white noise

-



white noise

 The fan beside my bed-side whispers me 
to rest, a gurgling flood of air 
that lifts my mattress ark—
                                           afloat, I slip in sleep. 
At 4:13, awake to hear

 the drowning voices of my dreams 
that cling to floating scraps of consciousness, 
to hear my wife beside me breathe
the rest

 I do not have, I do not hear 
the fan. 
Strange, how constant-things 
will pack their bags, vacation in 

 the tropics of unawareness till 
we force them back 
with heightened strength of will. 
The black 

 of night illuminates my darkest fear, 
and grasping at her sleep-twitched hand 
I wonder if she fails to hear
my own white noise:

                                   I love you
                                  I love you 
                                  I love you
                                  I love you

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Line of Thinking

-
THE LINE OF THINKING The line of thinking runs  that given time enough—the funds— we might yet get in front of this.  That one day honey just does the list, and lo, the fixer-upper’s up and fixed,  the lawn at last trimmed low and all the laundry done, so give  it but a week or so and we'll at last begin to live the life we always imagined as something more than a growing list of pending repairs.  Of course, all this will come to pass only after the ballots are cast, the offices swept and emptied out  for our officials, who will, no doubt,  enact our will and set right the deluded line of thinking we’ve too long been governed by. Then once the baby sleeps through the night— or say instead the baby graduates and vacates the house—that will be our ticket to kick up our feet the way we've dreamed about and somehow come to expect, when we’ll rest as deep and long as Orion in repose, belt unclipped and bow leaned back in that ever-elusive posture of "rel...
Read more

the road behind the hill

-
the road behind the hill At 8:13, the solitary oak outside the kitchen window pulls down the sun with groping, fibrous fingers. Shadows stroke the stucco wall in stenciled lines, and on the counter, store-bought casserole is cold. His mother snores. He creaks the screened-in door to slide his bare feet over the concrete stoop in callous whispers. Outside, the evening air is soft as puppy’s breath. The grass is wet.        His mother’s face was wet the day his dad    had went away, wet Carolina sunset    streaks of red on cheeks that he had kissed.    John had moved in that year, a cheshire smile    from cheek to cheek that said “just call me dad,”    but whiskey fists can’t hide behind a smile.       Cicada song blankets his lilting stride across the lawn, his shuffle leaving strokes of green on cloth of dew...
Read more

on finding an eviction notice

-
on finding an eviction notice but we are young today, my dear, so let us dance — spinning to the sound of neighbors shouting upstairs, then pirouetting past the pile of unpaid bills that peer out smugly from their plastic window sills with urgent, time-stamped stares — let's laugh a laugh that resounds above the city sounds of taxicabs that pinball past in seedy streets below, a laugh that drowns the drone of evening news evaporating through the plastered walls too thin to block the mumbles of the neighbor's TV set: the traffic's clogged again on East Magnolia St — and then let's sing, my dear, let's sing the sort of song that takes the smoggy rain of weeping city skies [drumming the window-unit that hangs itself outside like wire-dangled sneakers] and turns it into tin-roof rain on farmhouse nights, a liquid lullaby to hush our streetlight minds and settle us both in sleep — and when we wa...
Read more