Tag: sonnet

Sonnets from the Cherokee (III)

What is this nameless something that I want,
Forever groping blindly, without light,—
A ghost of pain that does forever haunt
My days, and make my heart eternal night?
I think it is your face I so long for,
Your eyes that read my soul at one warm glance;
Your lips that I may touch with mine no more
Have left me in their stead a thrusting lance
Of fire that burns my lips and sears my heart
As all the dreary wanton years wear through
Their hopeless dragging days. No lover’s art
Can lift full, heavy sorrow from my view
Or still my restless longing, purge my hate,
Because I learned I loved you, dear, too late.

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Tender

I spent late morning weeping with the news:
a black bear with burnt paws is euthanized
along the latest wildfire’s newest edge.
It was crawling on its forearms, seeking
a place to rest. I Google more; reports
leak out: the bear had bedded down behind
a house, below a pine, to lick its paws.
In hours before its end, officials named
it Tenderfoot, though some reports report
just Tender. Later, I will teach a class
where we’ll discuss the length of lines in poems.
I’ll say a sonnet is a little song
to hold a thing that otherwise cannot
be held: a lonely thing; a death; a bear.

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Late Bird

Count me among the noon risers who stumble,
dazed and bad-haired, from the nest midday,
pecking the crazed dirt for half-torn moth,
pear’s white core, severed worm. I’ve never
been one to trill at chink of dawn, to hop,
skip, chirrup before full sun. I’m better
at picking over crumbs, stitching a quilt
from what’s left, remaindered, given up
for gone. Better at betting the careless
will miss the best. Count me among
the nightbirds who sip starlight, a guitar’s
fading strains. Find me where moondust
swirls in streetlamp glow and stray dogs sleep.
What clings to the bone is most sweet.

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The World Is Too Much With Us

     —after William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us. Late and soon
it’s morning, phone in hand, and a screen on my wrist powers
on to report the no rest I had. News, a tragedy—so easily ours—
already breaking as I crack my eggs. Rage and prayers, rage and prayers, a boon
for the tycoon’s fear-campaign, clicks for the zillionaire buying up the moon.
Ad, ad, an AI figment, someone squawking, someone hawking—hours
consumed, of this only life, and who is left in the garden, who is tending the flowers?
I am trying to hear the birdsong through the auto-tune
of all this ubiquitous engineered crooning, but a podcast informs me silence will be
extinct by the weekend, gone like thought and the good kind of alone. Peace is outworn;
it’s chaos that feeds the algorithm, no likes for the actual, the tangible. No lea
without a billboard promising Hell as if it isn’t here. But don’t be forlorn,
I’m sold—the world is yours! (after this ad) unending and enhanced on a screen. Don’t mind the sea
at the door. Time for a selfie, suggests my phone. A filter. I can add (for free!) horns.

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Triple Sonnet Because Boy, You’re Starstruck and I’m a Wonder

Boy, you’re starstruck. I love the way you rub
     the red lipstick off above my Cupid’s bow—
how you call it the halo of my face, because
     girliness equals goodness equals godliness
equals, let’s be real, Oh My Goddess, like that
     moment when Hades and Persephone meet
in the fractured Greek myth, and the Goddess
     of Spring chugs her can of pomegranate soda,
because her future lover is oh so fine, and check
     out that ass. They don’t make stories like this
anymore, do they? Boy, you’re my good afternoon
     delight as the Fountains at the Bellagio go off,
as the tourists at the bistro across the street
     much on Steak Béarnaise and Croque Monsieur

     and Wild Escargots de Bourgogne, as the water
dances to Sinatra’s Come Fly with Me,
     and I’ve just about named every cliché
in the romance book, minus the flowers—
     I had to stuff the Vegas Strip in there, but no,
let me start over now. F was right that day
     in Tallahassee when he traced the lines on
my palm and said the three long ones at the end
     meant I’d have many great loves in my life,
and how I laughed at F’s face after. And oh, Boy,
     was F right, I think, when X asks me on the phone
if I’ve ever been in love, and I say No too fast,
     and I might be lying to her, but who really
cares? I used to want to outsex everyone, make

everyone want, make everyone pant,
     make everyone chew their steak just a little
harder, order that extra shot of whiskey.
     And his lips go wild because I’ve just drank
bourbon—that extra tingle of tongue—
     the red lipstick that gets him all messy,
gets me all messy again, gives me the halo
     above my Cupid’s bow, and what’s it like
being in lust with a man and a woman
     at the same time—it’s like dancing in a corner,
your tank top about to slip off, exposing
     nipples, but you keep dancing. And Boy,
I’m a wonder, and when you kiss me,
     I think about her red lips kissing me.

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To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall

If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever
closed your legs to someone you loved opened
them for someone you didn’t moved against
a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach
seaweed clinging to your ankles paid
good money for a bad haircut backed away
from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled
into the back seat for lack of a tampon
if you swam across a river under rain sang
using a dildo for a microphone stayed up
to watch the moon eat the sun entire
ripped out the stitches in your heart
because why not if you think nothing &
no one can / listen I love you joy is coming

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Incognito Grief: A Blues

Who knows the secrets in my gaze?
Who holds me back when I might choke?
Who sees beyond my taut hellos
To see the grief etched on my face?
Nobody knows what lurks within;
Nobody brings me back again.
Who needs to disappear for a while?
Who sings my name beyond the veil?
Who has my memories, my tales?
Who’s lurking in my carpet’s dust?
Nobody feels this weight beneath my skin.
Who knows I’m grieving as I walk?
Who has the list of gravity’s costs?
Nobody but the man I’ve lost.

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Seeing the Eclipse in Maine

It started about noon. On top of Mount Batte,
We were all exclaiming. Someone had a cardboard
And a pin, and we all cried out when the sun
Appeared in tiny form on the notebook cover.

It was hard to believe. The high school teacher
We’d met called it a pinhole camera,
People in the Renaissance loved to do that.
And when the moon had passed partly through

We saw on a rock underneath a fir tree,
Dozens of crescents — made the same way —
Thousands! Even our straw hats produced
A few as we moved them over the bare granite.

We shared chocolate, and one man from Maine
Told a joke. Suns were everywhere — at our feet.

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