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POETRY / ESSAYS This space is reserved for poems and essays. I'll make changes in the content from time to time. The following five poems are favorites. "Beaver Shot" was written in 2000 when I was studying at Bennington College in Vermont. The other four were written in the last few years. BEAVER SHOT One evening when I was seventeen and driving my mother to a meeting at church, where
she had been a member since
the neighbors decided to form a church, she
leaned over in a conspiratorial sort of way and
asked if she could ask me a question, to
which I said sure, and
so she asked me to explain the
meaning of "beaver shot," which
she said she had overheard some boys use (presumably
not directed at her), and
she figured they weren’t hunters, and besides, a
beaver of the amphibious rodent variety hadn’t
been seen in Missouri for at least a hundred years, so I
took a deep breath and explained in
the most grownup voice I could muster that
it was a reference to "a female’s private parts," because
I didn’t know the word "genitalia" and
would have been too embarrassed to use it if I had, but
I delivered the answer with a straight face in
an Academy Award quality performance, and
she thanked me for the information just
before I dropped her off at church, which
I thought couldn’t come soon enough, whereupon
I noticed that I was breathing again and
feeling totally embarrassed but at the same time proud
to have such a cool mom and honored that
she would ask such an adult question of
her boy who up to that point had
never seen a beaver of any description, amphibious rodent or otherwise. EXPERIENCE You might not believe this, but when I was little I could dance the tango and draw animals. Paint them, too. I could sing opera and play almost any musical instrument and do magic and be an actor in any play you can name. I was accomplished in acrobatics and animal tracking And I could drive trucks and trains and fly jets, even. I had this model sports car that would do over a hundred. And I knew all about asteroids and volcanoes and oceans and trees and state capitals and life in ponds, because, you see, I had this microscope, so I could do science, like medical science and experiments on cats and mice and ants and things, but not hurt them. Not too much anyway. And I could climb mountains, although they weren't very high, and I could hunt and fish, and cook, too, like squirrels and rabbits and potatoes and popcorn and spaghetti and macaroni. And I knew all about the history of Japan. I had this Japanese sword that my dad brought back from the war. I could even write some Japanese words and count to ten in German. And I knew how to ride horses and milk a cow, 'cause we lived on a farm for awhile. I even drove a tractor once and a combine. Well, maybe not a combine. But I could build wooden boxes and bridges and most kinds of forts and clubhouses. I had all this experience with designing and engineering. And so the other day I was applying for this job. I didn't get it, but I was wondering if I should have mentioned any of this. A WOODEN HORSE NAMED APOSTLE In a world of ribbons and pennants, we rock our wooden horses. We rock them in the boxes of our imaginations, gaily painted like carnival rides. We rock them to the light of televisions, to the music of commercials playing for our education, our amusement, our distraction. We rock them with the power of remotes for all the different channels, all the same. We rock them between the walls, the ones we've decorated with portraits of the missing. For they belong to us. The walls. The walls. That's what's important, the feeling of ownership. I own a wooden horse. Apostle is his name. I rock him over to a dead tree inside my box. He sniffs the tree but cannot smell. He waits for sunshine he cannot see. I rock him to the secret maps drawn by others. Who's to say there are no other voices? I've heard them. I think one of them used to be mine. I rock and rock a wooden horse. Apostle is his name. TANGO LIES We stepped through thin pools of light, our bodies turning under the night, the long night, dressed in black until the cold morning when we were exposed to an unexpectant sun. The music played like the pages of a book, each containing only a single word--"yes." Nothing more. Each note bending at the waist and asking both of us to notice, whispering first to one, and then to the other, "pay attention," "pay attention." This was my tango, I was compelled, I wrote it. What else could I do? You see, it, whatever it is, was a feeling. Tangible. Real. As if there was a sense, a sense of something to come. That is the nature of the dance. That is what art is. Something to come, to anticipate, and more. Something that takes us to where we've never been before, even if the desire has never existed, until that moment, or this moment. It doesn't matter. That is what I held in my arms that night. It wasn't her. It was a feeling. There were so many such moments. But it was never her. I knew that, of course. I told myself that it was, that it was all about her, and still do, whenever I hear the music, the tango. Whenever it begins, I tell myself that it was her. HUNGER Was I hungry or just wanting to eat your sustenance for my own pleasure? I had forgotten about fish and bread, the sacred feminine foods of love. I had become so lost in the waiting, I had forgotten how delicious it is to want. Hunger does that, forgets the heat of opening, forgets the taste of adoration, forgets the attention to give what is exact, what is surprising, what is deepest in the cauldron of my stomach of questioning, my original willingness. It is all about hunger, isn't it? It is all about the smell of your opening, and the taste of what sustains, not in the abstract but in the twirling of nature. My deepest hunger is to adore and be adored. I will put you in my mouth. |