Day 22
Sea Ghosts
You can’t kill a starfish in the usual way,
not by cutting off its star points,
impaling its heart with a shard of beach glass,
or baking it in the sun away from the surf
that tossed it at your feet on the beach.
These fleshy stars are ghosts
fallen from the sky, messengers, warn
of deaths in galaxies older than the sun,
old as the face of God. They ask
nothing of us but the short life we share.
Destroy the starfish’s body, petrify it, display it
behind glass or in a bowl at your bedside
if you will, but know this: Death is coming —
with its pretty stench, its starry words
washing up every day on the beach.
Day 23
Constellation
Grinning from the lip
of the harbor, a super moon
raises on its invisible arms
from another Somewhere,
a place it lived just yesterday.
Seems it cannot decide to stay
in one sky. This doppelganger
is fickle, a changling with faces
for every occasion, disappearing
altogether for days on end.
Nearly blotted out by this big face,
a small band of stars and planets,
a dusting of sugar in the sky.
If only I knew the name, could count
even half of its citizens, its spin.
A girl of twelve, her chin on the sill
of her darkened bedroom, believes
she’s discovered a new planet
or a perfect star. She scribbles details
in her journal: the date, its place in the sky.
She cannot know for sure, but thinks
she should call the star people and report.
Everything starts as something seen
for the first time. Even you.
Even me. Even this fat moon.
Day 24
Secrets & Masks
Just as the trees hold secret
paper under their skins,
just as the clouds hold secret
tears in their mouths,
you hold on to the dark, crouch
below the waves to hide, roll
like sea glass, your edges still raw.
Just as the pen masks secrets
in the color of its ink,
Just as the foot masks
where it’s been in its hardened sole,
you mask your sacred truth
in the smiles you shoot like meteors
across every family gathering.
I found your letters,
found his too.
Someone burned the edges,
or was it a cry for light?
I found the clippings,
ill news faded but not dead.
I found his letters, tied up in blue.
You know his hand, fine curves
of letters that crossed the border
to where you hold them. He knew
the scent on the envelope you licked.
I found your letters under a tree
where paper hides, under clouds
black as ink. I found the match.
Day 25
Tryst
Of course you didn’t tell,
didn’t disclose or offer details,
said you were called away
or that you just lost track of time.
Every thunderstorm is filled
with danger, with sizzle and spark.
Years away from this room,
these damp sheets, this candle
burnt to a gutter, you will remember
only the taste of me on your tongue,
the feel of my feet on your legs,
the damp of my hair on your cheek.
As for me, I’ll trade the memory
of this day for a new hour in the future
under a street lamp, our hair streaked
with silver, a flash of lightning that ends us.
Day 26
Distress #7
Nothing — is filled
with little prickles, jabs
that won’t fade in moonlight
or out from shore a mile or two.
Nothing — is bigger
than a box of nails and screws
and sharper than a knife.
Make something from Nothing,
give in to it and let it pass,
overcome and move on.
Nothing is filled
with knives and screws
and padlocks on gates that rusted
in the tears Something caused.
Day 27
Train to Boston, c. 2013
One hoot from the whistle
and we begin, easing
along the rails, pulling from the station
heading to the city. Tickets
are checked by the conductor,
40-something woman whose hair shows
grey, like the streaks of smoke
ashing the windows, the air.
Dozens of little towns blur
by, crossings where cars idle
impatient to get going,
get Somewhere.
My window looks on the red-bricked
backs of factories, tagged with art
of a frustrated generation, meeting
places in code, turf proclaimed.
Houses with hammocks rotted by rain
hold nothing of summer, instead
promises of the dream
dressed in coffins, wrapped in defeat.
Brackish puddles breed
mosquitoes rife with blood-lust.
Toys jumble in yards, a scruffy old dog strains
against a rope giving answer
to our whistle as we amble by,
Americana spoiled and desperate.
On the other sides of our tracks,
Mercedes and John Deere mowers
tell the lie of the century, how good life is
if only you’d stop hoping
to keep up and stay in your place.
In this seamless August heat, no breeze
of freedom for those who cannot afford
the train, whose shoes are too thin
to go anywhere, whose children wave
and smile, not expecting anything in return.
Day 28
Triangle Factory c. 1911
No one passing
on the city streets below
wondered much in those days
about immigrant girls,
foreigners with odd speech and dark eyes.
No one wondered who it was
who’d sewn their pretty
shirtwaists, pouffed arms, fashionable
pleats at the bodice, skirts
with sweeping folds.
No one cared
about the how or the who.
