home making

we leave early
before cows go to drink.

before there's a west,
we tack wood in a tree
shaken from squirrels
in the corner
of an unmade closet.

with april in, and bees falling
out of their wings like clockwork,
even the wet of our necks
is on loan.

we've a making hand
in everything here, where
walls, roof, and the only way up
are sawed and stained
from the same old stuff.








union, mississippi

hoeing the earth to recover
the plastic green armies of summer

mothers' gardens always provide
for the nicest wars

and lungs
for the loudest guns.

bandaliered in the colors of bruise
we patrol the rows

young boys growing heroism like sideburns


every new year is a new campaign,
each tour a yawn closer to all
grown-up.

we take our purple hearts
and we settle up state

soldiers turned pilgrims
domesticating east coasts easier.

back home
someone rebuilds old fences

the ground settles
new seeds like riflemen








reaction

a girl you know of
dies

and you think of death
because that's how science works.

consider skin and vessel,
grain-cell and stalk;

everything in practice
is a theory.

you bury your whistle
beside your skip

because that is how dying
works -

bruises and bandaids,
the giving and taking of names

as you grow skyward
towards your infancy

you are much less startled
by the ritual.








process

it begins with water.
babies fall into first puddles,

oceans close.

sidewalks put on their
best leaves, and

survivors begin tapping
the clocks.

for every gasp
there is a box waiting to be filled.


were it my place to make sense
of all this careful dying

i would do war right; i
would put more color into winter
and less into cheeks.

there would be none of this business
of waiting.








patience

the houses and i are glum.

cold rain stuck the pines
with a drip,

magnolias are giving up
their hand grenades like fruit over
the splashed backs of cars.

all the street light is mine to hate.
inside,

i am drying off and offering cause.
i am practicing loss in the condition
rolled and fired between finger and thumb.

the thought of you buds everywhere,
a smile, redefining margins.








selfish

so
i saved you
in a random acre
liverspotted with daisies
when you were failing
in calculus and health.

the day you were sketched to die,
i said let's drive and find
the sky in the country.
i rubbed your face like a cowlick,
tucked a cloud behind your ear.

i tried to paint how good it was
and you were cool.

you fanned me with a smile of your own,
carved sandwiches from an unlikely slab
hated me with distance enough
to carry home.








america

america's northwest of my home.
more mountain and gorge
out there, more cities than towns, and
on either side, whole coasts
trying to get back in.

the union's bored, been explored, redrawn,
looks less like the maps. it has networks,
years of cable, and all space like one long string
to carry our ugly news.

enough distance between houses
here.

our delta hums
under this country like a seed

to the blues, four chords, maybe five,
america's music is a kicking child.








for stacy

you were sewing, teaching me to play.
when i took up your guitar,
your smile was a patch under my ear.
        you were earth, and slender
    and a bit of your mother,
all over my fingers.

i tapped the frets
like a certain brail.
you were too beautiful to memorize.

you held my hand
as if we'd shared
cups and sofas all our lives.
        the music
    was a rag i stitched
to keep us there.








new blues

in doorways black
as fourfingers that divine
new blues. boy,
for a quarter and a dime
you get the genesis of what went wrong.

and this aint music.
music doesn't do this
to a man you see.

or maybe you don't.

corner maidens
painted thick to please,
they say could love a body
like mary for a price

someone's son
beneath a bridge,
hat empty,
        inverted,
and on his good leg
struggling to rise.








for e. huey

emily while we were loving downstairs,
perfumed and sweating
like chambermaids in the movies
you pay extra for

a boy dressed as me
acquired the style that stirred you,
rubbed the best sounds
from your silence.

now grass is my chosen sitter
nights that glitter the boy
too full of honesty
and he can not care for himself.

if you've forgotten, and oxford
has burned my literature from you
like a pious town,
then this is your poem

shelf ready,
instance of wood
cradle-perfect, old prospect

probably a page within
the year.








apology

whether she eats peanut butter
    has greek letters    an italian name

    whether she comes with a dowery or
pockets rinds    she can soil

any new home with decent looks    whether
her roots spoke and show when she bathes

    whether she's challenged
the shock of fence for a better view

        she remembers people
like paintings she's seen


    the lean    the first time she was clutched
for    he was all noble and smiles

drove a chevrolet and wounded her with conversation
    in the habit of adoring the sort of language

that lips take she was a nun
    and on her back

    whether she listened while
his midnight chided her    flattened stars

into a fancy terror    his back hammered out the sky
    when he was through and all there was to noise was a

soft crack and plummet of limbs    she blinked
    so hard her world shattered like a bulb








doctor's son

i wrote to you once, tight and
honest from a bottle. it was well after

the day we lit candles and
everywhere was turning sixteen,
when i

noticed the english blood
and the native tan,
the work ethic
and the soldier that raised you
thread in my jaw;

i suppose we share sin
like a certain gene
as whole counties pray for you
to recover their dogs, their sole survivors.
witch-doctor, handsome priest who would dance
to save them all,

in the pictures you keep
of college and friends
you sit loosely, legs crossed
like i cross my legs.

for a while i pretend
i am your son
and stroke our cat
that you can open and put
back together like god.