Handbook

-

HANDBOOK


At what point exactly 

does a drought become—

with the very bloom 

it withers—perennial? 


The shovel leans against 

the white shed, rusting 

in the thought of rain. 


Off Happy Valley Road

a pasture is deemed ripe

for harvest and a flock 

of yellow Cats led out to graze, 

to raze. When in this development

does it become wisdom 

to sell your inheritance? 


There is so little about what to do 

with the handful of left-over 

seeds beside the dusty trowel  

at the bucket's bottom,


and what there is

might best be thrown out.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holly

-
  HOLLY             — a yellow labrador One day you'll say your childhood  dog’s name and it will sound  a bit odd, flat , as if it  were someone else’s pet  who wandered its way  like a hair into your mouth.  You haven’t thought about her  much the past few years,  but still, you didn’t expect she’d just disappear like that.  The scary part isn’t that she’s gone— you loved her, but it’s a given dogs will run away, true  to their nature. What haunts you,  rather, is the crowd of other constancies milling about your house, the question of which will slip out next if you forget  and leave the door open,  even just a crack. The girl lying next to you? The name of your homeroom teacher? The drive home, those turns you know in your bones? And then  what really troubles you is how   you’ll go on living without them around anymore, how you might even do just fine at it.
Read more

7th Period

-
7th PERIOD Safe to assume we’ve probably got it  mostly wrong, or if not quite wrong  then likely a right that’s misinterpreted the question. That being said, students,  the fact remains that at the construction site  behind the classroom there’s a trailer-load of 2-by-10’s used to frame the concrete  foundation that I struggle to believe  they’re throwing away. Perhaps  it would be a more advantageous  use of our day were we to spend what’s left  of class time shouldering lumber across campus to the bed of my truck.  I, for one, plan on spending a few afternoons of my remaining puzzlement to puzzle  together a table where my children can pick up the pondering where I left off. It seems as good  a use of time as any. It's coarse work, but with every pass of the paper you can’t help  but feel that you’re getting somewhere,  like maybe, in the proverbial 8th period,  we’ll get up from our desks and gather round just such a table, sharing a laugh  about how splintered it all used to b
Read more

Emergence

-
EMERGENCE Seventeen plus thirteen equals eight thousand aliens crackling in the breeze of an oak tree  like deep-fried air, even more piling up below in a thick, leggy  mulch. Supposedly, in their long subterranean anticipation,  cicadas taste time in the fluid  of tree roots they sip on,  though scientists refuse to confirm whether that’s screaming we hear as they’re wrenched into the world like a bad tooth or harmony as they lilt their way to light. What we can confirm   is that based on the taste  of the root we’re drawing from,  we too are getting close  to the surface. Soon exoskeletons  will crunch beneath our feet like the hollow shells of selves we nibbled on to quell our evening ache. Soon  this red-eyed desire to rip a hole  in our backs and climb out of our skin will be something more  than an aphid dream you can't seem to shake, and with a roar   we’ll vanish into the eternal note, disappearing like a single voice in a swell gathering to break on some unseen tree.
Read more