D. A. Powell

Among the rain and lights
I saw the figure 5
...

Something seems to have gnawed that walnut leaf.
You face your wrinkles, daily, in the mirror.
But the wrinkles are so slimming, they rather flatter.
...

this is the track I've had on REPEAT all afternoon: she is butterfly
brilliant riband, rice flour face, silken, even her voice a sashed kimono
...

the bare-backed barback
in the bear bar's back bar
barebacked with a bare bear
who was also a barback back there
...

if you didn't mind the bible
you'd surely mind the belt
...

this is the track I've had on REPEAT all afternoon: she is butterfly
brilliant riband, rice flour face, silken, even her voice a sashed kimono

if I were foolish like her:
but aren't I foolish like her
spotting the coil of smoke and the billowed sail
against the verge of sky

simple on the rise surveying the anchorage: simple me, signal me
dreading the confident assumption of return, dreading more
uncertain tone to come, the thinning notes, performance
too close to my own impatient—swells, a surge: sick wind

but the emotion is, after all, an artfully conjured gesture
arranged marriage between a past ache and frail woodwinds
I could skip ahead
could break the inconsolable loop
of harbor, waiting, overlook, waiting, inevitable waning eye

troubled robins, once more in the handkerchief trees
once more, brief aquarelle of triplet lilies, blue as willowware
in that interval before his embrace falters, stuck, founders
[shuffle play] such a pitch of tenderness in the voice
such an awful lot of noise
...

were lifted over the valley, its steepling dustdevils
the redwinged blackbirds convened
vibrant arc their swift, their dive against the filmy, the finite air

the profession of absence, of being absented, a lifting skyward
then gone
the moment of flight: another resignation from the sweep of earth

jackrabbit, swallowtail, harlequin duck: believe in this refuge
vivid tips of oleander
white and red perimeters where no perimeter should be



here is another in my long list of asides:
why have I never had a clock that actually gained time?
that apparatus, which measures out the minutes, is our own image
forever losing

and so the delicate, unfixed condition of love, the treacherous body
the unsettling state of creation and how we have damaged—
isn't one a suitable lens through which to see another:
filter the body, filter the mind, filter the resilient land



and by resilient I mean which holds
which tolerates the inconstant lover, the pitiful treatment
the experiment, the untried & untrue, the last stab at wellness

choose your own adventure: drug failure or organ failure
cataclysmic climate change
or something akin to what's killing bees—colony collapse

more like us than we'd allow, this wondrous swatch of rough



why do I need to say the toads and moor and clouds—
in a spring of misunderstanding, I took the cricket's sound

and delight I took in the sex of every season, the tumble on moss
the loud company of musicians, the shy young bookseller
anonymous voices that beckoned to ramble
to be picked from the crepuscule at the forest's edge

until the nocturnal animals crept forth
their eyes like the lamps in store windows
forgotten, vaguely firing a desire for home

hence, the body's burden, its resolute campaign: trudge on

and if the war does not shake us from our quietude, nothing will

I carry the same baffled heart I have always carried
a bit more battered than before, a bit less joy
for I see the difficult charge of living in this declining sphere



by the open air, I swore out my list of pleasures:
sprig of lilac, scent of pine
the sparrows bathing in the drainage ditch, their song

the lusty thoughts in spring as the yellow violets bloom
and the cherry forms its first full buds
the tonic cords along the legs and arms of youth
and youth passing into maturity, ripening its flesh
growing softer, less unattainable, ruddy and spotted plum



daily, I mistake—there was a medication I forgot to take
there was a man who gave himself, decently, to me & I refused him

in a protracted stillness, I saw that heron I didn't wish to disturb
was clearly a white sack caught in the redbud's limbs

I did not comprehend desire as a deadly force until—
daylight, don't leave me now, I haven't done with you—
nor that, in this late hour, we still cannot make peace



if I, inconsequential being that I am, forsake all others
how many others correspondingly forsake this world



light, light: do not go
I sing you this song and I will sing another as well
...

