—  poetry  —

Fluorescent Lightning

All of the sudden the night changed shape—

the silent purple of the sky hanging cool overhead

became an emergency, an electric monsoon

peeling back Oakland just North of the 580,

where I lay, tangled in the plastic sheets

of a hospital bed, listening to the cracking and whistling.

The walls are long gone, high winds wearing

a face-mask and scrubs removed them before

placing the IV in my arm while thunder rolled down

the hall in a gurney just outside my room.

I heard birds beeping in the distance

with the bleating of heartbeats heralding

the song of still being alive.

The storm slapped on rubber gloves

and stole my vitals every four hours,

but took too long to deliver my pain meds,

fluorescent lightning flickered in the ceiling

and the permeating smell of flirting

with death dictated danger and the deep

sense that the stakes are high.

Nature always plays for keeps

and out here anything can happen.

I learned that the hard way,

with titanium holding my bones together

and just a hand-me-down umbrella

to turn toward the tempest.

Family Gatherings

I have a few blurry memories of dinner

at my uncle’s house—his white carpets

and temperamental cats, my grandmother’s

silver hair and my grandfather present in the form

of his favorited chicken recipe that my cousin

reincarnates on the grill in the backyard, when we eat

there are more forks next the plates than we use at home—

but since then, we haven’t gathered. Instead, we have clumped

in bundles to maiden names, bunched into

belated messages with the best of intentions, clustered

into neighborhoods that may as well be continents,

and converged as voices that only cross occasionally

in telephone lines that connect to a few blurry faces

from mostly forgotten birthdays.

We don’t gather over holidays;

we collect the way cut hair does on a linoleum floor,

the way bird shit stacks on the top of rocks,

the way dust sticks in all four corners of the room;

my family holds on like clutching a fistful of sand,

meets up like paychecks between month ends,

is close like a near collision.

We may white knuckle each other

because it’s all we can do,

we may flock to hospitals,

huddle into lumpy shapes,

and we may even let go—

but we don’t gather. 

History Forgets Itself

Ambrosia afternoons

spill through open windows

and are lost on aproned backs,

spooled into rows, woven away--

the look of focused indifference

hides in shadows cast across warped ground.

There is the feeling of someone always watching

with folded arms, and the weight of pockets

stuffed with burdens, there is the sound

of a whistle against the sound of a bell,

and air that looks the way engine oil smells,

there is the heaviness of steel,

and days that stretch into each other

like brand new cotton thread.

The silver tones of childhood arrested in a frame,

looking back, the nation cuts its teeth

swallowing mistakes,

deciding it’s easier to forget and repeat--