The Comma After Desire - March

for Gary Charles Wilkens

The comma after desire
was the most important pause of all.
It left a space for a throb, a twinge.
It was dark red and pulsed orange, once, twice.
Desire, then, could hide in a space
meant for roving fingers,
but replaced by prayers.

When face ye trials of many kinds... - March

Rest, ye weary, and
receive the bounties
of peace.

Sip jade green tea
in a noisy cafe,
reading bad plays.

Repent your transgressions
and know that he is God.

Take a 40-minute shower
that pinks your skin,
emptying your muscles.

Resist temptation and
lift your voice in song.

File nibbled nails and
ignore the desire,
aching in your womb.

Study Abroad - March

When she studied in Scotland,
she fell in love absolutely
with a Scot who loved her
intricately.

He was broad and mangy
and spoke to her in rough,
enchanted verses.

They married after he said
her eyes were like the Welsh hills,
wild and rangy, and she said
she'd write his life into stories.

She gave birth to his
angry little boys instead,
and he stopped complimenting
the geography of her body.

She missed Scotland and
knew absolutely that
her eyes had never been
quite as wild as
he had seen.

For Painters - March

she brushed on thinner
spread liquid white
rolled out the
terminal moraines
of shiny oils
with an eye to light
and a smile
from the glaciers

First Poetry - March

My mother freezes her placentas,
burying them after two or three years
of perplexing cold.

A pebbled, earthy afterbirth,
streaked or steaked or frozen,
once held the purest poetry.

I wonder if I can find where
she buried mine, my first nutrition,
my elemental throb.

I'd dig it up and watch it,
a moist heap under some chosen tree,
for signs of my mother's poetry.

Doubting Raku - March

When I was Thomas
He fired me.

My fingers burned in
His side, glowing.

He glazed my eyes and
set me in a kiln.

When I was molten
He moved me.

He choked me in heat.
I died to myself in
His vacuum.

I flamed sawdust and
cracked beautiful to
His liking.

He thumbed away soot
and I saw the fire
was true.

And I was.