had no direction to go but up: and this, the shattery road
its surface graining, trickle in late thaw—is nothing amiss?
—this melt, the sign assures us, natural cycle
and whoosh, the water a dream of forgotten white

past aspens colored in sulfur, they trembled, would
—poor sinners in redemption song—shed their tainted leaves



I tell you what boy I was, writing lyrics to reflect my passions:
the smell of a bare neck in summer
a thin trail of hairs disappearing below the top button of cut-offs
the lean, arched back of a cyclist straining to ascend a hill

in the starlight I wandered: streets no better than fields
the cul-de-sacs of suburbia just as treacherous, just as empty

if wood doves sang in the branches of the acacias, I could not hear them
anyone lost in that same night was lost in another tract

the air pulsed and dandelion pollen blew from green stalks
—that was all



and yes, someone took me in his car. and another against the low fence
in the park at the end of our block. under the willow branches
where gnats made a furious cloud at dawn and chased us away

I knew how it felt to lie in a patch of marigolds: golden stains
the way morning swarmed a hidden rooftop, the catbirds singing
the feel of ruin upon lips rubbed raw throughout the night

granite peaks: here, the earth has asserted itself. and the ice asserted
and human intimacies conspired to keep us low and apart

for an ice age I knew you only as an idea of longing:
a voice in the next yard, whispering through the chink
a vagabond outlined against the sky, among the drying grass



we journey this day to darkness: the chasm walls lift us on their scaly backs
the glaciers relinquish their secrets: that sound is the ice bowing
and the sound underneath, the trickle: the past released, disappearing



you pinnacle of my life, stand with me on this brink
half-clouded basin caked in flat grays, the very demise of green

you have surmounted the craggy boundary between us.



you open a place for me in earth, receiving my song


—for Haines Eason
...

shepherdboy? not the most salient image for contemporary readers
nor most available. unless you're thinking brokeback mountain:
a reference already escaping. I did love a montana man, though no
good shepherd

rather: a caveman, came spelunking into that grotto I'd retreated to

what light he bore illumined such small space—physically, temporally

and did he have a grove of beech trees? no, no grove
but together we found an old-growth stand of redwood

we gouged each other's chests instead of wood: pledges that faded
he was not cruel nor I unwitting. but what endures beyond any
thicket?


example: he took me to the ocean to say farewell. I mean me: farewell
to ocean
the ocean, for that matter, to me. us both fatigued, showing signs
of wreckage

and that man I had loved stood back from the edge of things

he did not hold me

I expected not to be held

we all understood one another: shepherd understudy, ocean, me


and did he go back to his fields and caves? yes, but they were gone
strip-mining, lumber, defoliant, sterile streams: you knew that was
coming

weren't we taught some starched sermon: the pasture awaits us
elsewhere


back up a moment: the forest you mentioned—remember, instead of a grove?

untouched for the most part. some human damage, but not ours

we left no mark, not there in the midst of those great trees:
not in the concentric rings that might have held us far past living

instead, I put that man, like so many others, on paper—
a tree already gone from sight where once it had drawn the eyes
upward: the crest of a mountain. crumpled thoughts, crumpled love


shepherdboy, do you see the wild fennel bulbs I gathered for you
olallieberries, new-mown grass, the tender fruits of the coastal fig?

I put them on paper, too, so fragile. for nothing is ever going to last


For Haines Eason
...

and yet we think that song outlasts us all: wrecked devotion
the wept face of desire, a kind of savage caring that reseeds itself
and grows in clusters

oh, you who are young, consider how quickly the body deranges itself
how time, the cruel banker, forecloses us to snowdrifts white
as god's own ribs


what else but to linger in the slight shade of those sapling branches
yearning for that vernal beau. for don't birds covet the seeds of the
honey locust
and doesn't the ewe have a nose for wet filaree and slender oats
foraged in the meadow
kit foxes crave the blacktailed hare: how this longing grabs me
by the nape


guess I figured to be done with desire, if I could write it out
dispense with any evidence, the way one burns a pile of twigs
and brush

what was his name? I'd ask myself, that guy with the sideburns
and charming smile
the one I hoped that, as from a sip of hemlock, I'd expire with him
on my tongue


silly poet, silly man: thought I could master nature like a misguided
preacher
as if banishing love is a fix. as if the stars go out when we shut our
sleepy eyes


