The Carrion Call

New location, same old shi.... I mean, the same high quality you've come to expect

2012-10-05T19:30:00.001-07:00

Well, I'll be closing down for good here shortly, and would like to invite anyone who is interested to join me at my new digs. After much deliberation, I've decided to stick with Blogger, for reasons that are much too tedious to go into here. Anyways, I'm not sure how regularly I'll be posting, but I've been working on a bunch of new things and have some new books out as well, which I will be shamelessly promoting over there.

eryops

Closed until further notice

2012-08-07T10:23:00.004-07:00

Mint-flavored Toothpick

2012-07-09T14:39:00.000-07:00

I'm closing up shop here for a while, maybe for good, I haven't decided yet. My reasons for doing so are complicated and tiresome so I won't go into them here. Suffice it to say it's time for a change.

Two more books will be available by the end of the year. Reverser in Neutral will be a selection of re-worked pieces from my first two collections (which I've stopped publishing) along with a bunch of unreleased stuff. The second will be called Brown Recluse. Chances are this is the last poetry I'll be sharing for a while, but again, who knows. I'll be hawking these books as well as the older ones on Twitter and Facebook and on street corners and such. I can still be contacted at carrioncall@gmail.com.

Thank you everyone who has read and commented these past two and a half years. It's been a pleasure having people to share this crap with.

Seann McCollum
July 9, 2012

Glacial Erratics

2012-07-06T11:05:00.003-07:00

Wind-plucked cherry blossom petals gently scour
the asphalt beneath our feet, filling the potholes
and ruts with pink confetti. We veer off the street,
and slip through the unchained gates

of Lone Fir Cemetery, where sparkling sap decorates
the furrows of the cedars, showers of white resin
like frozen waterfalls, explosions of glue.
This past December, we both realized

we were no longer willing to live immobilized
in one another’s amber. And so we separated.

But now that spring has arrived, we stroll amicably
through the grassy halls of the petrified library

with its granite tomes arranged in rows,
volumes of sealed-shut history

with spines bookmarked by pebbles,
black covers etched with frosted head shots
grinning and scarred with milky splatterings
of hardened tallow.

We skirt the dusty gardens of artificial flowers,
pause before the plastic dinosaurs awaiting the next meteor
at the foot of a child’s tombstone.

We salute the headless cherubs, swat paths through clouds
of April no-see-ums. I catch a ladybug,

then uncurl my fingers to release it. The insect huddles
in the dry riverbed of my heart line, unwilling to depart
until I flick it from my palm.

We will not grow old together. We will never again sleep
beneath the same headboard. Our names will not share a slab

like the one you stubbed your toes against

the first time we ventured here, the first time I reached
for your hand. That fragrant night, you wore open-toes shoes
to show off your pedicure, the shiny pink petals
distracting me from noticing

the sluggish river flowing around us, the flood rising
as slow as chiseled names eroding from stone.

This sunny afternoon three springs later,

no longer trying to impress anyone,

you’ve traded your pumps for a pair of old Chucks

as we zigzag between the concrete obelisks,

pausing on a gentle swell to see where we have found ourselves,

two ill-fitting pieces of rock carried for hundreds of miles

and pages, and days in one other’s company,
now finding ourselves freed,
like boulders stranded when the ice recedes,

savoring the gentle warmth of the interglacial sun.

Fireflies

2012-06-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

A glow worm illuminates the cavern of your ear

until a raven plucks it out, gulps it down.
Beams of light burst from its nostrils,
spill from the hairline cracks in its beak.

I grab the bird by its feet, hold it before me like a lantern

as I pick my way through the pewter thicket,

carefully stepping over the bony roots.

Metal claws scrape the flinty paths

of the empty creek beds, sparks flashing

in the shadows on either side. But I do not run,

and eventually reach the clearing,

where only the closest tips of sedge are visible,

shimmering blades that scatter like minnows

when I swing my feathered beacon back and forth
then hurl it in an arc across the blackened meadow.

When I hear it catch the wind, a snapping kite,
I collapse into the soft, wet grass,

turn my head and wait for a glow worm

to twist its way into the shelter of my ear.
I lie there on my back in the rain
and close my eyes

and listen for your footsteps.

