The Man with the Fresh Haircut
He strolled through the door for a snip
and left a conqueror.
The man with the fresh haircut—
don’t pick a fight with him.

The stylist froze in wonder.
A customer fell to her knees.
The man with the fresh haircut
made mirrors weep

Fishing for Sestinas

At first, there is only the paper
as plain as sleep without the dream,
as flat as the sea without its waves,
no sound, no ripple, no fish
slipping in and out so
suspiciously. Ah, now write

A Window on Seattle in 2018

Through the window, the yellow crane,

a slowly spinning sentinel,

casts me out like an infidel –

a refugee to be in misty rain.

A dark bird flies from the garden

into the condo, crowded sky

where it loses its stricken cry

to the street’s ambulance sirens.

Coming Home

Coming home

means many things—

the people waiting for me

my looking for them

wondering

where have they been?

the questions we’ll ask one another

surprises at how one another

Fleeing 2019 in a 2004 Ford

Sign on the freeway: silver alert.

Another elder said fuck it,

got into a red 2004 Ford

threw IDs out the window

and jammed the accelerator.

Wild Rabbit

A wild rabbit nibbles tender grass
Then hops across the hazelnut
Shells beneath the garden table
To settle under the unruly brambles
To rest to think as rabbits do
Silent world in fearful lull

Blues Factory

And so I fell in love with a color…

—Maggie Nelson

We blast indigo

out of dusk, dig

dark cobalt, smelt

the low notes, purge

the Reds. We eschew

Someday I’ll Love Clare Chu

Clare, don’t be afraid.

A box of chocolates is only

a box of chocolates.

Clare, you can eat them all yourself

if you want,

or offer one or two to your friends,

or not.

You do not have to count them.

There is no fair share here.

The New Math

My daughter pots plants in the desert.

In the desert, pandemic is elsewhere.

Or that’s the theorem.

If the proof is in percentages,

I tell her to wear gloves, her hands

in the dirt in the desert nursery,

Should I write a poem when the full moon

fills up the night with the voices of others?

Trills and whistles, croaks, howls and hoots?

In the morning, black birds call to their lovers

across the continent. We bolt the doors,

hiding from friends, neighbors, and a virus

which gnaws on the bones of the civilized.

We’re tossed and fevered by bare a fragment of life.

"Neck Broken, Resourceful Cyclist Walks to Emergency Room"

—from a news headline

Too late the bus slammed on its brakes—the rider

thrown over her mangled handlebars, against

the bus grille's bent metallic grimace. Her neck's

seventh vertebra ruptured, the woman gripped her

The Sword in the Stone

"Here is the stone and you have the sword. It will make you the King of England."

T.H. White, The Once and Future King

1950. Roslyn Estates

dusk. A streetlight with an insect

halo.... Me,

6, crouched in a roadside bush:

at the edge of our sea-green just-leveled lawn:

mallets for croquet

propped against the oak tree waiting

for the next family game to start....

Blackbird Away (published in Raven Chronicles 2017)

The five bones I use for talking

restrict my repertoire. If all there is to do with speech

is mimic words, then I choose wings. My black plaits wade

in stagnant breeze, awaiting further

demarcation. They shield my fragile back.

I perch at the window watching alabaster columns

Where I Am from

It was Oak Street in Aberdeen, then it wasn’t. It was Twelfth Avenue in Seattle, then it wasn’t. It was Ferry Street in Eugene, Oregon, then it wasn’t, etc. All of these places and more where I had lived, they were not my neighborhood, my home, I was less than a guest.

In Toishan the sun was brighter, the rain wetter, and the breeze more welcome. I was born there in a village in the southern part of Guangdong Province in China. Big Brother Mao was Chairman. He oversaw 600 million people, most of them like me and Grandma, my uncles, aunts, and cousins. We were peasants.

How shall the dying counselor be honored?

A soldier he fell into the hands of the enemy

They beat him broke his limbs

He told them nothing

A noble he stood before the king and assembly

He could not raise his arms

His voice was steady

Excerpts from three pieces titled Neighborhood Sketches

Save The Wolves:

“We live in strange times and what is this guy trying to say or prove with the Venetian Plague Mask, the dark leather coat, the boots? It’s not Halloween. Does he have a concealed weapon underneath the costume? Should I even go into the store?

