Three Poems

Heaven Dog

 

What fruits

there are in Hell—and has

any 1 wandered about them

?     The very few things

as true as blood: who named

and who counted them        ?

 

Granted, if the parvovirus takes our

dog of 9 months.      Exclamations

Vary. The play of fur, innocent

tongue     pink flesh     and flame

In summer. Rust of grief.  Saltpeter

 

For growing absence, the riptide

Sorrow. Solo flight. The moon howled

At. Pedigree pellets shaped into

Tiny bones of cartoon anatomy.

 

More than dogs, than nuptial gods.

Time in a wedding chamber—elastic

Hymen snaps a glow-worm’s green-blue

Touch. Incandescent moan. Crux.

 

Labial cheek. Horse-hair brush.

Heirloom wood handle. No you say

Yes you say there are words

But how do they mean                 ?

 

? Greater love hath no man

or dog than this—a life laid

Down—in memory, in a heart

Torn recklessly—in blinding

Storm—hammer fist, loss, madness.

 

Or prayer flung in the deadly

Dark—what is man/what is dog.

The playground of a killing love.

 

(For Cotton)

 

Sophia’s Rules For Ghosts

 

They can’t come in the house, Daddy. The door is

Locked. Where do they live?

 

In the land of ghosts. Well, how come we see them?

Sometimes they get lost and end up here where we are.

 

Or maybe they take vacations. All right, maybe they

Take vacations.

 

When we see them, could we set them on fire so they die?

Ghosts can’t die, honey. They’re already dead.

 

Of course they can die if we throw a big bomb at them.  They

Explode into little pieces and they’re gone.

 

I’ve never bombed any ghost before so I don’t know.

 

Are you afraid of ghosts?  Only of the ones I don’t see. The ones

I do see are here and gone very quickly.

 

You’re right. They’re more scary in the shadows.

 

I loved her at that very moment. In her smallness and her tiny

Certainties. I took her in my arms and then

 

I went right through her.

 

What It’s Like

 

 

what’s it like to have a god?

the chinese lady asked me

growing up in the mainland,

and, godless

done well for herself

moved to the u.s.

married an american

living in new york

firmly in the k(now)

 

her question’s no different, i guess,

from what her own grandfather

wondered about:

grown up and old in the mainland

surrounded by mountains, asking

what is the sea like?

 

my grandfather asked that of

relatives, of strangers passing by

she said, my grandfather was too poor,

too weak to go seaward

he died, never having seen the sea

the ocean would have frightened him

 

her question and the old man’s are not

much different

and the ending, if, the same, is enough

for any life

a life that wondered; that desired

sea or god,

which one would have cared?

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