Space Needle

2012-06-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

As we sit here at Bauhaus Coffee on the hill,

the Space Needle grimaces at us through the glass,

its lid painted its original perky orange
to commemorate its fiftieth anniversary,
a retro futuristic lamp standing in front of an inky curtain

of early evening clouds. I gently run a hangnail

down your bare shoulder, tracing the boom

of your wrecking ball tattoo.A potted palmetto
makes jazz hands at us, trying unsuccessfully
to grab our attention.

Down in the muck of the amphibious city,

you tickle me with your gills, as on the wharf,

our slimy pink compatriots curl up like fists on beds of ice,

or are flung like floppy disco balls between the fishmongers.

Your inner arms are laced with scars, with rows
of stitched closed lips.Your wrists dazzle
with pearls that glow like teeth,

like little moons sinking through the plume of silt

that billows up around us when we hit bottom.

We burrow like flounders into Puget Sound mud,

dreaming of fish that dart like rockets between the legs of the piers,

oysters that spin like saucers, dragging their nets behind them

like wedding veils as they blast off

into the soundless sea of outer space,

leaving constellations of bubbles in their wake
and leaving us behind, stitched together down there
in the sludge beneath Seattle, ignoring all those fleshy morsels

that dangle close enough to kiss, knowing that

the prize embedded in every one

is merely a hook.

Lady MacGuffin

2012-06-22T14:32:00.000-07:00

You kept your bottles of nail polish
jumbled inside a turquoise chest of drawers

on top of which perched a cast of the Maltese Falcon

you'd purchased from a thrift store years before.

Scars criss-crossed its black veneer,

exposing the chalky plaster underneath.

The film was on TV last Saturday evening.

I sat alone and watched it from my couch,

slathered in the achromatic glow, downing

tumbler after tumbler of bottom-shelf scotch

to make myself forget that you were gone
and still would be tomorrow and tomorrow

lacquering my talons with filched obsidian.

The liquor made it difficulty to stay within the lines,
the shaky brush kept slipping from the nail.

The vapors caused my skull to start to spin

just as the dark heart of the story is exposed;

when, cradling that chunk of feathered lead,

Bogie mutters those wrenching final words.
You know what they are. Stripped of fury,
signifying nothing. Sockets hollow and dead.

His gravelly voice so bitter, so resigned.

I hate admitting it, my love. I cried.

New story on that other blog I sometimes post stories on!

2012-06-19T21:31:00.003-07:00

I know, I need to get a little faster at these. It's been nearly a year since the last one.

Anyways, bon appetit and all that. Don't forget to wash your hands afterwards.

The Slime Net

Putty (W.H.)

2012-06-19T11:00:00.002-07:00

You are touchingly walleyed,
your wobbly pupils peering out through the holes

in your stretched-out rubber mask of a face.

You brush a few limp strands of your raven feather wig

from your chalky forehead.Your skin,
hanging loose on your skull, reminds me
of my earliest nightmare, in which
my mother stood at the kitchen sink,

her face turning to white paste

and dripping into the sudsy dishwater.

My most recent bad dream was just last night.

I was trying to buy religious icons from a South Philadelphia shrine

with paper money that turned out to be a wad
of elaborately etched counterfeit twenty-four-dollar bills.

I don’t know why it was so horrifying, but I awoke in a cold sweat.
The night before it was Whitney Houston, or rather,
a cake molded to look like her, in a red strapless dress
and frosted crimson lips.

My apologies; it’s true what they say, there's nothing quite so boring

as someone else’s dreams.
Don’t leave, though. Frightening though your features may be,
I’m still mad for your lazy gyrations,

your scuffed pumps and bunched stockings,
and I will flick crumpled twenty-four dollar bills at you

to flutter at your painted toes all evening

even if I’m certain any words we say to each other

will plop to the floor, where we will probably slip on them.

Oh, hell, I’m no good at small talk. I'm smitten with you.

I'll follow you anywhere you go, join in on whatever

harebrained crime spree you plot for us.

If you want, baby, I’ll even try my best to become a character in
your favorite recurring nightmare.