Maybe I need to lighten up.

I grab a grocery cart, go into the store.

Plague Mask peers at me from over a pile of fruit as I squeeze an avocodo. He turns and walks down another aisle. The echo of his boots rings in my ears.”

LET ME GO, SHE SAID.

Not because she wanted him to let her go.

She wanted to stay on her bed. Not because she

wanted him to remove his arms from around her.

She wanted them to remain. Not because she

wanted him to go away. She wanted him to be there.

The works at Georgetown Steam Plant don’t turn any more

I wanted to show you, love, the now-

quiet place where oil fires burned in the boiler. I wanted to show you the fossils of an idealized century.

Cities brighten with power while river dams shift the wilderness. Light enters the optic nerve upside

KALEIDOSCOPE

Parts of me that turn pink when touched by parts of you.

Parts of me I cut off that never grow back.

Parts of me that keep trying to give up.

Parts of me that never heed warnings.

Parts of me with opinions about other parts of me.

Parts of me that complain this is taking too long.

Revolving Doors

Hello - Goodbye - Hello - Goodbye
Then again.
No.
I don't get to say goodbye.
To want them to get better is to want them gone.
I must welcome them to better let them go.
I don't get to say goodbye,
Find out how they are
Or where they go.

Triple Acrostic: Orcas

Why the pods that used to streak and shimmy

in Puget Sound's granitic light

have disappeared in recent decades: the reasons

speed like a killer Chris Craft through clouded

inland waters. Reasons subtle as a buccaneer's

logic: Goliath-girthed trunks of

Seven Ways of Looking at Toilet Paper

1. Bleached white and insubstantial as the word of an ex-lover. Rip it in squares, swab your private parts, examine the paper’s surface, toss it into the swirl. Repeat as often as necessary. The bathroom is your laboratory. Sometimes two or three squares will do, other times it takes 10 or even 12. Much depends on your solid food intake. Do the math.

The Sunday School Teacher

A great blue heron swept in, surprising me
just at sunset, landing up the beach
and standing, almost invisible

in slanting light.
Leaning over a driftwood log, the heron looked
like my father in his blue Sunday suit,

Innocence

We now learn that matter in the universe is aligned

in a grid,

that each molecule knows its mark

as if order came first,

that the stars know the moment of our birth

Playground

“Play is the highest form of research.” ~ Albert Einstein

Hooking one leg over, we pushed off the bars head-first

toward the damp asphalt.

Hair grazed the ground.

ICICLE CREEK (STILL LIFE)

Out of the shadows, among shades of green

appears a deer, cameo like, still.

Sun draped leaves, warm, impart an auburn tint.

The doe pauses and hooves gently probe the mossy basin rocks.

THE MUSIC BOX In memory of Susan Sims Coffin

There was once a magic music box. You didn't have to wind it or open its lid. If you so much as looked at it, or in its direction, it would begin to play. The song was short and rather simple, but mysterious too, because it had never been written down, and never could be.

Anthropocenic

☿ Rx at ♊13°       

May 18, 2015, 5:49 pm Pacific

Bridging physical space and social distinctions, two people communicate telepathically – Sabian symbol for the 14th ° of ♊

Love distorts things. Each noun in a house a nova of votives. The 6th glass solves an imbalance of wheels spinning, a reverse-photosynthesis promising Mea vulva mea maximawithout ever filling in what was banned from music in the Middle ages. Wound healed is spirit wound without conduit, leaving only self-taught, billion-year-old carbon, and we’ve got to get our selves back. Fire is not made to rest on grounds.

Gender

(The Box of Broken Toys)

He stretches on the rooted ground beneath a birch

and puts the box of broken toys between her knees.

A naked doll with one arm gone 

displays a plastic smile with confidence

amid a wrecker's paradise of matchbox cars....

Just yesterday, s/he finally came to visit, 

Writing Weird

Since you left I’ve been writing weird.

In my effort not to crawl back,

I starved myself to a whisker moon.

Alone in lostness, with my new Barbie body,

I teeter across the four-lane, in six-inch stilettos,