Rochester

February 13, 2014

Rochester

Your apartment was empty.

Dark. Your family

one thousand miles away,

in a place with more sun,

in a city less bleak and...

Not depressing. Just

lonely. For now.

You might have made some friends,

some people to share a drink,

a cigar, a conversation

after work,

on weekends.

But what did you tell yourself

in the tired mornings

in the empty apartment

to get up for breakfast

and the daily commute?

What should I

tell myself?

Julie

February 8, 2014

Julie 

Tractors.

That’s how she starts the story,

her mouth taking a shape between

grin and grimace. Tractors.

I see her mind working

backwards, trying to recall

each detail as it was

or should have been

the first time. This

was not her first time

“at the rodeo,” or so she termed it,

so after a few boring hours

sitting on the couch in his parents’ house,

watching TV and occasionally making out,

she lets him lead her up the stairs to his room

where they find each other

under the cover of sheets

and darkness.

Afterwards, rolling over,

he reaches for a lamp that for some reason

revs like an engine, then illuminates

the room in bright John Deere green and yellow:

John Deere wallpaper, John Deere

photographs, John Deere models

on the dresser. Tractors

everywhere.

She might have yelped in horror, might have hid

her face in a John Deere pillow.

Me, I would have laid back and laughed.

How perfect this was, what a testament

to the sharp thrill of gasoline,

an engine’s sudden excitement,

to fields plowed fresh and new.

University of Virginia, Gymnasium

February 7, 2014

University of Virginia, Gymnasium

What about her made you stop

and notice, in a gym full

of sweat and clanking weights?

Was it something about her eyes, or her muscle,

or the way her hair was pulled back

as she did her set of bicep curls, or squats?

The way you tell it,

you had just been saying to a buddy of yours

that you were done with the dating scene,

that you were ready just to find a girl and settle down,

when you walked into the gym

and found her.

I’m sure you didn’t know then how this would lead

to joyrides in her beloved baby-blue T-bird,

or taking sunny pictures together in front of the Leaning Tower,

or raising three blond children whom you would call raccoons,

or owning a big blue fifteen-seater van good for road trips and wind-surfing excursions

and moving your family across the country, twice.

But in that moment, I think I know

what it was that caught your attention:

it was her mouth.

Not the small bump below the lower lip,

which you would grow to love

(and which I would inherit),

but the way her teeth were gritted and her lips were set,

a thin line of determination

against gravity,

against any natural force,

against the thought coursing through her own blood

that no, this is impossible as she made her muscles move

again and again, weight after weight.

It was her mouth that showed the moment

when ease ends and strength begins.

It was her mouth that made you stop and think,

“I could get along with a girl like that.”

Evolution

March 9, 2014

Evolution

I never want to stop

noticing the intricacies of life.

If I ever start to, I must tell myself

to bite into a grape, then look at its insides,

the tiny, complex striations, microscopic sections

of fruit, fractally structured; or I’ll go

outside and examine a bird’s feather or beak,

wonder how its body creates such different pieces,

some dense and hard, others fit for flight;

or I’ll go to the aquarium and try to count

how many scales a fish has, looking at how they attach

to its skin so cleanly and precisely, how each

muscular swimming creature has adapted

to just a slightly different environment,

together forming an entire, self-contained system;

or I’ll go to the zoo to watch the incredible,

unthinkable dexterity of the elephants’ trunks,

the giraffes’ tongues, the snow-leopards’ tails.

I look at a child’s hands.

I look at my own hands, notice

each of the bones and tendons,

fitting together so perfectly.

I notice the fine lines across the palm.

I stretch out my arm and marvel

at how far it reaches, and then

how far it has yet to go.

The Pig (Response Poem)

March 7, 2014

The Flea, by John Donne

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,   

How little that which thou deniest me is;   

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;   

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,

    Yet this enjoys before it woo,

    And pampered swells with one blood made of two,

    And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are.   

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;   

Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,   

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

    Though use make you apt to kill me,

    Let not to that, self-murder added be,

    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?   

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?   

Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou   

Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;

    'Tis true; then learn how false fears be:

    Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,

    Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

The Pig

You mark this flea, and mark it well—

See the way our blood has made it swell.

And since its undeserved feast,

Look: it has turned into a selfish beast.

Drunken brute, it just wants more,

No longer blessed with what it had before.

    A joyous act this could be, true,

    If blood had love for blood, or I for you,

    But this, thank God, is more than we would do.

Just two things end when I kill this flea:

Its life, and (I hope) your hope in having me.

For of wedded pairs, we are the least,

Unless you've made this bloated bug a priest

Or judge of love, or of respect

(Abilities I doubt in this insect).

    Too fat to flee, the flea lies dead;

    If ever ordained, it surely would have said:

    Marriage lives not only in marriage bed.

Alive or dead, the flea means naught,

So in your piggish mind, this means I ought

To yield to you, but I want no part

Of the pleasures you commit to without heart.

Though hearts have blood within their walls,

'Tis hearts, not blood, to which love truly calls.

     The flea and you have no excuse;

     Thus say your wasted efforts to seduce:

     The opposite of love is merely use.