Opening Ceremony

Open with something other than bad intentions
& the painfully short life of sea creatures
near public beach hot-spots, dig faster
little translucent sand crab & the droves
of human bathers just keep coming.

--

Open with something revealing & patterned
floral when he apologizes, a freckle behind an earlobe
behind curls. A pyramid of light beneath the streetlamp
& your lips move.

--

Open with lightning cleaving an oak tree. Disregard
metaphor, a small pond gathers itself
in your lungs.

--

Open with a friend eating eggplant while
in the background, a riotous crowd overthrows
a small country. Say okay as Pittsburgh shakes
twenty cars off the interstate in a freak accident,
the coils of black smoke rising up
like absolution.

--

Open with men saddling a donkey on a narrow road
kicking dust. You place two coins in the husband's hand
& sit down beneath a gnarled tree.

Opening Ceremony

Open with something other than bad intentions
& the painfully short life of sea creatures
near public beach hot-spots, dig faster
little translucent sand crab & the droves
of human bathers just keep coming.

--

Open with something revealing & patterned
floral when he apologizes, a freckle behind an earlobe
behind curls. A pyramid of light beneath the streetlamp
& your lips move.

--

Open with lightning cleaving an oak tree. Disregard
metaphor, a small pond gathers itself
in your lungs.

--

Open with a friend eating eggplant while
in the background, a riotous crowd overthrows
a small country. Say okay as Pittsburgh shakes
twenty cars off the interstate in a freak accident,
the coils of black smoke rising up
like absolution.

--

Open with men saddling a donkey on a narrow road
kicking dust. You place two coins in the husband's hand
& sit down beneath a gnarled tree.
-
--

Open with the disillusionment of your life which
lived out, was not like the movie. Tell the husband to buy
a motorcycle & ride it into a broken clock-tower
Look up at a heaven, which refuses nothing.

***

Unapologetic Poem

In the harbor the men trudge knee-deep
        through the river's fishy mouth, filthy, pulling the plastic green nets
      into heaps on the bank.      Watch him, my sweet cartographer
place a handful of almonds into a bag & give the bag to me—
                       death stinks of red carp flailing
      on a boardwalk. My cartographer, his back curved
        like the glistening blade of a hook says mourn me—
the water's bluish eye blinking itself ashore.