Poems for Persons of Interest

  If I May Ask It of the Dying Tell him my foot still thrusts his shovel into soil, Chipped edge gouging shadows for his favorite Shade of purple.   Tell him the handle sits in my hand as if it were  Born with me; the grip of his fingers, dinged-up And dirty, cool beneath my own.   Tell him the irises did not come up easy, but the Sound of metal severing each clump was an Ice cream truck’s song honed sharp.   Tell him, please, the flowers grow, the earth He lies beneath cradling each root, feeding Beauty where it’s planted.

  The Last Human Boy on Earth The girls here swipe left on the Milky Way. They want a galaxy delivered, curated, held at the distance of a screen held at the distance of a face.   I want to walk you home the long way: past the Sunoco, past the middle school, past the parking lot where nothing ever happened except in my imagination.   I am the last one standing in this. The last to feel the telling weather of a specific girl in a specific coat turning her face in the cold.   The others evolved past the ache. They found a cleaner interface, a version of desire that doesn’t leave one out here soaked and obvious.   Your window is the third one from the left. I am not a stalker, only a man made of the wrong century’s materials: brittle, serious, without irony.   Keats died of this, more or less— the exquisite susceptibility, the inability to hold beauty at the recommended distance.   Your hair does something in the wind. No one has built the machine that no...

  Elephant On that day, the eleventh of September, You and I were traveling in Thailand. We bussed it into Bangkok, I remember, With plans to travel southward to the islands. I sat across from you, looked out the window, And spotted blooms of smoke and flaming flowers Burning through the newspapers below At sidewalk stands: the falling of the towers. We jumped off the bus at Bangkok station. I dragged you to an internet café. I watched with shock the strikes against my nation, My countrymen’s last moments on display. I looked at you, tears welling in my eyes. You said, “I hope George Bush was there, and died.”

Death and the Child The boy, confused, stood up and looked around. And where was Mama? Papa? All was dark. His small bare feet explored the bare smooth ground. A slim long line of light: a singing lark.   The fluttering of wings against a door. He jumped, afraid. Was it not morning yet? He slowly crept across the unseen floor And light embraced his fragile silhouette.   Once he stopped blinking, he was in a hall Papered the tawn and grey of bone and marrow. Featureless busts made blank memorial; But not a lark at all: a common sparrow,   Which, twittering at him, flew up to land Upon his shoulder, knowing him somehow, Then perched upon the fingers of his hand. All of a sudden, flower, branch, and bough   Pushed through the seams of floorboards and the plaster, Baseboards buckled, the wall burned green, and curled. “Now,” said the sparrow “let us meet the master.” He walked into the garden of the world.

  Ode to My Tumor I suppose I should bid you a proper farewell, take the high road although you have done nothing at all to warrant my courtesy. But since you are now biding your final days, trapped in the knowledge that your end is approaching I can be minimally magnanimous. How does it feel to be  on death row waiting, knowing that your end is inevitable  and quickly approaching? Do you sense the irony of all of this, you now in a place I was certain you had put me only weeks ago when they first found you? I will not miss you, no one would, but you strangely have given me a certain peace of mind, for there are no others like you lurking. I’m not sure what words are best for saying farewell to an uninvited tumor so I’ll leave  it at goodbye for you won’t fare well.