They used to dig ditches here to catch wolves.
Deep gashes stitched with roots,
slick with melt,
baited with deer necks
that drew the wolves in,
even the mothers, full of pups.
All night long, they fell and fell,
brewed fog with their own heat,
dug everywhere only to find
endless earth and darkness
and the bones of other buried things.
In the morning, they barked
and shied and bared their muddy teeth
at the farmers who shot them from above
and cut off their ears for the bounty.
The tiny ears of the pups,
born on the tip of a knife,
were like pink rose petals
that curled and stiffened
in my hand as they dried.
That is what I remember best
of the year before I was old enough
to hold a shovel or a gun.
Finalist in the Naugatuck narrative poetry contest, 2012. Published in the winter issue.
I am addicted to Africa.
To the high bob of a baboon’s tail,
the way he eats the muck from his hind foot
with such aplomb.
I am addicted to a dusty ton of rhino and
her spud-faced son
forged of tungsten in the sepia dusk.
To the giraffe following the atlas on her coat
slowly through the fever trees,
the hot geysers of her giant heart.
The burrow owl that bids the buck take care
where he sets his cloddish hoof.
The zebra festooned with stripes,
shivering at fly-touch as he drinks.
I am addicted to the mutton-chopped warthog,
wallowing in the brown batter at the water’s edge.
The hunchbacked gnu, his beard a fright,
the ravenous oxpecker that probes his teeming nostril
with her candy-corn beak.
I am addicted to all of this and more,
to the belching of bullfrogs in the
night, ticking as it cools,
the twang of love-sick bugs,
the rusty squawk of God knows what.
And God does know what.
What else a world like this could want.
What else to ask of this box of
filaments and miracles and Africa
that sits on my desk.
I wish there were a camera aimed this way,
so they could look at me as I have looked at them,
so I could be the stuff of their addiction, too.
So they could see, in the squirrel outside my window,
a phenom of pewter and grace,
in the jay a deft orator,
in the woman at my desk something exotic and fine.
They would listen to her as if they’d never
heard anything so unusual
and wonder about the texture of her skin,
the smell of her hair,
what she is thinking as she sits quietly
in her little room of words and photograph
and waits for something wonderful to happen.
Published in the 29th Annual Awards Issue of the
Nimrod International Journal, Fall/Winter 2007.
Awarded Honorable Mention in the 2007 competition for the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize.
I want an NPR voice
Smooth as water over stone.
As deliberate as a cat at her bath.
Kin to warm milk, cool hands, and lullabies.
If I had an NPR voice,
I could say 10,000 dead in Japanese tsunami.
Death toll hits 144,000 in Rwandan genocide.
Father kills his five children before shooting himself,
and you would listen.
But I don’t, no matter how long I stand in the shower,
softly trying.
I cannot say, US debt soars to 14 trillion
and make you want to hear more.
I cannot say Baby dolphins wash ashore with the
oil in Louisiana
and keep your calm attention.
I cannot say Missing child found dead in dumpster
without flaying some part of you.
I want an NPR voice
so when I tell you that I’m leaving
you will curl your hand under your chin,
blink your sleepy eyes,
and to that lullaby concede.
I want an NPR voice so you will think that
the news is not so bad after all.
And neither will I.
Published on air and online by WCAI, Woods Hole, MA
Into the morning, briskly, I walked,
trouble barking at my heels,
fear riding my wake,
one long tooth away.
Everything felt like storm
though the day was bright.
Everything felt like an ending underway
as I walked on,
looking for a new way home,
away from all that tracked me.
Instead I found a dead cat
by the side of the road,
its mouth open slightly
as if to taste its last autumn air.
A cat I didn’t know, had never known, and didn’t love.
But the thing that stopped me so that all the
worries at my heels piled up against my
back like blind shadows, the thing that
made everything suddenly quiet and still,
was the coat that someone had laid over the cat.
A good coat, worth something,
tucked up to its chin as if to keep the body
warm while someone went in search of
a shovel, a way to come back here
to scoop the body out of the pretty leaves,
to lay it in a hole somewhere and cover it up.
I wanted that coat as I have seldom wanted anything,
certain that I would have been given it, had I asked.
Published in Halfway Down the Stairs,
September 2024
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