This from Southern Review (2007?)

Easter Freeze

The resurrection was a bust this year:

dirty weather, sneak-thief wind, dogwoods stripped

of leaf, the daylight stretched like soiled silk.

So she put by her white shoes and sheer skirt,

her pastel blouse and breezy reveries,

to wrap herself in lamb’s wool, then stood 

inside the open door and looked down

the frost-slicked streets she would have to drive

to hear again how the observant woman

kept death’s offices, but found the tomb-rock

rolled aside; and how the death den kept

no scent of death, nothing but dank air

and gore-stained grave clothes, strewn—

her vials and verses, useless; how she told

then showed the baffled men; how they looked

and left her there, alone.  And how she wept 

until her name was called, and so set forth.

This from Nebraska Review (1996)

Rainstorm

The Lord sits enthroned above the flood.  “Psalm 29"                                                  

for Glen Vecchione

Lost in rural Georgia, we did Jesus

one better and drove on water,

hydroplaning gully-washers

churned up by mid-summer heat.

The Caddy shimmied in the curves

and fish-tailed down the straights,                                                         

past red clay archipelagoes

of tenant shacks and trailer-parks

rinsed opal in the shifting squalls.

We lunched on RCs, Scooter Pies,

and watched the wipers skim

momentary half moon vistas

lush with peach and pecan groves

whipped by drenching scarves of wind

while gospel stations ghosted by

then crinkled into static shards.

and billboards asked if we were saved,

promised Hell if we were not. 

But the hootchy-koo Savannah 

kept low-country holy-rolling,

swinging through her tangled banks.

Shimmy, dear old Caddy, daddy’s car,

shake and roll, old rattling gospel–

the waters came, we skipped like calves

across the rich and sinful south.

This from Rattle, 2012

Blue Plate Special

Pork chops, potatoes, beans, gravy, and grief,

seasoned to taste and shared by the dead girl’s

father and boyfriend, the table talk sparse,

the dead girl not much mentioned, especially

the dead part, or how she dumped the boyfriend

a week before she died. The boyfriend drank beer,

the father, iced tea. The boyfriend had plans,

the father did not. The brother came late

and skipped dinner (not hungry, he said),

went upstairs and cried (they seemed not to hear). 

Then he came back and cleaned up his plate.

Then they all had coffee, ice cream, and pie.

Then they looked through a box of old photos

and then said goodbye, over and over again.

This from Kenyon Review, 2005 (?)

Feeding the Fire

Down the chute the coal chunks come, black and brittle

from time’s press, packed with essence of dim forests, 

funk of flora, fungiforms, relics of the Paleozoic

destined for my furnace, fire-bellied Baal that warms

the innards of this house.

I toss the flame a shovel-load

and feel the blaze of opaque past transfigured into infrared,

then kick shut the furnace door and wipe the smudge

of pitch-black dust that seams the lifeline of my palm.  

This from Zone 3, 2011

Durable Goods

She knew the fridge and stove would outlast her,

washer and dryer, too.  And her car was good,

her son had said, for more miles than she’d ever drive.

So what to do with what lasts, like the four-post bed?

Well, that she hoped to die in, as her husband had,

ten years past.  But she’d made sure her will was clear—

who got what, not why.  Details wore her out. 

Some things last a good long while.  She would not.

“The body’s estate?” she said, “just stuff to stuff,

amen.  Burn it and be done.  Sell the house,  

divide the rest—and Joe, you can have the car,

but Susan gets the silver.  Give young Louanne   

the four-post bed now that she’s found a lover,

and dare her to wear it out, if she can.”

And a couple more...Bouquet in Boulevard, 2000 (?) and Shooting the Breeze in Southern Cultures, 2006 (?)

Bouquet

When you’re away, I sleep on your side of the bed

and smell the sheets where the weave is richest

with your scent—bath-damp hair, armpits, feet,

the alchemic reminders of your sex.

Call me, won’t you? Call me what you will:

pillow-sniffer, linen-lecher, truffle-nosing swine,

or better yet, a drowsy drunk who smells

the empty bottle’s cork to tease the tongue

and taste again the flower in the wine.

lShooting the Breeze

Aloof and aloft, the buzzards circled the farm,

and we would shoot at them, to no effect,

small guns popping, round after round.

                                                             Did we know better?

We were thirteen and had guns,

maybe small guns, but big enough, if we could only hit one,

to blow a hole in any bird that fed on carrion.

                                                Still, we wondered

silently, how they rode the breeze forever,

as if sanctified.        

                        Only later would I learn

about the great-winged vultures the long-gone pharaohs deified,

and even later, Dante’s circling song to death,

how it undoes so many,

                                           and from a P-3's vantage point,

watch Beirut burn and learn at last, I too was charmed,

flying circles, like an icon.