August 25th, 2009
pt 1
green, unripe peaches bobbing like Adam's apples
above him as he leads us to his front porch, smiling
a crooked, sloping smile that cups over his false teeth,
his skin hanging off of his bones like windless sails and
his eyes still haunted by a blue tease. the underbelly
of the veranda sags like a sigh.
we sit on his couch and he talks about irrigation and longforgotten
agricultural techniques. he is a teepee of bones – I can almost
see right through him as his arms lie by his side, fingers tamed
and deviating to the side, drowsy with arthitis. in the late sunday
light, his eyeglasses catch and grieve and wink
the clock down the hall ticks patiently, arms in rigid salute
to father time, and the hanging flowers
outside the window bow their purple heads,
like children reciting prayers. his wife sits by his side, tiny
whippersnapper, fresh-mouthed despite the frost
gnawing her bones down, scissorgrinding them down
and the tiredness that she wears around her shoulders
in a black shawl.
the sunlight fails over the unborn peaches, stealthy and cat-creeping
as the pumps and pipes in the house knock behind the walls,
like babies kicking in the womb. their hair, white and perfect,
swept clean, his pants pulled up to his bellybutton as they
sinks into the couch before us, becoming nothing more than
figments, watched by their children,
who squat in their framed portraits
on the piano.
February 25th, 2010
pt 2
the first thing i notice is the chinese lantern fruit, before:
an orange bazaar, unlit, sagging down like sleepyheads
now: skeletal, latticed, the most delicate, quiet things,
alien in their radiolarian design, fragile dreamstates,
held breaths.
he is eating again,
but he lost a lot of weight and can't have more
than 106 pounds of flesh and skin on him. he sits on the couch
with a baseball cap on, two shirts and a quilt over his lap, his smile
like the smile of all elderly once they reach his age – perpetual,
suffering, distant. the petals of a vase of get-well-soon daisies
are left behind on the coffee table, like suicide notes and he
keeps his hands in his lap, because anywhere else
they shake.
we talk with him and his wife about pears – their tree is doing well.
she exclaims that before she moved here she had no idea
what the difference was between a cumice and a red anjou and
that she had always thought a pear was just a bartlett -- bell-bodied,
with a sad, womanly neck. the pear blossoms have come early this year,
in nebulas and shocks, the orchards like bridesmaids in congregation.
we talk about pain, about growing old –
he speaks slowly, but cheerfully, sucking on each word before saying it
like a cough drop. the house smells of creaks and old crockery. at times,
in the right light, you can see right past the worn and crinkled skin
into the cradle of bones, clocking, cold ossuary, shelved and clothespinned.
he complains of the cold
and shrinks into his old wool button-up shirt.
we get up to leave. the pharmacy of blue decorative china shivers,
the sky is red and spread like an after-birth, and I shake
his hand, which is strong considering his recent surgery
just two days before. he smiles and says it is always a pleasure
seeing me, his breath is musty, antiseptic, and comes from deep
inside.
the new flowers taking the place of the chinese lantern fruit,
spring up, bloody and tribal, like tomahawks.
i see him sitting in the window in his baseball cap,
breath fogging up the panes,
watching us go.
. Without a doubt, this is a very accomplished poem. But I have read enough of your works to know that you can do far better and so I chose to be harsher than usual here. Your style is too detached and observational to allow for even these slight slip-ups. I remember having called your poetry 'flash fiction' when I was less wiser, but I think I won't take it back, because despite the transition of time in the world from which this poem has come, the poem itself is transitory. 