about Canoe

This sequence of poems began as a result of wanting to write something completely different from what I had in the past. After completing two full-length manuscripts, I wanted to write something brief and direct—something I could write in a few months without stopping to consider the “project” as a whole.

This change had to be a conscious one. To be aware of the differences, I gave myself several rules to follow. One of the most important rules was the necessity to compose the initial drafts of these poems by hand as opposed to on the computer.

Another important difference, and one that occurred more subconsciously than others, was the autobiographical element that began to emerge in these poems. The formal considerations of these poems allowed more room to communicate personal experience without delving too far into sentimentality.

from Canoe

remains of nothing. a brief return

to piled leaves and a mouth of water

from a hidden spigot. clinical

sky. a canoe of weather. the canoe

still days away. what river would not desire

a swell. what to say of the rhetoric

residing in meteorological desire?

revival turned to a laugh. five-

thousand reruns of yr favorite show.

*

streetlight sun. strike indicator

of a star. frozen november

and a forgotten fall. despise

is a sea wall of certainty. surge

construction. it is not difficult

to read for lack of light. there

is too much light in this room

and i have aimed my sight

to the flicker of ongoing,

purposeful, dirty, dead light.

*

ladder yr self elsewhere. mumble

something meant to forest fire

this world back five-hundred years.

its halo is spoiled. its eagerness

for process has cut you off

mid-sentence a gray

space where the sun should be.

the greatest thought a teacher

can convey is sudden

and stark when the student is ready.

*

never ready. never born. never un-

done. a thin shirt on a cold day a wind

at my back then at my face then at my

side then nothing. water is certain.

river swollen around my legs.

river mile in a blink.