Four Poems - The Missouri Review
Every Forearm Is Its Own Work of Art
A man says this as I dial into NPR.
He means the arm can unlock
museum vaults, every arm is a chaos.
At the stoplight, I stare at my own hands.
In my mother’s body, these arteries
grew like galaxies grow, or coastlines
erode, unpredictable, without a map.
I’ve come so far from where I started,
I wonder what I’m holding that’s still mine.
A woman made me from the air
in her nostrils, beef, apples, spring wheat
sown east of the mountains. Fifteen years
later, I camped there by an old sheep pen.
Tree line turned to moss, I lay down,
looked up. Constellations were falling
apart in slow motion, I had nowhere
to go but into the future. Do we choose
any part of this story, does the story
just wash us off the shore? The only raft
I imagine involves you, your fingers
lying so quiet under this page—
one hundred thousand possible fates
must have expired to deliver you
into this moment, sitting on your bed
beside the lamp. At a city bus
window. You’re infinity once removed.
Hold yourself in your miraculous arms.
Looking Myself in the Eye
Was it bedtime
Did my mother use simple words
hand shadows on the wall
to explain
we all die
Fern beds quasars heavy-antlered elk the mastodon cast in tar
What did I say when she told me
Let me try it in the mirror
Can you come with me
Out the window
bare fields laundry line far off highway hum perpetual
indifference the world a sweet
and terrible
taste in my mouth
I will be
a vacancy
White blooms an avalanche of bees
When I’m gone where will I live
a question so crowded
the sky bristles
Out the window stars fading dawn’s particle cascade subatomic
annihilation leaning close
light becoming
matter matter
becoming light
always a pair
Doesn’t that communion flare
when I put a finger
here
on the sill on my lip
NOTE: In subatomic annihilation, a particle meets its antiparticle and both are automatically destroyed. Their mass changes to energy—taking the form of two or more gamma-ray photons.
The Universe Believes in Resurrection Just Not Yours
I took a picture of her body
blue and white
flowers we gave her
to hold
I look at it
like looking into a crevasse
I can’t go any farther
I used to think
we still had a place after the body ended
Now I’m the child
standing on a curb
Hills outside the city turning
blonde and the grass
says be satisfied
titanic clouds lupine asphalt poppies
she’s part of everything
But I remember her fingers
on the Joe Pye weed
florets tightly
closed she opened us to our lives
with that body blue
and white fingers curled
on the quilt how
can I be satisfied
with grass for her voice do trade
winds hum
alto does stratosphere
know the pock-scar
in the brow over my right eye a small
explosion
I can’t
be satisfied sap rising in the alder
song spilling over
the song sparrow’s beak
pomegranates jellyfish
milky penumbras through night oceans
caribou sea stars dicots
uncurl
I can’t forgive
this unslakeable
everlasting life
Letter to My Mother About Dreams
I’ve been told they help to some degree
could make me
feel you
Last year I met your mother
she was pruning roses beside a lake
blue water blue sky
I walked to her across a lawn
It wasn’t a complicated dream
I drank her quickly a plant
on the sill too long
When she began to evaporate
we had time nevertheless
to feel love had been ours
in the real world
those minutes beside the water
It’s been one hundred and sixty days
last night you made
your first appearance
my college dorm
I was lying in the sunroom
on that huge carpet
inside those shabby ivy leaves
A storm came churning through the walls
My brothers were there to help me
I yelled What is this
Scott said It’s Mom
you were sitting in the eye of the wind
you had a body
like a rock turned in sun
every so often you glittered
we could watch
but not touch
It’s morning I’m walking around the house
it looks
like a cyclone hit
What help did I imagine
you can’t choose
what heals what destroys
— All four poems published in slightly different forms in The Missouri Review, fall 2023