by JS Gilbert
There’s something, I think, a flap
or flange on a plane that lets its
fuel tanks hold hands across the
wingspan of a particularly strenuous
crossing, and I think about that
flap whenever I make you laugh, or
when you order the Chinese take-out,
and I pick it up.
Once you’ve squozen the recommended
allotment of shampoo relative to hair-girth
into your palm, be careful when letting go
the bottle for its pop-back-reset,
or the mintfused molecules will panic and,
with eucalyptous hands, cling to each
other in a desperate, schlurpy retreat back
into the globuly hive, leaving only an
invigorating, sulfite-free residue in the air,
your hair plastered, and unwashed.
Like the deep-cleansing morning I spent on the
front porch with my coffee and my dog and
suddenly remembered the day my mother changed
the locks on all the doors and my father,
and I hadn’t even showered.
Dearest Neighbor, I did, indeed, see you
back into your garbage cans.
As Caravaggio saw Narcissus, or as my
parents saw me minor in poetry.
when in a moment
of inattention your
most precious and richly
stained coffee mug falls shattered
to the floor it knows only
that it is broken
and cannot cry
but desperately
wishes it could
I gave my dog a carrot.
She nosed it into the
ground, into the grass
and walked away, having
reached the end of some
dog-algorithm that tells
her a carrot is worth
saving, grass for safe-
keeping, and that I will
always wait to watch,
with two hands and a
face she’s allowed to lick.
Not every thought needs
to be expressed. Certainly
not shouted, as though lovers
divided by a widening chasm of
flame instead of a cooling dish of
patatas bravas that you found too spicy.
I vowed to write this poem before
allowing myself a nap in the middle
seat squozen between my wife and
an inattentive father seated just
behind his daughter who may as well
have been left at Disneyworld where
princesses stand guard behind topiaries
and garbage cans and other princesses
to emerge in case of indifference
to curtsy and wave and wink
at this little girl peeking between
the seats to make damn sure she
is seen and known and loved which
is usually my job but
I had a poem to write, and a nap to take.
before your son leaves for college
take him for a walk along the beach.
Stay by his side without holding his
hand. As you avoid drift woods
and tides and fly-clouded corpses, drift
away and let his pace outpace yours.
Step in his footprints. Notice that his
feet have outgrown yours. Notice that
your stride can match his stride.
Notice that it’s not worth the effort.
Look askance, all you
want, at a people who
draped their cats as
queens, in gold and lapis
and jasper and jade,
or shaved their eyebrows
in lamenting grief when
their whiskered royals
sauntered through Duat to
bask beneath Ra’s passing,
but have you, a lap
among a sea of laps, ever
been so richly blessed by
an ambivalent god brushing
against your shins?
It’s Their Cheese
Certainly, O Dark-Souled Dane, a hintish
tickle of rank and foetid currents
weeping beneath your kingdom’s feet, but have
you, Unsettled Prince, sensed what stirs
across the ocean? A waft of acrid faith
twined with sourful pride beneath a haze
of festerous free, towering rot. Not some
thing, but many. Many things.