Computer Lab Before Class

Strangers scratch at thick
stuble. Their faces tired,
they breathe slow and deep.

Lovely Old Mask

Acropolis-eyed, she wore a mask of wisdom
brandishing age-vein maps of her years
curving down her checks to her mouth's corners.
Dimples of youth hollowed and sunk,
engraving pits when she spoke,
filled with salt-seas of tears when she cried.
Graying strands of broken hairstyles
hung loose down her forehead,
interweaving through her teeth as she slept,
jostling her awake with thick mouthfuls
kinked around her tongue.
Loxic, the eyes of her mask were carved uneven,
mushed slanted under the weight knowledge,
nestled nearer her temples each new year.
Over her dry sockets thin leather
paper, wrinkled jagged,
quaking in her sleep as she dreams, grinding
rigid against her focusless gaze.
Seeking mirrors' pitty and finding nothing she
tears at her mask, now beckoning burial
under the ancient dirt along with her,
voices of the past scream for her to stop,
wishing she would leave her mask so they might recognize her
xoanon without gouges or blood,
zealed with respect and not monstrosity.

Confessional (found poem: Rain Taxi)

Out of Pamela a confession.
She does not beg:
haunting, her silence.
She wants to tell us, and she does,
keeping us always on edge.

She begins with water, remembers
her childhood and a girl under
the lavender of summer's fecundity.
The barrenness of March, in
the balance of the equinox,
lies in breathless trance,
starving for the season's turn.
the opportunity the season will have to define
itself evokes the turn. As it takes us
into the last word, it urges us to turn.

This brings us to an ominous source
deep within her that fountains up,
welling from the heart.
Remembering her mother at a swimming pool
where she felt alone, a mother bathes her daughter,
remembers exactly its fragrance of soap,
the grooming of a woman who flinched
in her nakedness, lived sequestered,
born into a home of secrets that confused
the lonely child.
But what is the truth going to be?

Thus a family has tried to keep hidden
a tragic event. She looks at
the aftermath of this tragedy,
the death of her mother.
Goodbye to the stoic form she has chosen.

In the final section the saving hinted at comes.
The mother's legacy: she cherished
her daughter who buried the family secret.
She now lets her words flow out,
as if in a stream of water. They convey the truth,
finally freed.

My grandfather told me,
“Son, pay attention: you’ll live longer,”
and I have noticed these things:

The tar on fingertips after a syrup breakfast

The underbellies of pillows, fresh and chilled

The thick breathing in saunas

The nameless sherbet sky-swirls of dusk

The stretching of a kitten lank with youth

The stingy purge demanded by curry

The layers of sweat-musk stacked on mattresses slept bare

The guttural songs slung across gyms

The haze stamped over fall sky planets near cities

The tinge of brokenness in obedient dogs' eyes

The stubble-gruff of three days unshaved

The taste cascade of iced root beer in summer

The branch pecks on windowpanes in November breezes

The crackle of bad joints against exercise

The indomitable cowlicks of a hard sleep