Plank

2012-06-14T11:58:00.001-07:00

My Dearest P.,
Sorry I haven't written lately.
Been busy navigating these perilous straits,
plowing through choppy chum-laced waters
with a spyglass jammed into my eye socket, and
a cold glass of undrinkable liquid sweating
in my hand. Sometimes I get tired of the effort it takes
to stitch these tattered sails together.
Wooden pegs. A wick of twine
spiraling down one's neck. Burning bile. Acid reflux.
A worm of wax curling down a rope.
The corkscrew I forgot about in bed
and rolled over onto
is still jammed up there somewhere, clicking
against the broken sextant.
Hope is an icy splinter I chomp down upon
and curl my lips around, saliva squirting
from the corners of my mouth as the ship
spins circles in the middle of this sea of snarls.
Sky of powdered charcoal, waves of frothy curd.
Lightning lashes the mast, garlands the pole
with twists of knotted luminescence.
The small hairs on the back of my neck
stand up and smolder, crackle with static electricity
...or something like that. You know how it is.
We load the cannon, lob iron spitballs at the clouds,
knowing it changes nothing.
Give my love to the children and the pets,
if you haven't been driven to devour them yet.
Best wishes,
S.

Enola Gay

2012-06-12T10:32:00.001-07:00

At first glance, the scene looks peaceful: a placid pond shimmering in a verdant meadow. But on closer inspection you can see that the air is swarming, the water teeming with acts of violence. The general squats on his round flat dais, croaking orders into the spiky microphone of a floating blossom. All around, segmented biplanes buzz on transparent wings. Dive-bombing damselflies are picked off one by one by a snipe hidden in the reeds. Mosquito larvae hang suspended just beneath the surface, wriggling with impatience, eager to unsheathe their bayonets and join the fray. In the depths far below them, an armored submersible lurks in the thick gloom, waiting to rise from below to snatch another bobbing frigate from the duckling armada. The pacifist fish hope that if they remain motionless they will evade the piercing shell of the egret torpedo. Fascinated by the skirmish, you lean forward and slip on the muddy embankment. The explosion of your body smacking the water causes a brief cease-fire, as the battalions scramble to escape the resulting tidal wave that pummels the shore, casting the water striders into the grass and flooding the muskrats from their trenches. Sadly, the impact is not enough to end the battle for domination of this tiny body of water, this strategically useless puddle, and the tiny creatures are soon back at work, doing their best to annihilate one another here in these wetlands of mass destruction.

Grail

2012-06-07T09:40:00.002-07:00

A McDonald’s take-out bag has hurled its guts,

strewing its contents like the innards of a squashed rabbit

across the sidewalk. Its wadded paper organs mingle
with scattered fries and condiment packets.
When we were young, my brother and I,
having finished our Happy Meals and already bored
with the apathetic prizes that came inside

would squeeze all those little bladders flat,
mixing their contents together in a paper cup:
mustard, mayonnaise, "fancy" ketchup,
stirring in a splash of cola, plopping in the pickles plucked
from our flaccid cheeseburgers. Then, giggling like mad scientists,
we’d dare one another to swallow the concoction.
I would give anything to sample one of those noxious cocktails again,

just so I could watch my brother break into paroxysms of hilarity,
so I could once again listen to him cackle
at the way my face contorted with disgust,
even as I declared the stuff delicious.

I'm certain that a single taste
would transport me back to my childhood

more efficiently than a nibble of Proustian pastry ever could.
Although I'm not sure I could bring myself
to actually swallow the questionable digestif,
nostalgia goads me to revisit that moment
where nausea gives way to anticipation
as I smack my lips and pass my brother the chalice.

Manna

2012-06-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

The angels are gobbling their steak rare, worrying the meat like wolves then gulping it down without chewing since, after all, they don't have any teeth. They dab the corners of their mouths with napkins made of stitched-together foreskins. They wiggle their toes in delight beneath the tablecloth, occasionally kicking the cherub-crabs that scuttle about their feet, clicking at the bits they drop. They flick peas at one another across the table with their spoons, dip their paws in fingerbowls filled with holy water. They guzzle soda pop to fuel their belching contests, hoping to catch the attention of any saintly agents who might happen to be in the vicinity and who could stop by to listen and nod in approval, perhaps even offer them a contract. They slurp oysters from the shell, as well as the occasional fetus. They gorge at the golden trough, trying to sate their eternal appetites. Occasionally one eats so much it bursts, its guts raining down upon the earth, where we sinners snatch it up, a bucket of chum tossed out over the deep.

