angular glory

beneath the layers of fat on our chest
is us in all our angular glory
but no one ever reaches that far.

we can never say a word.
there is no fruit in the throat,
no base to our moans

we love god and trees and all these
but what is to love
in that which needs to be torn down?

and when we are remade,
who will remember the school girl
and will we ever want them to?

Speechless

Dear Dad,









Your Son,
Toben

Mother In the kitchen

your hands are wet from doing the dishes
your face is stained with steam
from potatoes rolling over each other
in that pot you got for Christmas
the year I slipped on the floor
and cut my fingers on the glass
that i was not supposed to be
drinking out of in the first place
you never wear an apron and
all the oven mitts have holes in them
you look your prettiest here
even when the food is over cooked
and the presentation is underdone
it is the best way I know to remember you
now that you never come this way
now that you're not just my mother

my ancestors' wheat feild

I think of farms, of yellow wheat fields.
Where there are no clocks watching,
just a natural rhythm.
Who am I not to sit on the lashes of God?
If there is a heaven it cannot be
softer on the eyes than all this.
If I ever had a mother,
surely she is music by now.

She took a spoonful of medicine to make the sugar go down
I stood there helpless and watched her drown
And when I decided to finally jump in
I couldn't sink fast enough so I had to swim

It seems like yesterday I heard the last word she said.
I wasn't always thirty. She wasn't always dead