Apollo 13 (a successful failure)

We are in the simulator.  

My daughter asks, Where’s the guy who wanted to land on the moon? The other three people on the bed say, shh.

We are in Jim Lovell’s house. She asks, Which one’s the guy? We say, shh.

We are in mission control. She asks, Where’s the guy? We say, shh.

We are in the lunar module. She asks, Is that the guy? We say, shh.

We are passing the moon. She asks, Where’s the guy? We pause the movie. We say:

The commander’s the guy on the left. Yes, pushing the buttons. Jim. Yes, one whose wife was crying because she couldn’t see his face.

We are on the bed cuddling.

We are back on earth.

Expected

Someone is coming soon. She's pressing

toward arrival and I'm heavy with waiting,

my body slowed, thinking of her. All I have 

is an echo of her form, small impacts of limbs

that kick me awake these nights. 

I lie restless, toss out curled-up names,

wonder if there's any she will catch and keep

when she unfolds into the world. 

I'm losing the need for words, 

the power to find them. Soon all I will know 

is her intelligence of flesh and bone

and wailing, sucking mouth. We'll speak 

through skin touching skin: lips, hands,

my full, aching breasts.

re-volt

Sodden skies paste themselves above
us, papier-mache away the sun, and squeeze
themselves wetter against our dampened cheeks.
A rogue wind blows branches, and the power
is out for an hour. Lighting candles
we read slow stories and watch rain
drip melancholy a weaker coffee than the pavement
wishes for, puddling weakly water-white.
Lights return, electricity hums, and clocks
flash digital red and electric blue a midnight number. So urban
so wild, one thin black line away from
chaos, powered / disempowered by the electricity
bolt that untames us: at night
one round bulb in the sky
glowing neon steady
cyclops moon

hiraeth

Green it was, emerald ebbing to chartreuse
or lime: sheep on roads, and everything
-- a stone's trow away, to be sure --
even clichés lilted sideways sweet.

Everything was covered
in moss, and maybe
sleeping, like the giant's
causeway slabbing the water.
Ruined castles -- fairytales
gone unread. Fields
that were not like home.

Belfast on a Sunday, us
under a table as marchers
went by, angry faces framed
through blackout curtains
in plateglass windows. Secret
and furtive eating in the time
of hunger strikes. (Nothing
tasted right -- except potatoes,
or a heel of bread.)

Often there was rain. We
couldn't find the records
that would give us place
or name. Spelling

not the same. And a churchyard
where we found your grave and
gathered sombre for a prayer
then left the rosary dangling there, medal
tintinnabulating against the stone: a bell
without a tongue, without a song.

[untitled so far; this is an addition to an existing series]

Catherine, walking at night, is thinking
of what lies outside the reach of streetlamps.
What it is that the light makes invisible.
Whose breath she almost hears
at the mouth of an alley. If she turns
her back she might perceive a movement
in her direction, a gaze fixed on her outline.
She is tempted to defy all warnings and leave
the lighted sidewalk for the dark passage.
In a safer place, far from here, she once walked
alone on a moonless night, testing her footing
with small steps. Her eyes hard-pressed
to judge depth or nearness.
Here, in the lane behind the drugstore,
she might be lucky, or not.
Catherine gives herself a shake. She knows
the foolishness of this. Yet it frightens her less
than it ought. Less than sinking below the surface
of her thought, fingering the tangled weeds
of her own mind.

untrue north strong, freed

unspin the needle on my compass sew me shut my eyes can blind the sundogs barking off in all directions madly the mad trapper's cabin find me there panning words for gold in streams of sadness spark metallic glint of pyrite truth shingled dreams of gladness lichen grows the northern side of trees rooting on the roof unsing the song of south winds sawan sadness green the gloom that blues the western skies east me to the sunrise softly sweep the pine trees carpet hollowed thumpthick ground with pin-sharp lies

Aspergers is characterized by at least two of the following

leaning over her net she casts

her eye on a floating fish, a weed, and gasps,

rocks on her toes beneath bobbing flies  

minnow! minnow! minnow!

her suit sags low between her thighs,

the bottom tan from dragging in the sand

that falls like sequins from her fluttering hands,

the girl swoops again and reaches in to stroke

a shiny shell! with somebody inside!

                                                                                                                                               

her pigtails whirl, off she lopes   

to where two stray adults hold

glinting beers up to the sun

                                                                                                                                               

Look! I’m a marine biologist.

Do you know what a marine biologist is?

the couple frown and squint

at the horizon,

they swig, can’t look exultation

in the eye

A marine biologist collects life like fish before it gets away.

as they step back, unswayed,

she hefts her find

up to the strangers’ shades –

too close

(Sean liked the cadence; Don thinks it's become enslaved to form and it should be rewritten as prose poetry; I feel stuck)

mousetrap

to write it is overstated: an owl floating
downwind
eyes sharper than razored talons

synapse-snapping descent to prey
(I have seized ideas this way
shook them to stun then thrown them
away) for full effect say the moon

is full and round, no, three-quarters
for modesty, and say you can't see

the mouse, must imagine severed

spine, glazed eyes, smorgasboard
innards, grey fur riffling in
a midnight

breeze. there are owlets
to feed and you,
me -- we are ambivalently
carnivorous.

50 cups o' coffee

you say truth is relative

just pick one.

       which one, I mumble

and

we go round and round

spoons melting shapeless

should I say about the abuse

and divorcing my family? or

mention the decade-long marriage

that haunts me? the cult & the cubicle

I escaped? the assaults I've survived? 

you've had a few good years,

you say smiling -

and I smile with you,

grateful for their being;

mindful of the road that led me here,

fearing the one I can't see.

pick one true thing, you say

as I reach my bottom.

I think of what I know, what

has always been...
       the moon, I reply. it
never lies. I'll write 
about the moon.

*the 3rd piece for my collage: la lune

Do I love you yet?

I thought it would be

love at first sight;

this mother-child thing

the stuff of legend.

But you looked nothing like me,

my father, your dad, or what I see when

I close my eyes.

I pull off your diaper and marvel

at the detail in miniature,

at the mess in a million wrinkles.

I pull you to my breast and

feel the letdown

of milk and warmth

from heart to nipple

pour into your rising navel.

I stroke the ear that’s

closest, the wax, the down.

I will your hair to grow.

A second pregnancy,

a new fluttering inside

beneath my heart, but

I’m too caught up in you

to notice.

Then she emerges head first,

and love is a flash –

she looks just like you.

Sunday Morning, St. Pete's

birkenstocks on waxed tile
a muffled leaving in dusty air
oatmeal sugared with plot points

and back to the cloistered silence
broken by bells, or the shower singing
next door. last night coyotes lullabied

the moon, and you. this is the place
of new beginnings, old revisions, carved
time in weathered stone word by word by pater noster