Overnight Poems

“The Most Fatally Fascinating Thing in America”*

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“The stark, unutterable pity,
To be dead, and never again behold my city.”
—James Weldon Johnson, from “My City”

What if this is how it’s going to be—
atmospheric screen frozen,
no rebooting. Only one season left,
all natural warmth from the sun

a myth
our ancestors handed us
on a microwavable platter. The raw
movement dies from lack

of passion.
No more fire
in the belly, no more burning
desire to create friction—

to get next to you. This table wobbles.
That type set to tell on those paintings
has shrunk

to a grunt. I’ve lost
the secret code to maintain
an allusion. This uncoordination
has nothing to do with my left hand.

* James Weldon Johnson, from The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.

Drift—Or Curse of the Smiling Eyes

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Slip on ice but don’t fall
down. Seventeen more

days. We want a preview.
If I were a train,

I’d be local
and mostly underground

till I’m not. Sub or el—either way
I’d move people more

than I could ever move you

or me into tomorrow’s
shades of the unstratified.

Metal Grin

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In an era when buildings opened
with zippers, she fastens her life together
with safety pins. Then she hears them drop

one by one on dried mud. Inside
gets entangled in the outside—a blur
with or without corrective lenses. Pricked fingers,

the aromatics of March come next.

I Always Let My Victim Catch Me in the Act

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The first time I could have thought
I’d died and gone to heaven, I didn’t.
Only years later would I see
how one night of live music inside Toad’s

Place would be all I ever needed—
one almost lethal obsession kicking
in, another stubbornly tame one sparked
and filed away in a Midwestern vault

for safe keeping. Do not remove for more
than a decade (and a half). The first time

I did think I’d died and gone
there, I took a wrong turn
onto a riverboat and got trapped tracing
a wake aft. To cross it without spilling

into myself has become a new preoccupation
about to break the surface. Ready
as I’ll never be and all other stolen
turns of phrase twisted inside out.

Hemmed

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To become retro
for the third time, to hear
laughter cloud the air

from a different direction—more west
than east, south than north—to lose
track of the full moon

tally is to be in medias
res. Is to be on
the verge

of reconciliation: talk
with listen, sleep with walk, trust with
survive, survive with prevail.

Poets Were Reciting in the Month of August

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So concerned with giving
credit where laws say
it’s due, she forgets what she intended

to steal—loses
the pearl in its muck.

Traction Conversion

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Echoes from last week’s conversation,
a speech delivered
on a candy dish a week ago, a small stone dropping
into the river before
I was born. As my body becomes less

elastic, other tolerances may
snap to. I may not
be able to turn my head to the left so easily,
but I could trust
he’ll be there to catch me or be

my eyes. Only the stone
can say for sure.

In Situ

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A regatta underway in ditch water,
the wind changes direction

just in time. To survive the melt
without damage is no small act. Welcome

to the drip age. From it, drought isn’t a life
saver. Water—too much— not enough—can kill. When

this planet gets the DTs,
it’s all over but the quakes.

Johnny Becomes You

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No one else called you Lester. No one knows
I broke your typewriter—
save you. Who will
call me

Esther now? I see the jumbled
mass of timber holding up the Grain
Belt billboard sign. It doesn’t change
even when the river below breaks
open its mid-sigh

pause after months
of near death
threats. This city moves
to a different cadence

in a dye color you and I
could never find
for that windbreaker
that got left behind. On a wooden stoop
behind a cobbler’s shop.

Everybody’s got to work.
The banging has stopped
for you. For me, I’m left holding
jokes no one else gets—inside out.

Johnny Nolan Died: A Found Poem

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Three days later. Can’t sing anymore.
An uncle’s ashes scattered
from the Statue of Liberty. Nightmares
in daylight, cross out drunk—

write down sick. Expected rescue
does not come. Nothing
is wasted in this world—is a lie. A lump
of cold damp earth

in her hand. To the edge, she closes
her eyes, opens her hand. Thin
tinkle of a mandolin makes
a sad sound. Not from the common
cup—not Johnny.

Note: Contains phrases found or inspired by Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.