for poetry

the mountains. you're close enough to see the other shapes emerging from their rocky faces -- the valley here, the bluff there, the spire, the horn, the ridge. you're close enough to see the shadows on their flanks like cool, lazy hands, sliding over the stubborn forest, the roads you can't discern.

then the sun slides west and it blurs red and gold, a brief united front against the greying sky. then it leaves altogether.

the following morning, everyone emerges slowly. still-green leaves shatter the earth, and everything -- fences, trees, signs, people -- leans on something else for support. maybe here a long wire lies sparking. maybe here someone's roof is crushed. but the time of running and rain is over. the wind is tired. the sun and the clouds hold quiet conversation. the air drapes itself sweetly on your shoulders. any hail has melted, and the roads are dry. except

another time of reaching through mud, through mud, through mud, through mud. there are roots like taut strings in our hands, and a whole earth of it, down and down and down. I see my birthday, and yours. isn't that enough?

three two one bread roll(s) left, one thing I'm already afraid of dying, and a half-empty bottle of water. I remember that the sun will kill me. I remember a song under the rush of cars' engines. I remember walking down a dusty driveway. I remember being happy.

Last one.

Big News

Habaneros at the spice market! A robin's egg blossoms! A green flash at the Golden Gate heralds the coming night. A tenth grader's highlighter loves The Scarlet Letter. In the churn is a fresh pearl of butter.

What the World Needs

A Big Mistake

In an Alternate Universe

There's No Place Like Home

Far, Far Away

an inchworm in a deep-sea vent wishes for a rainstorm, chamomile tea

--

For Christmas one thing my family did was go down to the local Museum of Art, which none of us had ever been to before. I saw Paint Chip Poetry -- half creative exercise, half game -- in the gift shop and couldn't resist buying it.

The rules are simple. You just pull out a dozen paint chips at random, flip over a prompt card to serve as your title, and then create a poem from the colors you are holding. Visual poems and more "meta" works are encouraged, and other words are allowed so that your finished work doesn't have to be a parade of nouns if you don't want it to be. At the end, you share your poem (if you're playing with anyone else), retire the paint chips you used, pull out some new ones, and choose a new prompt.

you are shown a beautiful garden; it has acres of roses. you could trim them neatly. you! yes, you!

do you feel every inch of your body? what if you could feel less of it? what if you heard only the cries of wild geese? would you be happy then?

on Monday I went to work. I packed chicken and rice, cookies, an apple. at lunch I ran out of time. I didn’t eat the apple. people died.

on Tuesday I went to work. I packed chicken and rice, cookies, an apple. at lunch I ran out of time. I didn’t eat the apple. people died.

on Wednesday I went to work. I packed chicken and rice, cookies, an apple. at lunch I ran out of time. I didn’t eat the apple. people died.

today I went to work. I packed chicken, tortillas, cookies, an apple. at lunch I ran out of time. I didn’t eat the apple. -- but when it came around to dinner I set it on my place mat. I picked it up; peeled it free of its sticker. I took it in, open jaw wide but turning smaller, bites of juice and white gone slightly sour. it was good. it was good after all.

it wants less heartbeat. it says hold still or hurt. the corollary: it does anyway. it’s under the arches of your feet when you stand. in the corners of your eyes like desert sand. and the realization eats everything, the proud women, thin men, those others with their furious brows: the world is always ending, even in stasis. it’s ending. and it hurts. of course it does. there’s no such thing as less, only then and later and now.

and if I see the moon in a round streetlamp, is that heresy?

I think about the fate it is to endure, and what it means to accept the knots my grandmother tied around her heart. I think I do not want it, but I accept it. and I am glad.

is this what it means to be good?

is this what it means to apply chapstick at night and then reflexively lick it off?

think of harmony as dots on a page. now know, intellectually, the sound of it. now imagine it. do you feel its brightness?

now go out and find who you need, align their schedules, get them together, silence their bickering. make them face east, at last, beside you. lift your face. your faces. and

listen. listen. when you

hear it --

when the sun comes up --