I. letter to tarin kot
1200 days in solidarity ,4 autumns watching leaves turn: princeton, rust, canary with boots pulled off and on .i haven’t tired of the same tea filling the same cup ,though i wish you’d tuck my hair behind my ear just as you wish i would forget to close the blinds ,to consider inviting in the sky .beaver moons, pink moons arching near and away ,perennial reminders that for me we are merely who we were years back, bargaining time into train tables .tonight i call you and cry out for you with passerine care ,deep in my mythologies ,restless in a summer bed and i am afraid the trees won’t turn .i am afraid tonight the wolves won’t want to be wolves ,howling love from their throats ,harmonizing loneliness .still ,indifferent cold time creeps unyoked against my naked finger ,how i steeped dunes damp mornings under dawn’s seclusion one summer back ,sand stuck to all but my reflection ,thinking of faith, of freedom ,palms unable to touch- then landed among pines: ice again .here i am no closer to you and your american dream .trees don’t tend to my ruminations .crickets sing anyways. ---
II. maui prince
this syndrome is a stale loaf of bread .upon a footbridge, watching koi ,mouths agape ,fins rippling wider the rings of wake around weathered stones ,i offered my scraps .every toss a fist full of manna .when i didn’t have crumbs i cast out empty hands as if to throw my longings back .to the fish i seemed a panhandler begging above open jaws to feel valuable .when i learned they drained the ponds i thought of myself standing on the bridge and of coins leaving my fingers on one or two occasions ,but mostly ,i thought of hollow, sky-stretched palms and felt ashamed .three years on and little has changed for me .the fish, i hope ,do not forgive this. ---
III. ms. chayka
i had dreams parts of my body were decomposing when i woke my toes were cold and the plums had rotted in the kitchen like the flowers, the fruits died from outside first skin bruising as petals fell i lie awake wondering which of my nails will chip first ---
IV. creekwood
picidae first alight among sugar maples set striking skin, husk, and seed now aloft, soaring ,woven trunk to trunk then vanished, hair after noon above the conococheague sailing south towards the mouth of the river ---
V. creekwood II
what killed you? what wrung the water from your hair? .salt water, sandy water, flowing from your place of birth a taste you still remembered when wine replaced rivers .below catoctin, south mountain, edges of blue ridges ,you wade in the potomac, the chesapeake ,in tributaries whose names know neither map nor mouth and come out drenched and alive .else, float face-down facing your consequences knees nevertheless made muddy ,leaves and twigs collected in your curls. ---
VI. palisades
post and pre war new york state, two lane highway: color as far as we could see ,color miles up the mountains ,a mismatched maze .no speak of pines or widow-makers .no hiawathas .no fawns taking their first steps .what to call a fluid habitation ,territory of take-no-notice ? “place your stakes where you must ,tired siwasher ,but home is having your side of the bed not where using a towel makes it your towel ”between white sheets on the upper east side and shivering in a shack above the conococheague i choose the cicadas ,the warblers ,the branches bent and broken .rich, fragile- reminds me of glass. ---
VII. philadelphia
the keystone rail marks station stops across southern pennsylvania .in the library car i am bitter- evening receding into lists ,lackings of this and that, tasks unaccomplished- all impatience .sunday sighs brief refuge against steady worry ,saturday leaves me unchecked ,simmering ,asks: which pit compels me to wade into tall grass ,to stumble beneath trees in the dark ?which currant crushed between pale gums turned the whole boxcar sour? ---
VIII. atlantic city
saltwater dialysate curbs my losses .salt air rises the bread .summer spent in effort to climb stairs beyond the alley ,panting up fourteen boards reeking of warm tar .then, the roof- waves white specks propped on deep blue, sand a thin filament bridging land and water ,the ocean another ocean .shattered clams, scattered chips ,carnage tips over the edge of the boards. ---
By Mackenzie Riford