For Haines Eason
...

to say no more of art than that it makes, by its very distraction
a mode of abiding



accordingly, its variations: each type of thread-and-piecework
named double engagement ring, log cabin, or broken dishes
all built on the same geometric figures—
precise interception of angle and line



so too each tale of love is rooted in that first tale: the poet
descending to the underworld
finally granted his shade, who'll follow him
only to disappear again. perhaps one version has them reunite
affixed in their solo chromospheres the stars, which,
to the human eye, appear to overlap



substanceless love
immune at last to gravity and time—



in texas (I might as well recount this as a story) there's a town
with a courthouse built on concrete and twisted iron
edified in red granite, capitals & architrave of red sandstone

with point and punch, a carver broached the effigy of his muse
he rendered her attractive features, down to the very blush

of course she spurned him,
of course there was another to whom she turned
love should not be written in stone but written in water
(I paraphrase the latin of catullus)


the sculptor carried on: not just the face of his beloved
but the face of her other lover:
snaggle-toothed, wart-peppered, pudgy
them both, made into ugly caricatures of themselves, as wanton
as the carver perceived them, and as lewd



well, craze and degenerate and crack: the portraits hold
though, long since, the participants have dwindled into dirt

beautiful. unbeautiful. each with an aspect of exactness



tread light upon this pedestal. dream instead of a time before
your love disfigured, a time
withstanding even crass, wind-beaten time itself
...

either the postagestamp-bright inflorescence of wild mustard
or the drab tassel of prairie smoke, waving its dirty garments

either the low breeze through the cracked window
or houseflies and drawn blinds to spare us the calid sun

one day commands the next to lie down, to scatter: we're done
with allegiance, devotion, the malicious idea of what's eternal

picture the terrain sunk, return of the inland sea, your spectacle
your metaphor, the scope of this twiggy dominion pulled under

crest and crest, wave and cloud, the thunder blast and burst of swells
this is the sum of us: brief sneezeweed, brief yellow blaze put out

so little, your departure, one plunk upon the earth's surface,
one drop to bind the dust, a little mud, a field of mud

the swale gradually submerged, gradually forgotten
and that is all that is to be borne of your empirical trope:

first, a congregated light, the brilliance of a meadowland in bloom
and then the image must fail, as we must fail, as we

graceless creatures that we are, unmake and befoul our beds
don't tell me deluge. don't tell me heat, too damned much heat
...

the pope has his cardinals
batman has his robins
shakespeare has a lark
in just one of his sonnets
...

I can only give you back what you imagine.
I am a soulless man. When I take you
into my mouth, it is not my mouth. It is
an unlit pit, an aperture opened just enough
in the pinhole camera to capture the shade.

I have caused you to rise up to me, and I
have watched as you rose and waned.
Our times together have been innumerable. Still,
like a Capistrano swallow, you come back.
You understand: I understand you. Understand
each jiggle and tug. Your pudgy, mercurial wad.

I am simply a hand inexhaustible as yours
could never be. You're nevertheless prepared to shoot.
If I could I'd finish you. Be more than just your rag.
...

a stabat mater

listen mother, he punched the air: I am not your son dying
the day fades and the starlings roost: a body's a husk a nest of goodbye

his wrist colorless and soft was not a stick of chewing gum
how tell? well a plastic bracelet with his name for one. & no mint
his eyes distinguishable from oysters how? only when pried open

she at times felt the needle going in. felt her own sides cave. she rasped
she twitched with a palsy: tectonic plates grumbled under her feet

soiled his sheets clogged the yellow BIOHAZARD bin: later to be burned
soot clouds billowed out over the city: a stole. a pillbox hat [smart city]
and wouldn't the taxis stop now. and wouldn't a hush smother us all

the vascular walls graffitied and scarred. a clotted rend in the muscle
wend through the avenues throttled t-cells. processional staph & thrush

the scourge the spike a stab a shending bile the grace the quenching
mother who brought me here, muddler: open the window. let birds in
...

turns out
there are no
dead bodies
after all
unless you
put them there
...

