Song of the Roadway Door

I'm sorry, but we cannot provide any refunds on this item.

Once your payment clears, I will ship your item and send you the tracking information. Price includes shipping and tax.

Song of the Roadway Door

 

…three hundred miles,

ahead the road more visible

as the land dissolves in the pink light

of almost dawn

 

you sit beside me,

eyes fixed and restful on my face,

offering hot coffee from a thermos

while the farm news

breaks morning music

on a local station

 

i could be here forever,

moving toward an unfamiliar place,

held by speed and the vibrating engine,

touched by the warmth of your breath

 

i could be here forever,

even as day turns into twilight;

you borne lightly on sheets stiffly cleaned,

wrapping your strength within, around mine;

prepared for tomorrow’s miles

 

we and machines;

only we moving, moving;

i could be here forever…

 

 

Eva’s Song

 

Twice at my hand it was nearly over,

and countless times my thoughts have let me die.

To have loved such a one as that: The world stares

fascinated, asking only to be properly appalled.

What was it like, Eva, tell, to share

your bed at his twisted whim?

Were the blood-drenched lips smooth

against your awkward body? Did he beat you down,

burn holes with cigarettes, and shave your pubis bare?

The feckless would know; they beg to know

what gives this man his power over them.

The conqueror’s robe, shining,

and dropped by night at my bedroom door,

rises of its own to haunt their dreams.

These hounds of death prattle unaware;

frightened by the answer locked in the eyes

of their own silent wives.

For when, at last, the sheets have fallen free,

leaving the master of this house

prickle-pocked with cold and drained of will,

I alone am left to feel the course of history

as beads of sweat that run across my breast.

 

 

Notes From a Small Town

 

Here, where I grew up, the roads are lazy;

the air is often thick, heavy with summer,

or sharp and crisp like leaf-blown fall.

Your daddy’s car smelled of old cloth,

comforting and warm against my back,

your face framed by the faded grey roof.

I married you because of that back seat;

one broken rubber; two broken lives,

and this other—what becomes of her?

And in this endless drifting time

of sunlight hours, sluggishly repeated

like a mantra gone wrong, or in the night

when I am called stranger by your eyes

and cast adrift; I still remember

when our touches rippled, broke the light

of a shuddering moon…

Days are formed by the drip of wood;

light melts through glass,

lies puddle on the unswept floor.

Outside, another country calls me home.

 

 

Temple

 

Let the red rust run like blood

then powder into earth again,

and rise as Babel once more great,

to smite the sky with steel wings

and spit our name into the rain

that lets the red rust run like blood.