June Poetry, Week 4

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.