Soccer fun!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

It's nice to know . . .

that someone has enjoyed our project! Thank you, Eileen, for this beautiful review!

metaphor 6

graph
like a precipice and ridge

spiral
not your complicated replication

apology
the tendency of fluid to move to the area of least pressure

nickel
so smooth in his hand. questions about the sky

he
bigger than the universe and arms

graph
rise beyond the paper

if
you could have held that single, multiplying cell in your hand

carnage
who knew it could be so minute?

metaphor 5

hole
but no, it doesn't have sides or a bottom

organ
more like wing than spleen

cancer
the tumor is the presence, not the absence

polyp
looking like an eyeball and focusing

intestine
and all if its exchanges

ovary
when you imagine grapes

absorption
where do the puddles go? wash

Shape

triangle

character style fast menu

square

twice alive not wearing monster

line

eyebrows quick like symptoms dire

point

given fireball is the collar of good

triangle

recognize in the water on the sidewalk

square

is the jar in the mirror two and four

line

from the shadow the trail leaves tracks

point

you welcome the flavor before it's gone

again

from the light of that season
between winter and fall
you came and went.
your coming was never marked
by an arrival or a rush of heat.
it was the quietest stay.

your departure was marked
by a floating, swirling beam of loss.
not like losing but like becoming less
than nothing for a time. like nothing
could cover it. soak it up.

how hard we try to fill in these spaces.
caulk the leaking crevices. maybe there will be
another who comes. maybe with limbs,
a body, a mind who can think of me. Another you.
Another you who might be here already.

the significance of steam trains

(I feel the need to add some kind of disclaimer to this poem, which is much more traditional than most of my current work. I feel a strong need to write this poem for a more traditional sense of "understanding" because it is for my son. When I speak to him, I am attached, unified, and sure of my trajectory; therefore, my usual sense of division and confusion is erased, of only for a moment. I want the words to carry a figurative weight of a more traditional style- more lyric in the traditional sense. Because this poem serves a specific purpose for me, it is written in a specificly direct way. Not that you asked. . .)

For Eliot

Such explosions, steam. Rising in the dome.
Turning the wheels.
For you, everything is linked, coupled,
sequenced in terms of who
carries whom. You wake up already attached
to the elements of significance:
Who is the engine? What is being carried
into this separate coincidence
we call "freight"? Who is, after all,
on the train?

Still, I'm astonished to see the dexterity
with which you connect everything. Paper clips;
silverware; books, once a pile, now lay end to end,
from one side of the house to another.
Your tracks take shape and look
both like circles and tangents at the same time.
Each engine has its place, its own power source,
and its own cars to carry.

We've read countless books about trains,
some are about arriving, some are just about
getting on. Destination and arrival. You often return
to the story of our own journey on a train, the orange engine
straining up the mountain and through heavy rocks,
tunnels, emerging into light. You slept soundly
on my lap as we descended, like a river,
into the valley. Your wheels, for once, at rest.