mariner

The fog rolls up silent
and unstoppable
at sixoclock
it creeps in the kitchen window corners
holds out fingers thick with stories

the coffeemaker coughs and spits

this is one story: i am a barnacle
frilled and clinging, furled, alone
in this world, in this house

This house: this dead and drifting brickskinned whale
thickshelled, still i go on riding
this island
there is, outside his lidless eye
a single dark and brachiating tree
stolid among pregnant waves
a thick and secret sea

labor (spoken word)

I am a man

unleisured, unlettered, i am heir
to as much of sky: i too partake
in 15minute nicotine drenched midnight breaks
of stars flung no less wide
thronged no less deep

than you
Sleeping in your mattress in its solid wood frame
in your 5 bedroom 3 1/2 bathroom
woodfloored wifecleaned roachless yardmowed
House

Look at you reaping
the fruits of your labor
casting bread on the water
did the debt snowball
you're the good Christian version
of american dreaming:
save and amass, one day you'll pay cash
for a palace like Dave Ramsey
till your taxes go to benefit
men
like me

(second shift third shift
shiftless

what does it profit
a man
if he gain)

My name
is no less heavy
in God's hand
because it's on those documents of shame
(I have a name:)

wal mart employee
delinquent rent
stacked up infractions
unpaid child support
benefits
godforbid food stamps
haven of the shiftless unprincipled

Do you know my name? 
Your granddad called my dad
worse than a n-------
How do you figure the worth of a
broke
image

white trash
no class
Back then at least he had his white skin
not at the bottom if there's someone less than

Human
My sin
is no less grave than yours.
Your sin
My sin
For the same damn wages

And the rate of my redemption is not one drop less
of God's own blood.
I am a man

It is a much diminished thing to be a man
We lost sight of justice
we love our private school educations
   family vacations
   college savings
   club cards
   Chik Fil A (my kids eat free lunch and PB&J)
more than the rawscrape shape of love
and mercy

it is better to walk proud
in our righteous bootstraps
our heads so full of prudence up on those clouds
american dreaming
oh holy nation of white middle class self made
men

You want to work 9 to 5
and eat the fruit of that righteous toil
and eat, and eat
the little thistle prickles make it sweeter

A day will come
(it won't be my day)
when we at last go home
Work the earth together like we were made to

and you, with your Protestant work ethic, your prudence, your priorities
your middle class opportunities
You will own not one inch of it
that sweet black soil, wormrich and warm beneath your hands

Beside you I will weep
barehanded, bury deep this angry pride
This bitter seed, humiliation
I will reap humility

We will receive the same wages

joy

Even in these days and these places you may find her
if you seek
diminished to a frail and shrewlike thing
like all her kind
Always, now, she has teeth

her mouth a dollhouse steak knife
serrate, swarming
you will remember the razor bite in your thumb
and the bite in your ring finger
later, the too-pink flush and swell and itch

remember that frantic bundle
needlebones, sharp stink, and matty fur
wrapped too thin around a shrill accelerating buzz
How tiny-frangible those bones
a dollhouse skeleton
a dollhouse heartbeat

Remember you held her,
teeth and trepidation,
tenderly

and were amazed

Found her:
fear and featherweight, a thing
too heavy-huge
to fold in feeble giant's fingerbones

accidie

Snake come crawling
in my garden
snake come stinking
in my green
Old snake and i go way back
Don't like the way he stings

get back old snake i said get
back 
get back where you belong

snake come crawling
in my garden
snake come stinking
in my song

cant keep on singing snake
get
back
where you  
belong

old blue heavy on my back
snake slide by so sweet and black
pick up go on now
sing your song
cant sing my song no more

hoe hangs heavy in my hand
lay that burden down
gonna lay down in my garden
black snake wrapped around

i said get back
but now i'm gonna lay me down

look up at the bean threads
and the hot sun looking down

birdsong breakfast

breakfast: black coffee
perched on the front door steps
in birdcrammed morning

its brash black smell steams into air
thick with sound,
curling around the stars and loops
spirals and whistles, pip! pip!s
spurts and whirrrs--

the sun smudge smiling blearily
into birdchat like seed full berry jam
thick heaped on toast

while muted insect trills and hums
pack thick the background
music crushed and sugar-sweet
buzz and rattle
scuttle

Hear! Hear! Here! rawthroated cock
bragging and chortling
glad to be crowing up
the sun. The sun up, glowing
like warmed butter drips
and melts in every cranny
of (now)
day

gratitude

I will fill up the cupboards with coffeecups
and wineglasses
with mismatched plates

i will fill up the days
with sisters. Their children
will fill up the rooms with scattered toys,

and i will not count the days since i vacuumed
or apologise for the spiders spinning in the corners

i will go out for chairs, or linens, and come back with more books
i will dress myself and your children in secondhand clothes that almost fit
until i am grown up enough to do differently

i will cook beans and cornbread
and buy sixdollar wine
and cry because i wrote poems
instead of cleaning the bathrooms
i will save ten dollars from the grocery budget
and send my brother twenty

we will invite families anyway
to eat stories from yardsale plates
with dented flatware,
good stories

Oh, our backyard weeds will rejoice
and i will go on hoping
mopping sometimes, sometimes moping

it is a nice home you have provided
with its doorposts
its doorposts
and doorposts
and doorposts
It will hold a lot of truth
it has room for hope

doubt

My husband says, "I have provided a nice house for my family"
which is true.
I hear gratitude in his voice, and well-earned pride
He has worked hard for this.

Thanks? i return

prickling inadequacies and resentment
bunched and crumpled into a three year old's bouquet
(don't give me nice things)

Three bedrooms. A kitchen--a large kitchen. A dining room. A living room. A den. Two full bathrooms. A laundry room. One hallway. Seven closets.
Wide rooms, long rooms
yawning and looming
We have spread out our odds and ends into the gape:
a chair here, the Wal-Mart futon, your particleboard computer desk.
We have, at least, plenty of bookshelves, plenty of books,
too much plenty of what i call my junk
(mostly craft supplies i will never use
and things we might need someday, in ten years)
when i am being polite

A room for each child: daughter, son
i have folded and stacked their clothes in little plastic baskets
4 for a dollar at Goodwill

Oh, it is a delicious extravagance
to wear these many rooms, these empty rooms
The weight of them draped
(undraped) around my neck
in their long spaces.
Unfurnished,
unpictured,
(and worst) un-corner-dusted
 Cinderella draping herself in stepsister necklaces
preening and mocking
They are heavy,
they sparkle,
look at all that zircon!
--her fists tight around the locket
her mother's locket
which is brass--

Really, you see
(don't sneeze) i am afraid.
How can i inhabit these wide rooms, these many rooms?
As greasy smoke--
i will dissipate
Fade into their grinning spaces
into mere traces of grime i was
Too poor white trash to clean weekly