My father waved good-bye.
I didn’t wave back,
scared I might drop
my new cold smoky marble.
At the core a spiral
glinted and coiled
like a small windy flame
turning in on itself.
That night my mother
shook me from a dream,
whispering he was dead,
he was dead, he was dead,
as if to teach a language
and I answered: he is dead.
Even in sleep
my hands had not opened.
—D. Nurske
D. Nurkse, “Evening Practice” from The Rules of Paradise (New York: Four Way Books, 2001). Used by permission of Four Way Books.
Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth
and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,
and it is good, a way of letting life
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.
And now the crickets plug in their appliances
in unison, and then the fireflies flash
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex
someone is telling in the dark, though
no one really hears. We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.
—Tony Hoagland
