Preparing for the Storm

A good wind will

rap your body’s cage

with baton hands—

smack it down

hurricane strong

     and your organs tremble

In the night

barefoot in the yard

I watch a good wind

bring down the tree

I climbed in youth

and take every last

      limb bark leaf

into the dark with it—

Wind like a jackknife,

jetfire, coalfire, cannonfire

Wind like my grandmother’s hands,

dry blue rivulets

thinning out in plots

of her skin

Wind like a quake,

like twines of sulphur

you breathe

    at our moon

    at the stoplight

    at your sister

    at everything, everywhere

A politician has

good wind

So does the radio

between chatter static

in traffic

where a good wind

howls horns and all

The radio with the bad news—

     bad news

     bad news

     commercial

     bad news

A good DJ knows

good wind

Jeremiah down the street

knows wind

It took his job

then his house,

most of his dignity

It saved the respect

of his neighbors

for last

My brother found his

wind in a pipe

His lungs filled up

with glass

and dark-eyed gales

hauled him to the pit

He never really came back

My mother,

hers was the strongest—

     a tailwind

          It sent her far away from here.

Swallows

Her eyes never settle, but flitter in her skull—

slowly wild like flame behind the blackened glass

of lanterns in her flooded home. Columbus Day.

She tells us a story of the storm—

how the thunder bawled, the windows

whined, strained and shattered.

My brother holds her talon hands. I see her

in my mind, child-eyed with cheeks

like a watercolor chorus—

not the hounded, narrow jowls

she wears now.

She weeps of the dog she saved—

Marionette,

who crouched from the rain

down through the gaping frame of the window

blown out by the wind,

who passed over glassy teeth, straight back

into the black throat of her basement.

Mom says:

She shook off the rain

and gnawed at a bit

of copper piping

caught in her ribs.

And I want to save her.

My brother holds her hands, the wire fingers.

I watch her eyes—

like watching a pair of etherised swallows

be tossed away like this                                                                              into that skittery storm

and forgotten.

I begin to wonder if they used to chitter,

calling raucously across the bridge of her nose

or if they used to sing

in the morning behind the thickets of her eyelashes.

I wonder if they ever dreamt themselves awake.

I wonder if they thought themselves born then came to life,

or if someone found them and cast them away into her sockets—

the way you might save two moths from an overflowing sink

then flick them out the window.

We sit her down weary, already coughing dust—

a flame on a wick

blown out by the thinnest wing.

I Awake

Django,

just as you tip the song over

and spill everything out of it,

I split a clove of garlic on the chest of a knife

and press it with the cold cheek of a spoon.

And when your fingers ache,

mine will, too.

Just as I hear your gypsy tune come carouseling

off of high-cornered ceilings,

bending without shape

around the open frames of unlocked doors,

I float a bay leaf over the broth,

bring it all to a boil—then bring it low—

and sweep the scraps onto the floor.

I wait for you

in a room filled with that simmering murmur,

by the window looking out

on the passing sun—

on all the callow switches,

stitched and quilted by unbeaten snow.

We have winter minds, Django;

this cold keeps us warm with forgetfulness.

Sit here with me and listen to the land—

tapping, dripping, wheezing through the pane

and softly through the room,

tipping me adrift into a dream—

like snow lured into a bluster,

or a fallen branch

wheeling gradually down an empty road.

Ivy the Limbs

The trees sleep,

old claws clinging

deep into their beds.

When the wind comes

it rattles their skin—

loose and flaking—

and shaking their muscle,

steals their blood-let
leaves away.

They're caught

stiff in the cold—

pointing, forking

at the sky.

I, the Spark

Manholes clatter under my toes—

clanky clankity

click click—

and lick my chin with sewer breath.

The wind is my carriage!

I smell pine needles burning

in the throats of chimneys,

and watch a few tawny towers cough into the air.

I bite into my lip and taste my own fire.

It tastes the way the street used to sound at midnight—

little Aaron Graves tip-toeing down Columbia

after we tossed rocks through the eyes

of forgotten depots, when the wind

was not my carriage, but a conspirator,

and the rocks were not rocks,

but napalm.

We ran where fallen apples

lay rotting in corner lots,

where two toothless men

shared a brown-bagged forty

because they had forgotten to turn off their ovens.

Don’t knock it ‘til you try it, they said,

the charred cookies of childhood

burning in their minds.

We were as hopeful as hand grenades,

swinging streetlights at stray cats,

and fastening shadows like capes.

Rhino trudged there along the gutters,

watching for hellions below the street drain.

Swallow me up! He’d cry,

when rivers threw back the covers,

when the moon took a shot in the jaw,

when something whispered flicker

from a leaky conduit.

While rubbery trees wriggle in a puddle,

I fit my memories in a tumbler of whiskey,

which I chase with water

to douse my flames.