Rothko Soliloquy

2012-05-30T15:24:00.000-07:00

The actor portraying Mark Rothko
in the local production of a play about the artist
is being given a private tour of the gallery
by the head curator of the museum.
Both men are pale, portly, and bald.
The curator pontificates
about brush strokes and layering;
in one scene, the actor and his assistant
(a convenient prop fabricated by the playwright)
paint a canvas solid red, but not before
discussing at great length the various permutations
and implications, and variations, both physical and metaphoric,
of that grisly color. The actor peers closely
at the paintings, backs up, strokes his chin.
The curator stands with his arms crossed,
his voice deep and authoritative.
The master instructing his pupil,
unlocking the artist's secrets:
There's a little bit of white in there.
He preferred dime-store brushes to expensive ones.
Notice the scumbling around the edges.
...as the apprentice murmurs I see and interesting.
Once onstage, he will bellow and bark lines
from a script that reads like an undergrad dissertation,
salted with every imaginable cliche
of the volatile, egotistic stereotype of the Artist.
Nietzsche's name will be spat across the stage,
the words Dionysian and Apollonian will be hurled about
to reassure the audience that they are witnessing a work
of great seriousness, that they have come to this theater
not to be entertained but to be inspired,
lifted into the heights of intellectual nirvana.

When the two substantial gentlemen have strutted off,
each going his separate way, I secure the gallery doors
and flip the breakers to shut off the lights.
And there they hang, those luminous creatures,
those butchered slabs of beef,
their crimson hides turned to bruises in the dark,
longing perhaps to share their sublime grace,
but nevertheless treasuring the silence.

Mugshots

2012-05-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

A shingle, glittering gray
and rough as sandpaper,

peeled from the roof
by the wind and slapped

at the feet of a chalk outline
of a child's shadow

traced on the pavement
beside a black Tbird

with its hood propped,
engine ticking in the sun.

The Pride of the Wolverines

2012-05-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

After the parade, the street is littered with porcupine quills scattered like pick-up sticks across the asphalt. City workers pull on thick gloves to remove the splintery sawhorses that block the traffic. The crowd has dispersed rather suddenly A small child squats amongst the popped ballonskins and silly string, spelling out his name in quills. He tugs at his mother's hand but she is busy texting a message to her sister. That's nice, Honey, she says, never taking her eyes off the little screen. The plod of an exhumed Sousa march still echoes lethargically between the buildings as the last band staggers around the corner and collapses.
Thirty years pass. The porcupines have conquered the nation. In the basement of an abandoned Woolworth's on the outskirts of Detroit, the son stretches his arm through the bars and gently bumps the stump of his wrist against his mother's. He nudges his bowl of pine needle soup toward her, urging her to eat. The swill is congealed and cold, but still it's sustenance, and they take turns bending low and slurping from the bowl without a word.

Cleave

2012-05-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

An early spring storm brought down
one of the big elms on the corner.
A woman was trapped beneath it briefly,
cradled between its branches but
swiftly rescued without a scratch.
The upper limbs of the tree, not yet budding,
came to rest against the old stone church
across the street, shattering one
of the stained glass windows.
A single squirrel darted up and down
the trunk for a while
before finally disappearing
through the narrow aperture
into the building.
I stood there thinking about you

as city workers set flares in the road
and strung up a web of yellow caution tape.
Rainwater filled the hole where the roots had been.
Soon the chainsaws would start up,
followed by the grind and munch
of the woodchipper reducing
the toppled giant to sawdust
as inside the church, a small furry creature
darted beneath the pews, its tiny heart
pounding wildly in the dark.

Shofar

2012-03-27T12:44:00.003-07:00

A toothless old veteran squats behind a dumpster,
attempting to knot a bandanna across his greasy forehead.
The air is a sliver of glass and the daffodils
have sucked their bugles in like skittish barnacles,
waiting for April to stop being such a bastard.
As I shiver at the bus stop, an obese woman with a black eye
smiles at me through the window of the Lebanese restaurant,
where she sits with a man in a fishing vest.
Their fingers tear apart a beret of pita bread
from the basket on the table as they wait for
their wet shanks of lamb to arrive.
I spy a hawk floating in a puddle but when I raise my face
to gaze directly at the bird, the sky is blank.
Charlie Parker's trumpet blares, muted and mournful,
from the open window of a dented Cadillac
stalled at the traffic signal. I don't know what
to do with myself these days. I have nothing
of interest to say. I ride the bus across the bridge
from one side of the river to the other,
to the end of the line and back, dragging the pen
across the page like an animal pacing behind the fence.

