, this small storm comes on, a prickly tidal wave :
Some
how
her
song
travels to the skin, lower back, ears, lower

and back.

Can feel even as we hear, or we are not hearing until we first feel.
It’s a chill, a warning, a takeover.

How to say -- feel music so much as hear it
without saying what has been said before?

Redemption, Redemption, Redemption, birth rite.

So, this small storm comes on, a prickly tidal wave :
it sounds like with-with, heart stop, with –

it sounds like shhhhhhhhhhh

It sounds like learning, learning, learning, lifting burning.
Willing, willing                                      willing.

shush.

It sounds like looking back, looking forward, looking-

Joy can be mine?

I have learned

I won’t be cruel

I have learned

the path Less Broken, less broken.

What would you do what would you do what would you do what would you do
if I told you:

I am not back

I’m back

I’m not back

I’m back

I'm
not ready not ready not ready
never ready
for pain.

Elegy (II) for Gil Kalt

Gil,
I dreamed again of you last night.
                   In the dimming light, your eyes
                seemed green, and true
I am no longer sure they were blue.
Oh! and your feet were bare
but
striking more was your hair, a swept
                            up affair much less you than those eyes:
green not blue.
Last night I smelled again your salt and your sea,
        laid my head close to your heart, a mystery
warmly caged. I clutched you like a land bird after a day
stuck in a tree. You smiled at me.

I am a child still grasping 
       but no longer asking
you to stay.

"Less than a month after joining the police department as Philadelphia's only open gay officer, Thomas G. Kalt Jr. took his own life today by shooting himself once in the head near the historic First Bank of the United States at Third and Chestnut Streets."          --Philadelphia Inquirer

Selling the Farm

sestina for my brothers

I dreamed again of our old farm last night.
In sleep the land is forever changing,
Chestnut mares constantly running, running,
their finely chiseled forms slick with cool sweat –
I see their muscles flexing, fluid skin,
I smell the strong musk of manure, sweet grain.

The sky opened up – a starburst of grain;
the silo shot like a rocket last night,
oats showered dried earth and the smooth skin
of the mares, their shapes and colors changing
as I, too, begin to move, my own sweat
dripping, my bare feet slapping dirt, running.

The orchard shook, fruit fell from our running
thick pungent sumac patches bent like grain
while my feet cracked and my eyes stung with sweat,
the pounding of hard hooves rattled the night,
in moving through acres I was changing,
my own muscles flexing beneath my skin.

The mares’ thick switching tails flick at my skin,
I don’t know why I continue this running.
Am I also frightened by the changing
sky and the explosions of glistening grain
shooting forth, bright tiny jets in the night?
Bending graceful necks to drink, the mares, sweat

pours from their bodies becoming streams of sweat,
cascading from smooth coats and slickened skin
draining into the dried earth and dark night.
The mares begin once again their running,
bodies like wet chestnuts, manes like light grain.
I move along the fields, body changing

all the while running to avoid changing;
the slipping away of the farm like sweat
from our bodies, the sting of the grain
as it pelts, welts and sticks to our wet skin.
Then I realize it’s the earth that’s running –
a huge treadmill spinning the farm into night.

We grew up with foals, whose coats changed like our mixed skin –
our futures sliding apart, spreading like the sweet sweat
of the horses that run only through the high grain fields of my dreams at night.


Note on the form:
The sestina is divided into 6 sestets (six line stanzas) and 1 triplet called an envoi which is just a concluding stanza that is half the size of the rest. It is usually unrhymed and works by repeating the end words of each line. The envoi contains, in any order, all of the six end-words. The catch is that one has to be buried in each line and another must be at the end of the line. The pattern for repeating the words is like this: (stanza A) 123456, (stanza B) 615243. This 615243 pattern is how each of the next stanzas are made.
Winner of The Julia Fonville Smithson Prize, this is my first Sestina.

Final Exam

Believe that the throat
is meant to be so bruised.
Ruin the soft blue-
the curve of a vein
let this sharpness become pain,
say: this is nothing.Nothing is this: say

it has no name,
make a game, then;
call it a kiss, missing
the idea completely.
Let your eyes cloud over,
mind crowd over, just forget it.

This is unimportant:
we all live for the surprise
of the lies that keep us up.
Tip your cup to the dog.Test yourself, test yourself.
This wavering is no dream.

Blind Foal

Sweet Jesus, grant me the power to delve deeper, deeper still:
cracking it all up,unsheathing, splitting everything
then leaving it out in the sun, exposed.

Give me some bitterness and irony
like the blind foal born when I was ten,
pushed out slick and steaming,
tearing his mother with urgent hooves–
then mercy-shot a day later.
(The mare stood, her tender parts swollen and stitched,
missing the colt’s nubby mouth nudging her belly.
All that work for what?)

Don’t listen, if at some future date,
I beg for release, pray for numbness.
I may say different,but this is what I really want. Really–

to scream at the difficult moments,
say the awkward things.
Let my flustered lovers leave me,
let heartache leave me brave.

To remember and shudder; let some pain drive me into corners
collecting the God almighty ashes and dust, making my own.

Stoop

for JQO

Now do you think of me
as nettling around you?
I don't know how to be
I don't know where to stand,
put my hands --find a way to
join you on your stoop.
Lets draw figures in this mud;
your speak
I can no longer speak,
your space is so far away.
Walking lightly to your door:
where are you now?

and now?

Live on WXPN

Listen to me and other local artists --some amazing tales and tunes!

View: Live at Kelly Writers House.
Episode 83 Produced and hosted by Erin Gautsche.
Click names below to select individual performance, or Listen to Full program.

Erin Gautsche - Introduction
Angel Hogan - Introduction
Angel Hogan - Reading
Leah Walton - Introduction
Leah Walton - Reading
Ross Bellenoit - Introduction
Ross Bellenoit - Performance
Eric Thomas - Introduction
Eric Thomas - Reading
Katonya Mosley - Introduction
Katonya Mosley - Reading
Mike McCarry - Introduction
Mike McCarry - Reading
Tre Rials - Introduction
Tre Rials - Reading
Ross Bellenoit - Closing Performance Intro
Ross Bellenoit - Closing Performance
Erin Gautsche - Closing Remarks

Diving

After a certain depth, there is no light. Or at least, there is neither hope nor promise of light again. At this level, it’s easy to imagine you are seeing bright bursts or sparks, but truly-- the light is gone.
On his first descent, Sean felt the darkness encase his skull as snug as a dirt-bike helmet. He thought of the time his cousin Benita locked him in the empty silo. He thought of how he stood, blinking rapidly with his arms helplessly outstretched to form a sagging “T.” On that hot day, inside the silo it was cool and the muffled whirring of the owls above him made Sean feel exposed. Soft fluttering, nothing. When panic finally settled in it was immense and total. Sean opened his mouth to scream and found his lungs deflated; he inhaled one oat-dust filled gasp and then fell face first into a soft pile of droppings. When the tiny door was flung open some time later Sean peered up to see Uncle Jim with a cigarette clamped between his teeth, cursing Benita.

Encased in such darkness, what a welcome relief                  the light.