Sunday, July 28, 2013

Dear Family Chronicle of a Flock of Pigeons,


There are so few pigeon
heroes, or dastards,
and also, I think,
so few affairs, since
each and every character
mates
for life—the history
of pigeons
is a chronicle
without wars—sure, a falcon
grabs a sacrifice now
and again,
but on the whole this
is the tale of how you rose,
a chorus on
a January morning,
wings nearly
white against a bank
of darker cloud, and I
read that chapter,
thankful to see
the fog of my breath
while I waited
on the train, nearly
able in that moment
to love my lifetime the way
a flock of pigeons loves
to be silver in a flash
of sky, dark
then silver.


Saturday, July 20, 2013

After the poetry reading



It was an hour before dusk, very hot, and the light of early evening was made especially beautiful but the intensity of the readers he'd heard just minutes before. Ravenswood Avenue, that bland alley of light manufacturing, took on the mantle of temporary beauty.





Thursday, July 4, 2013

Dear Dented Box of Cupcakes,



 


Dear Dented Box of Cupcakes,

All the toddlers weep at your disarray, preschoolers  
point out 
the ruin of your frostings, powdered sugar
pools 

like blue sand in your corners, and your devil’s food 
bundles, your Mini-Cooper carloads of lard 
are smeared, smashed,
among the fallen. 

Let this be the worst thing to happen today, 
a slip and an oops, 
some momentary grieving. Let this be 
the worst thing 

some of these witnesses will ever know. But of course 
that’s impossible. There shall be loss 
upon truckload of loss. Someone will die.
Someone will fall 

in love with somebody else. Might as well, 
I tell the children, (as I push them
aside) might as well try
for a smidge of icing.