Should my bleating windpipe get slashed,

the body of this sacrificial ram reduced

to a wheezing and deflating fleecy sack,

I pray that someone will unfetter one

of these hollow horns from my skull

and place their lips to the corkscrew tip and blow,

conquering the sudden silence with
a single note

Bathysphere

2012-03-23T10:49:00.001-07:00

Down through the chaotic frenzy of the shallows,

past the congested coral maps,

through darting quicksilver traffic, through the matted net of sea grass,

this is where the music drags you:

under

using
composition as a cacophonous anchor,
a chunk of discord sinking like an iron lung through the murk,

trailing a necklace of tiny glass beads behind it

as it plunges down
through pages of algae,
down through miles of blue glass turning gradually black.

A mushroom cloud of silt puffs up
when you touch bottom, not that you can see it
-you only feel it whisper against your cheek,

a billowing hem of silky dust, followed by
a slap and a thump.The lights blink on,
the underwater nightclub lit by

toothy, illuminated ghouls that float
like paper lanterns through the murk.

In the glow cast from their luminescent bellies,
you can see, not the Titanic's band
but a jazz quartet of sub-aquatic maniacs.
Witness the bass, tilted like the hull
of a sunken ship, with fingers crabwalking

up and down the mast; the twin saxophones,

encrusted with barnacles, their diving bell cavities
creaking and honking with underwater pentatonics

to summon a herd of crustaceans
that thunder across the ocean floor,

rattling their armor and lashing their antennae wildly about.

Your ears grows accustomed to the pressure of the deep,

picking up faint screams of feedback echoing off a distant reef,
a tape loop bellowing from the blow hole of a leviathan
rumbling past on the rainy avenue upstairs.

The drums bang tsunami numbers, mocking the rumble and rush of the tide,

followed by a long moment of the abyss’s crushing silence
before rattling and banging like an endless avalanche.

Strange papery creatures pulse and flutter to the improvisation,

but finally become so sluggish and dense they can barely move.

A gaping mouth in the rock hisses,

snoring in its sleep, belching bubbles of gas.

Its lips are rimmed with wormy hairs, undulating gently,

the sea floor populated with sucking tribes of polyps that feed

on your improvised dreams
well after the music has faded

and the divers have returned their instruments

to those ominous black cases, giving a tug on the line,

hauling everything back up to a trawler on the surface.

Emerge slowly; take some time to acclimate,
to prevent yourself from getting the bends

as you ascend the stairs and step out into the night,
accompanied by the clamor of car horns and crowds
which, now that you hear it, actually sounds
a lot like music.

(Written at the Blue Monk during a Sunday night performance
by the free jazz quartet Battle Hymns & Gardens, 3/04/12)

Pith

2012-03-16T08:33:00.003-07:00

Hack a path through the fields of never-ending
ever-growing rodent teeth
swerve to avoid the carnal resting-place
hidden in the tall grass
tiger trap scattered straw grown
damp with sweat pressed flat
the underside of every leaf teems with secret appetites
squint through a lens of dew to peep
on teenaged girls posed cross-legged on the frilly bed
reading encyclopedias and almanacs
waiting for the dye to frizzle their scalps
distraction swivels your head in the grimy dusk behind you
just in time to catch the egg-sac delivery truck
belching black clouds of exhaust
the lights click on in the store selling neckties printed
with kachina dolls and totem poles
a metal cup hits the wooden floor with a thunk
the park is still unlit at dusk
still crowded with bronze statues of parasites
I crouch walk hunched over using a pine limb
to scuffle my tracks behind me I waddle
into a tiny cabin made of toothpicks and sparrow bones
behind the outhouse a tall man throws
his loose-jointed limbs out across the crevasses
leaps our of focus over chasms and ravines
his starched white shirt splotched
with scabs of various liquids long since dried my glasses slip
from my face and plunge down the well
where they get stepped on by the barefoot child
who lives at the bottom
the plushest moss covers the hardest stone
I finger a pin for each of your eyes
a pickaxe scraping at pockets of cartilage
your last thought stumbling down the hill
flung along the path of ever-growing rodent teeth
curved chisels gnawing tunnels
through the marrow of your mammoth bones
narrow passages flanked by guardian worms
and splinters flinging open those unhinged doors
those uselessly flapping gums
those creaking gulls

