Pack

coursing home through a buzzing night
spindly legs wavering like kites
our voices raised in song.
every corner a new farewell,
parting the moment brave as hell,
we are bold and clever.
even if we don't last for long
can't you see we've been young forever,
please don't ask us to stop,
please don't ask us to stop.

this town somehow passes by like
spinning spokes of summers rusty bike
we should have learned to ride.
streets and sidewalks know the tread of
unsteady friendly feet, dread of
waking alone at dawn.
matching each others easy stride
we love the moment already gone,
please don't ask us to stop,
please don't ask us to stop.

greeting sunrise, dairy queen,
making the setting but missing the scene
sleeping on the floor, don't stop anymore,
my tired family. (my tired family).

night will end before it's through, we
won't forget to leave our names here, see
this town was made for us.
time's the river we've got to cross
caulk and float now our party's lost
call me in twenty years.
this is the home we'll leave tomorrow
we'll forget but please
don't ask us to forget,
don't ask us to forget.

Don's Cafe

She had gotten up so early
to open the door at six,
turn the light on against the rain,
brew the coffee and tie her apron on.

They were already waiting,
the regulars, quiet men in seed company hats
who would want to eat eggs
and talk about the weather.
They knew her and would tip her
ten percent in quarters and well-worn dollar bills.

Two more were standing outside the doors,
two students with dripping hair,
sweaters that would soon seem to steam
in the greasy flourescent air.
Only lovers could smile so beatifically,
they were so marvellously tired,
smudgy with spring.
She took them in, gave them the small table
so their knees could touch.
They ordered without menus, giddy,
already shining with her cheer.

Thick food on clattering plates
balanced on her arm as she crowed, crooned, coaxed,
bustling away her sleep, filling cups,
watching her children eat.
She called them sweeties and they were sweet;
She called them honey and they bloomed.

When they finished, the boy and girl,
the rain had stopped, the streetlights had flipped off.
They paid her, tried to repay her,
they had been up all night in love
and she had filled them with warmth,
even the table was warm when she lifted their plates,
for a moment their hands pressed into the circle of heat she left behind.
She grinned, they smiled,
it was morning and they smiled.

For Emily, 2008

We
spent the last day of the year in tangle-town
eating the world bitter,
spitting out the pips.
All the brides of France
tore midnight into strips,
draped us in the sprawl of cities.
We
spent the whole night blind.
And sometime before the new year began,
we got in the car
shut the doors
drove away.

Ghost Arm (really short fiction)

She woke up curled on her side as usual, eyes heavy and hair tangled. The light through the curtains was dim like early morning or a cloudy afternoon, time had no meaning in the stringy moments before movement and memory. At once she became aware of the arm beside her in bed, a long tube of flesh lying along the length of her body. Her own arm, she knew, must be beneath her: thhis was not her arm. Carefully she turned her head on the rumpled pillow to see who else was in her bed. Had there been someone there when she had gone to sleep? Had someone joined her in the night? As usual, there was no one lying beside her in the single bed.
Finally she prodded the arm with her hand, watching the finger indent in the still skin. She felt nothing. Grasping the limb and levering it upward, she found it attached to her shoulder and felt the terrifying weight as it flopped back down, numb and dead. At last a rational thought crept into her mind: this was going to hurt. She rolled on to her back in her empty bed and closed her eyes, hoping to fall asleep before the prickling pain set in.

Decaf

You've always loved coffee,
late night coffee, dripped hot
from gaping plastic pots.
I watched you drink cup after cup

peeling back creamer lids,
emptying sugar packets
one by one so wild eyed,
unwilling to miss a single moment.

Around you I stayed wide awake without caffiene,
that thin brown dream,
desire the buzz unrecognized.
My hands kept stealing back to wrap around
the warm porcelain of your mug, how I wanted that sweetness

beside me, we watched night
peeling back into day.

I drink coffee now,
I want to be drinking it with you.

Teaching Poem

I want to learn to make coffee
and drive a stick-shift car,
see clouds without sunglasses
and make mashed potato volcanoes.

I want to tear bread with my teeth,
make snowflakes from scrap paper,
taking care to fall into bed each night
white-lipped with exhaustion and
filthy with freckles.

I want to gag on salt water because I am swimming in the sea.

Each day in the years since I learned to walk upright
I have forced my feet into shoes.
But I will not put away childish things.

Fish and Chips

Six senses and you could not see the net
that pulled you from the water.
What a waste of 450 million years.
You were perfected ambition before mammals birthed or
plants grew.
Those ampullae giving such sensitivity,
an ocean in each pocket of flesh,
a world of electricity
sliding through reefs of ancient nerves.
Smooth and toothful you have no use for words,
you are water, not air,
feeling those fields, fish flesh,
suspended in the sea.
Your slick oblivion is no match now for thumbs,
boats, bait, plastic and hunger:
how little you can see.

They fried you in vegetable oil.
You have no use for vegetables.

Dawn

dawn arrived
like an old cowboy dragging into town,
whip-thin and alone.
Asking Miss Kitty is this seat taken
before sliding in for another shot of whiskey.
Already the fog in the fields is gone,
the dew hanging on the first tomatoes is turning crimson.
The world has been set in motion,
the sun a tumbleweed on dusty streets,
that cowboy with his buckskin face
has checked each bullet in his gun.

North Campus

It is snowing
and the white, unbroken canvas of North Campus beckons to me.
Everyone I ask is too old to play in the snow, they give old excuses.
But you agree, we race outside, time stops in the cold.

We write a giant H in the shallow snow, frenzied and fast,
dragging our feet.
Smiles ricochet from your face to mine.
Next comes E. You lay out the lines and I follow,
as I always do, to reinforce your words.

I want to fill my mouth with thick snow like I did when I was young.
I want to throw snow at you until you laugh.
I want you to kiss me.

We move on the L, flakes melting on my hair and your flapping scarf.
Now P, the hardest one, a giant curve, chasing itself.
You are late for play practice but we persevere, limping madly:
Arctic hunchbacks, two crazy Tiny Tims chasing one another.
Then with the exclamation point finished, one last look and it is over.

Tomorrow morning everyone will look down from the third floor
and see what we have done.
Our work of art, the letters that can be read from space
though you can not read me from five feet away.
We have written HELP!
but no help comes.

2003

Snow or Sleep

Nearly five am

I say I’ll be in class in five hours,

You say you’ll be asleep

(curled in forest-green sheets-

tangled in a thicket of slumber)

Asleep, you say, and dreaming of me

(jolted awake into a world of white-

wet socks and textbooks)

You’ll send out a dream-thought to visit me

here…and you press a hand against the warm

ski-slope of my neck just below the ear…

In the winter-bright morning

(a fleece blanket of snow-

more beautiful than cold)

With an intake of clear air I feel the pressure of your dreams,

(a reminder of what you wish you could share-

but not exchange)

and I wonder who got the better deal.