A Bar in Santa Cruz

The bartender slaps my glass
and change on the counter
as in anger, making me wonder
what I did, then I realize it is
a need to put rhythm in his work.
Children drop by the bar
on their way home from school,
stretch a hand up to receive
a small glass of water.

One guy on the stool
next to mine complains
the trouble with democracy
is that you can’t get any hard-
core movies, only soft core.
He thought that after the death
of Franco he would be able
to see it all.

Two dogs sniff and circle,
mount and tumble,
in the small space the men
clear for them.

In Asturias

At the local bar a man cuts
my hair for free as a woman pours
a sparkling cider from a bottle
she holds above her head
into a wide-mouthed glass
positioned below her waist
to escanciar the drink —

this is called friendship,
these are neighbors, they like
each other and welcome
strangers. Here we find
a small pocket of people,
call them human beings,
who care about such things.

Thunder

Early on, thunder
rumbled its broad bass
echo to tremble
my soles, to excite
a deep-rooted tempo
that rose up my neck
and I awoke to
a wide-open sky
darkened and boiling,
that invited me to
believe there was
power I could
harness, now worn
down to my worn
out boots where
a distant rumble
still echoes with each
slow step forward.

Mulberry Trees

Mulberry trees with
dark trunks thick as
giants wrapped in cragged
cracked bark bleed wisdom
in furrows. A sticky
semblance of ancient
lore weaves shiny
runes unreadable
by those who dare
gaze into crooked limbs.
Fruitless twigs and browned
dry leaves gesture
idly on a quiet breeze.
Wafty green waves
beckon us to climb into
high hearts and look out
across the dark horizon
that awaits us all.

19 Reasons

1. My dog won’t know where I went
2. I still have twelve frames left on my disposable camera
3. Black raspberry ice cream tastes too good
4. Mom said no
5. I haven’t read every book in my library
6. It’d be another date to remember
7. No one else wants to drive my green Jeep
8. Someone has to be the least favorite child
9. Too much has happened to give up now
10. Funerals cost a lot, therapy costs less
11. I don’t want them to be right
12. I don’t want to become a statistic
13. Because the show 13 Reasons Why was awful
14. AC wouldn’t have anyone to buy black raspberry ice cream for
15. Living out of spite
16. A magician shouldn’t let their secrets die with them
17. What would Dr. Rempell say?
18. I don’t want people who didn’t know me claiming they did
19. Because I haven’t reached it yet

Daydreamers

Prisoners in love.
Addicts of hope.
A tightrope walker
balanced between
sleep and night,
between
despair and ecstasy.

Scribblers of poems,
pressed by images,
fettered to words,
smooth-talking so and so’s,
their grimy hearts
like captured songbirds.

They who sing sweetly
for the unlikely chance
they won’t be eaten.

Does Your Dog Bite?

A fine judge of character,
he’s simply smiling,
he’s airing his grievances,
of which there are many.
That bark is a talking dog’s way
of conferring the inexpressible.
My dog isn’t growling,
he’s singing Elizabethan ballads.
It’s a dogged bedtime story.
It’s a lyric poem about love and loss.
Dear deliverer of parcels—
you’re part of the plot
in my hound’s libretto.
O howl. O lamentation.
My dog hasn’t bitten anyone
who doesn’t deserve to be bitten.

Woman Under Water

I grew up believing femalekind was made of something else, something foreign, something like soil and soap rubbed together into indefinable goo. Chalked into squares, they couldn’t hop or scotch out, lest they get branded liars. Eventually, it came out that they were so alien that scientific tests excluded them, as if it hadn’t occurred to technical marvels that extraterrestrials had any interest. These others ran wild in wooded glades, nymphs from the babbling spring with tangled hair above and below. They cut aerodynamic in marble figures high above on magnetic plinths. Very old men in long-tailed coats thought this up. Didn’t know female anatomy from vague oil splashes on secondhand canvas. I still find it flavors thought. When I taste it I try to spit it out first. A dark sheet hangs between the two kinds. Wisdom can be felt without the aid of sight, never more. She spends her days swimming beneath the waves to avoid the clutching fish. Some- times she surfaces to flag for help, but they say that drowning never looks like drowning, but like waving from afar, an invitation to drink.

Catherine’s Poem

There is no room for a story,
not even really mine. I look
and look. The world is doing
something so unsavory.
The dirty sparrows bathe
in the storm run-off. Robins
go for the cicadas’ empty shape.
We just bicker about money,
sex, and dinner plans,
but we’re so in love—still expecting
everything miracular.

The seagull is almost
stilled against the breeze.
Steady and unflapped like
in a painting or a dream. The gull
gives in and falls back—
It’s that monumental.
Everything, and everything
between us.

Looking at Robert Blake

After Wallace Stevens

Among a stretch of cold brick houses,
Robert was the only moving thing.

He was of three minds the way
three windows appear on the side
of a red neighborhood home. It
was evening. It had been snowing
all evening.

Robert whirled through the cosmos.
He was a small part
of what we don’t yet understand.

If I and myself are one,
then I and myself and Robert are one.

It was indecipherable, Robert’s shadow.
It moved across the walls—sharp
one moment; gone the next.

Robert is involved in all I know.

When Robert flies out of sight,
he marks the edge of truth
with disbelief.

At the sight of him
there! there!
in the green light,
he was silent as
a fish, as a cloud,
as, yes, three minds.

Robert enjoys riding over London
in his glowing coach! He mistook
desire for the song of the blackbird.

He strolls along the river.
He keeps time to himself.

It had been evening all afternoon
and Robert sat humming
in the limbs of the field elm.
He was dead and in love
and in love with his death.

The Tyger

People love to ask: but have you really seen the Tyger?
Oh, I’ve seen the Tyger—the one
with thick haunches that moves slowly
through the apartment each night
waiting in the thick of it
no words
only the knowledge,
that a good life
is built with a hammer
and a want—

The furnace is smudged with grease.
The brain is hot.
Have I seen the Tyger? I am the Tyger—
And, of course, I’m afraid of my life.