Pocket

2012-03-13T13:00:00.004-07:00

The wind presses against my cheek
with its cold, flat blade. It feels good;
I'm stifling in my clothes, overstuffed
and bundled much too tightly.
The sky is ice white, the sun flat and blinding.
It's so quiet that every ordinary sound
seems to intrude like footsteps
outside a sacristy.
It's a day for watercolor washes,
not words; for soft-focus photographs,
for the gentle interrogation of hands
silently questioning the shadows
of one another's bodies, growing familiar
with the slopes and crevices,
tobogganing along the crests and gulleys,
seeking out the warm places in which
to curl up for the remainder of the winter.

Chinatown

2012-03-06T12:37:00.001-08:00

The world is rubbed until it turns translucent.
The clouds enshroud the remnants of the sun.
I pause and press my palm against the window
and gaze a while before I head downtown.

The bus’s motion makes the raindrops quiver
like beads of mercury upon the glass.

Our breaths accumulate to mist the windows.

As we exhale, the city is erased.

I stop and wipe the moisture from my glasses
beneath the awning of a restaurant.
The captive lobsters pummel my reflection
like drunken boxers swinging taped-up claws.

A string of ducks hangs in a butcher’s storefront.
The neon bastes their plucked and glossy skins.

The wind cuts rippled notches in a puddle,
that world in which we dangle upside down..

Lethargic koi float through the upper stories
of skyscrapers inverted in the pond

until the pouring rain dissolves the buildings
and melts the orange fish to blobs of gold.

A bulb’s transparent flesh grows brightly blinding,
its incandescent skeleton aflame.
The rain unveils the city’s hidden mirrors
that echo every street lamp’s sunny claim.

Steam rises from a grating in the sidewalk
and cloaks the souvenir shop in a fog.
Its window crammed with swords and waving kittens;
good luck and blood go strolling hand in paw.

I pass a mural she once posed in front of,
a phoenix stretching out its flaming spurs.
My camera lens was wet and wouldn’t focus.
Our coals extinguished, yet this beast still burns.

A girl steps from a car with tinted windows,

umbrella spreading like a bat’s black wing.

Her swaying backside hijacks my attention.

My mind folds up. I can’t see anything.

*

The brass pole in the strip club gets a rubdown
with disinfectant by the owner’s dad.
Above the bar, a TV surgeon rips off
a nurse’s scrubs inside the x-ray lab.

*

A crow attempts to lift off from the gutter.
A carton of lo mein swings from its beak.
He hops and flaps, ignoring all the traffic,
can’t fly without abandoning his feast.

*

Entombed within a twilit basement tavern,
I gorge on fish and chips and gargle gin.
Unearthed potatoes, fish dug from the water,
and juniper exhumed, buried again.

*

Last call here in the underworld seems sudden.

Old Charon’s cab tools aimlessly around.

Poor Orpheus returns home empty-handed.

I’ve missed the last bus out of Chinatown.

Cricket

2012-03-02T10:43:00.000-08:00

I loved that upside down pentagram on your back,
your broken glass smile, your centipede leg eyebrows.
I loved the way your tongue darted out to lick the grime
accumulated between my accordion ribs, to sponge
the damp wormy hollows scooped by my chirping lungs.
I loved the way you tore into the living,
then daintily dabbed the corner of your lips
with your spider silk handkerchief.
The way you slathered my arm with honey and mayonnaise.
I loved the way you snapped me up
as if you were the gecko and I was a cricket,
brought home with my brothers in a plastic baggie
from the pet store. I loved your wintry warren:
the icy columns, the prickly pillars,
the ravine bristling with frozen thistles and waxy clumps of fungus.
I miss that furry mouth, that foamy proboscis.
I miss the nights we spent with our faces stapled together
and our tangled genitals slathered in slowly-drying glue,
all our legs entwined beneath the sticky branches
that lay in wait, hoping to entrap that fat white grub of the moon.