I play the egg
and I play the triangle
I play the reed
and I play each angle
I play the lyre
and I play the lute
I play the snare
and I play the flute
I play the licorice stick
and I play the juke
I play the kettle
and I play the uke
who ever thought of the triangle
who ever thought of the clarinet
the castanets the cornet the
discotheque the harmonium
the euphonium marimbas and
maracas harmonicas
tom-toms and tatas
I play the fiddle
and I play the jug
I play the washboard
and the washtub
I play kalimba
and I play the koto
I play the organ
and I play the banjo
I play the fool I play it cool
I play hot and I play pranks
I played your mixtape
forgot to say thanks
...

How is it that you hold such influence over me:
your practiced slouch, your porkpie hat at rakish angle,
commending the dumpling-shaped lump atop your pelvis—
as if we've one more thing to consider amidst
the striptease of all your stanzas and all your lines—
draws me down into the center of you: the prize peony,
so that I'm nothing more than an ant whose singular labor
is to gather the beading liquid inside you; bring it to light.

I have never written a true poem, it seems. Snatches
of my salacious dreams, sandwiched together all afternoon
at my desk, awaiting the dark visitation of The Word.
When you arrive, unfasten your notebook, and recite,
I am only a schoolboy with a schoolboy's hard mind.
You are the headmaster. Now you must master me.
...

soon, industry and agriculture converged
and the combustion engine
sowed the dirtclod truck farms green
with onion tops and chicory

mowed the hay, fed the swine and mutton
through belts and chutes

cleared the blue oak and the chaparral
chipping the wood for mulch

back-filled the marshes
replacing buckbean with dent corn

removed the unsavory foliage of quag
made the land into a production
made it produce, pistoned and oiled
and forged against its own nature


and—with enterprise—built silos
stockyards, warehouses, processing plants
abattoirs, walk-in refrigerators, canneries, mills
& centers of distribution

it meant something—in spite of machinery—
to say the country, to say apple season
though what it meant was a kind of nose-thumbing
and a kind of sweetness
as when one says how quaint
knowing that a refined listener understands the doubleness


and the leveling of the land, enduing it in sameness, cured malaria
as the standing water in low glades disappeared,
as the muskegs drained
typhoid and yellow fever decreased
even milksickness abated
thanks to the rise of the feeding pen
cattle no longer grazing on white snakeroot

vanquished: the germs that bedeviled the rural areas
the rural areas also
vanquished: made monochromatic and mechanized, made suburban


now,
the illnesses we contract are chronic illnesses: dyspepsia, arthritis
heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, asthma
chronic pain, allergies, anxiety, emphysema
diabetes, cirrhosis, lyme disease, aids
chronic fatigue syndrome, malnutrition, morbid obesity
hypertension, cancers of the various kinds: bladder bone eye lymph
mouth ovary thyroid liver colon bileduct lung
breast throat & sundry areas of the brain


we are no better in accounting for death, and no worse: we still die
we carry our uninhabited mortal frames back to the land
cover them in sod, we take the land to the brink
of our dying: it stands watch, dutifully, artfully
enriched with sewer sludge and urea
to green against eternity of green


hocus-pocus: here is a pig in a farrowing crate
eating its own feces
human in its ability to litter inside a cage
to nest, to grow gravid and to throw its young

I know I should be mindful of dangerous analogy:
the pig is only the pig
and we aren't merely the wide-open field
flattened to a space resembling nothing



you want me to tell you the marvels of invention? that we persevere
that the time of flourishing is at hand? I should like to think it

meanwhile, where have I put the notebook on which I was scribbling

it began like:
'the smell of droppings and that narrow country road . . .'
...

don't talk to stranglers
when yr wasted do
talk to swingers don't
talk to swindlers if
you can tell them apart
from the strangers who
are just strangers no
stranger than you alone
and afraid to be alone
cuz they might want
to touch your throat
...