The factory managers worried about them,
wanted to prevent theft, so blocked
with locks, any way for them to steal
to safety once the flames and smoke rose.
No one thought there’d be death
at those sewing machines, leaping
from those windows.
Crimes against industry,
pilfering a spool of thread or a needle
for home mending just too dear.
Remedies must be taken against loss.
Protection
was for product and profit.
After all, these Jewish and Italian girls
were easy to come by, dozens more
at the docks every day, looking for work.
Hundreds of pounds
of cotton scraps, tissue paper
patterns, thread, fragile kindling
ready for the lit match,
the spark from a treadle
against flywheel. Half an hour
and all was silent, 147 women
and girls — human rubble.
Beneath the photographs
of bodies, remains of young women
in aprons and kerchiefs, an ad asks
would you like to write a children’s book?
and I think of childless girls like ash
who never felt a flutter in their wombs
or the curl of a fist around their fingers:
Kate Leone, Rosaria Maltese, only 14
and a few years away from first kiss.
The shirtwaist dress
my mother wore for housework
or coffee with a friend was not made
at Triangle. Her bobby-pinned hair
tied in a kerchief never saw the inside
of a factory. Her sewing machine
was modern and safe, our Easter clothes
made of wool and cotton and freedom.
Day 29
Lessons From Minimum Security
The poet arrives with sheafs of papers
a bundle of approved pencils duly counted
beginning and end to prevent a stabbing
at dinner when tensions over the size
of rolls or portions has done damage before.
My notebook is thumbed through
before the guard gives it to me.
Don’t you be writing nuthin’ dangerous
his warning. Don’t see no use
for poems in here, just makes yer want out.
I suspect he reads every poem,
understands that all we want is out.
Perhaps I will become wiser
here in the coils of my bondage
The poet hangs a prism
on a stand on her desk, placed to catch
light and make rainbows over us.
Rainbows and poetry in such darkness,
sixty-four panes of glass
I’ve counted every day for eighteen
months. Write about light, she says.
Today the panes seem to grow
with every line the poet reads, getting cleaner,
brighter with the swing of the prism.
I think the light might cut glass,
might laser through the grate that holds us.
Perhaps I will become freer
here in the coils of my bondage.
Day 30
Deadlines
Since I was once stardust,
since I was once a comet,
since I was once a small pebble
bouncing off the moon
to land on a blade of wet grass,
I often confuse myself —
often wait too long to find where
to go and how to get there.
Since I am now earthly, heavy
and attached by gravity’s anchor,
I move slower than my comet self,
gleam less brightly
and streak across nowhere,
I often let things slide
like the snail self I may be,
like the hands of the clock I push
across the face of the moon
where once I dropped my pebble
self, bouncing and bouncing
for lack of gravity, making craters
everyone thinks are surprising
when they look up from here.
Since I was once stardust, and you
were stardust too, let’s dance
in the night garden, forget deadlines.
Let’s streak across the lawn
in our nightgowns, arms out to catch
the dew, faces ashine gathering light.
Day 29
a bundle of approved pencils duly counted
beginning and end to prevent a stabbing
at dinner when tensions over the size
of rolls or portions has done damage before.
My notebook is thumbed through
before the guard gives it to me.
Don’t you be writing nuthin’ dangerous
his warning. Don’t see no use
for poems in here, just makes yer want out.
I suspect he reads every poem,
understands that all we want is out.
here in the coils of my bondage
on a stand on her desk, placed to catch
light and make rainbows over us.
Rainbows and poetry in such darkness,
sixty-four panes of glass
I’ve counted every day for eighteen
months. Write about light, she says.
Today the panes seem to grow
with every line the poet reads, getting cleaner,
brighter with the swing of the prism.
I think the light might cut glass,
might laser through the grate that holds us.
here in the coils of my bondage.
Day 30
since I was once a comet,
since I was once a small pebble
bouncing off the moon
to land on a blade of wet grass,
I often confuse myself —
often wait too long to find where
to go and how to get there.
Since I am now earthly, heavy
and attached by gravity’s anchor,
I move slower than my comet self,
gleam less brightly
and streak across nowhere,
I often let things slide
like the snail self I may be,
like the hands of the clock I push
across the face of the moon
where once I dropped my pebble
self, bouncing and bouncing
for lack of gravity, making craters
everyone thinks are surprising
when they look up from here.
Since I was once stardust, and you
were stardust too, let’s dance
in the night garden, forget deadlines.
Let’s streak across the lawn
in our nightgowns, arms out to catch
the dew, faces ashine gathering light.