The Salamander Enclosure

2012-02-28T09:51:00.002-08:00

The naked mole rats huddle together
like sausages in their artificial burrow.
These shuddering onionskin creatures seem
so easily crushed, so vulnerable,
yet their curved teeth can chisel through concrete,
hence the special resin that forms
their worming tunnels, the thick clear plastic
that allows us to watch them stumble blindly
through their mazes beneath this molded, painted
model of the desert.

Limp sardines splash into the pool, flung from a bucket
by a portly attendant. The penguins, remarkably good
at exactly one thing, bullet through the water,
snatching the silvery fish before they can sink to the bottom.
Liquid transforms these plump, waddling blobs
into graceful angels, bobbing and coursing so quickly it seems
impossible that they don't collide, or knock into the observation glass
the schoolchildren press their spread palms flat against.

A fruit bat hauls itself across the ceiling,
its claws hooked in the chain link mesh.
It stares with black glass eyes and bares its teeth,
thrusting a sharp snout into the crotch of a potential mate
before suddenly mounting her from behind.
Both of them hang there, ears pointing toward the ground,
jiggling wildly for a few moments before he untangles himself
and once again goes lurching off, claw by claw
across the cage, choosing for the moment not to drop into flight.

When I'm finished spying on the various trails these animals trace
through the earth, through the water, through the air,
when I'm done pondering their various forms of locomotion,
I follow the asphalt path that twists between their enclosures
and exit onto the street, to resume my own flickering life,
wondering who is standing outside my cage,
watching this strange beast navigate its way between the flames
of the civilized world.

Ironman (Dried Papaya)

2012-02-24T11:01:00.000-08:00

Flying home after spending Thanksgiving back East,

I strike up a conversation with the mouselike woman in the next seat,

traveling alongside her daughter, who has just competed in

an Ironman triathlon down in the Yucatan.

They are from Canada, but now reside, like me, in Portland.

The daughter is perhaps twenty, her bright orange hair

glowing pale against her deeply sunburnt skin.

She wears a t-shirt and shorts and all through the flight

she keeps standing up and stretching in the aisle,

flexing her thick, muscular thighs despite

the flashing fasten seat belts sign.

There is quite a bit of turbulence. “We’ll be hitting

some isolated pockets of bumpy air,” warns the captain,

his voice tinny through the intercom.

The stewardesses finally force her to sit.

She fidgets in her seat like a restless thoroughbred.

At one point the young athlete produces a plastic baggie

full of long, translucent orange strips of fruit.

She takes one out and bites into it, then waves the bag at me,

across her mother’s lap. “Papaya?” she offers.

I decline but she shakes the bag, and I don't want to be rude,

so I gingerly pull out a piece and gnaw on the end.

It’s thick and squared off and rubbery.

I’m hungry, having forgotten the box of beef jerky

my mother bought me for my trip back to the West Coast.

I can see it sitting right where I left it

atop the low bookshelf of my sister’s old room,

which is finally after all these years being converted into a guest room.

She moved out years ago, but recently fled the time zone

to relocate for a more lucrative job. She’s the favored child,

the baby, the successful one in the family.

She’s the one winning the race while I remain winded,

trudging far behind. The possessions she abandoned

in her old room when she graduated

are being boxed up and stashed in the crawl space.

The walls will be given their first fresh coat of paint in years.

I awoke in that same room this morning,

and had trouble escaping from that big plush bed.

Groggy, I gathered up the last few items I hadn’t packed,

stuffing them into my already bulging suitcase,

making sure to throw away the empty envelopes and wrappers

I’d strewn about during my stay.

That box of smoked meat, bought by my thoughtful mother,

is the only remnant of myself left behind, her forgetful, ungrateful son.

It’s a minor thing, I know, but for some reason, it upsets me.

It seems emblematic of all the ways I’ve let my mother down

over the years. I may be less self-destructive

than I was when I was young, but after all this time

I still struggle to pay my bills, have not managed

to produce any grandchildren, and I’m sure as hell

not running any marathons. I barely function as an adult.

And to compound my guilt, she will no doubt

waste the postage to mail that box of jerky across the country,

no matter how much I beg her not to bother.