Haiku Sonnet: In Another Room

In another life
you might be in an office
reading clouds’ outlines
in a building face
or eating with waiters framed
by failing sunlight
and onlookers’ gaze.
You search for your other selves
in the familiar
posture of strangers.
The soldier’s gestures are yours.
The child laughs like you.
In another room nearby
someone writes you down.

On Being a Soloist

I have a bad habit of seeing only the task before me. With grade reports due at the end of the week, I can’t see past that obstacle. I know of nothing beyond it so nothing exists beyond it, and I won’t like thinking about any other tasks this week.
And I [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Chicagoans in Winter

Everyone’s inside—
the steam of their living clings
to a broken line
of rooftops, and, if
curtains move, it’s not wind but
a glimpse of faces
seeing the world is
still there. No one stays for long.
The cold has slowed us.
Everything arrives
by pipe and wire or through
waves in the ether.
We’ve no need for others—we
bear it all alone.

Difficult (And Loving It)

This week, one of my classes wandered into meta-territory, the domain where you are no longer talking about this book and begin talking about writing, reading, thinking.
The specific spur was the previous night’s assignment, the twenty-second and twenty-third chapters of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. If you’ve read the book you would [...]

Haiku Sonnet: After the Amnesia Bomb…

Pigs chortle the same
in every language, rumbling
no longer rendered—
low fidelity—
as vowel and consonant,
but as a snort of
mud, gnawed sassafras
and blunt odors of coupling
never nameable
anyway. Nearby
humans occupy themselves
rolling around in
the cool shade, straining
to fold head to crotch.

Time’s Reach

I’m thinking of replacement, cell by cell—
how every moment is renovation,
rehabilitation. Is time saying
I need correction? Is nothing yet right?
In my book, the error is too far back.
Buds proliferate on a tree, branches
divide again and again and just won’t
return. Maybe way does lead on to way
as Frost said, but what can we know besides
where [...]

The Unhappy Spaceman

My brother drew a flip-book cartoon in the margin of Edith Hamilton’s paperback Mythology. The rocket suddenly appeared in the lower right-hand corner about page 40, rose quickly above three trailing lines of thrust, divided into stages, then—near the top of the page—spit a tiny triangular capsule that began to tumble, [...]

Born in February

A winter fly loops over their table,
a mad orphan signing air,
wondering why his wriggling birth
didn’t make him more visible.
Who will read him now,
when snow nearly stills the world,
and he and she are kitchen statues?
Their eyes rest on anger less delicate
than flight.  Their faces won’t take in life,
ready to call its dare.

Twelve Minutes

Friday morning a colleague told me Chicago has seen only twelve minutes of sun in February.
My first thought was, “Where would such a figure come from?” A machine, I suppose, but I pictured a despondent soul in a parking booth, stopwatch in one hand, his head in the other, leaning out [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Aubade*

She knew he wanted—
just that. Words could’ve been mute,
strange calligraphy
that only needed
intended meaning, and, now,
recalling her, he
sees her gray profile
shadowed in the first daylight,
whispering something
to live oaks standing
against morning’s saffron light.
The memory knots
in the branches’ canopy,
no song to save it.
*