We are just passing through
Published by Poetry Pacific  (forthcoming, November 2018)


The one who shakes
IS the shaking.

A person can turn into
a shout in the woods
or a long spill of loud tears.
We shake to give ourselves birth.

The saints ask outright for what they want:
'Put your hand on my forehead.'
'Lay myself down.'
'Go away!'
'Water, please.'

The saints only answer yes-no questions;
The saints only answer yes.

If I Can Hear You Chew, I Have Fantasized About Your Death
Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest 2018 Honorable Mention
(listen now)
​

Oh, Facebook, rollercoaster of my anger and self-righteousness,
hermetic mental sandbox overstuffed with cat turds,

it is a friend, a real life friend, who posts this; and it's in character,
and that comes as a surprise because he is my friend, and
because when I chew, there are noises.

I have a hairy back, hairy armpits, jungle crotch.
I exude smells with unbelievable proficiency.
I broadcast an embodied asymphony of digestive gurglings,
bone creaks, woodwind respirations, evocative passages of flatulence,

and when I put food into the only place on my body where I can make use of it,
the xylophone of my teeth is the only silent part.
My tongue unravels the gland-squirted slurry;
my lips percuss to keep most of the churning swamp in,
and my echo chamber of throat rings and resonates in peristalsis.

Yes, my mouth shuts, and I concentrate, but still the noises never still.
You fantasize about death while I choose to chew, to nourish
this noisemaker, this cooperative agglomeration of stench-making entities,
ravenous automatons symbiotically truced, whose borders
ooze pus and rank biles, whose avant garde flakes into flurries
that blow into other nostrils, whose whole noisome collective is alive

in a slurping, sucking, knocking, pinging, Wurlitzer hellracket,
complex concerto of cosmic clashing, the grinding and slicing,
juicing liquefaction and ungainly assimilation of this
warmed over slice of spinach-and-onion deep-dish pizza--
and you can clear your throat tube of throat cells, roll your spheres of eye cells,
run those electric fragments of cerebral cortex over the terrains of disgust
and reprimand and even the wish for another being's demise;

but what I call I does not wish you any ill,
and still I am eating, am going to eat
this leftover angle of pie without swallowing it whole.
(Fantasize what that sounds like!)
But remember if you will that online is antithetical to alive,
which is why you can control the sound levels
more easily, sometimes, than you can control
the crumbs you drop into the conversation, friend.

After the party
From One Way to Ask  (Norfolk Press, 2016)
And published in Wisdom Crieth Without, May 2013


​My friends visit, and I feast, storing up
memories, storing up memories for
when they’re gone and I stand by the cupboard
with my hands, with my hands talking over
each other like they do when thoughts rupture

so fast over my head. If forever
were mine, I would be still as a painting
and reach the exquisite end of wonder.
Wonder why. Now my hands are recalling
their American faces. I suppose

we’re the same around the world—but being
understood at last! Mother, I’ll return.
Mother, I’ll return, but first I’m knitting
this unforgettable, missing garment
from the way my friends are no longer here.

My hands knitting in the Sri Lankan sun,
knitting what’s gone, knitting what’s not yet gone.