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Tag: dead letter office

Return to Sender

over there’s a rusted pipe
a candy cane in an open field

is it a searching periscope eye
or gaping mouth accusing?

barn swallows weave the sky
questions unfolding

you say stay still
we don’t need to answer

I wish I was the static
invisible between your stations


This is the end of this series that I started posting in 2019. The series originated in 2018 as sample poems I wrote with my students at school. I didn’t like any of them so in early 2019, I cut them up by line, by stanza, by phrase and collaged them back together into 10 poems most of which have titles related in some way or other to the history of the US Postal service.

Of course, I stopped writing for almost 2 years when I hit a snag on “Facer Canceller.” Couldn’t figure it out and couldn’t get on with much else writing-wise. Suddenly it was 2 years later. I finished the poem and picked up where I left off.

I’m still not quite sure how it happened. How it went so fast and took so long.

P.S.

everyone hoped
we would recover

but we got worse
& stronger

when the daylight wanes
& the moon grins

we are this and that—
blue with time
& forgery

we are trees tangling
between the shadow
& the sky

Chain Letter

I can’t find New Mexico anymore
west there’s just the Llano Estacado

in my dream airplanes vulture overhead
do you see the fighter planes going by?

this twisted road of cloud and movies
half-remembered could be x-rays winding

through our DNA tying us up in books
we don’t believe in (doesn’t mean

it isn’t happening) we take our complaints
to the bureau of broken drums, pound

the chain link fence around the reactor
it rattles with ice and meltdown

Facer Canceller

I thought I was some problem
scientists could solve, a theory
the Nobel prize they’d hang up on their walls

but we’re from the last generation
that can disappear completely, unplug
pretend we’re never home

we laugh like animals, laughter welling
from some place behind the deepinside
we ghost away from old classmates

& lovers, drink this don’t pay attention
there is nothing happening here
this pretty postcard says it all

make a list of daydreams now & line them up
like soldiers staring over border walls

Rural Free Delivery

See the fireflies spark glowing light
this is the drought you can’t escape

listen to the glimmer in your eyes
if there were stars out tonight
that’s how they would shine

you can’t go around Texas
it’s everywhere—in your clothes,
your hair, stuck between your teeth

a jet plane’s contrail
splits in two, a heart breaking

dissolves into cumulus clouds
that look like bees

Air Mail

I wish I was a horseman racing 
headless heedless wild down the plains

bright sunshine glints on razor wire
an egret pumps the sky
a daytime star in blue

imagine the newspaper you read every day
I will be the article you clip & never throw away

now do you smell the slow spring coming?
the grass humid with the buzz of dragonflies

an airplane’s drone reaches the rec yard
it’ll land somewhere in a few minutes

we will still be here
imagining birds & sky & other lives

Dead Letter Office

sunlight moves like a broom
through wild worldspinning grass

the grackles in the trees are machines
tuning up & ready for the day’s

music no one would recognize
a heartbeat on the edge of familiar

songs written in dead languages
& trees that grow twisted on the plains

could be the old hair metal guitar
that escaped the pawnshop wall

Pen Pal

I stole this from some stories you used to tell

something from beyond the memories
of great grandparents & 90s hard drives

a butterfly struggles flaps mad
through the yard

warm morning daguerrotype sunlight
& notes slipped past the censors

the swoop and swirl of phony wood
painted on a tabletop

listen: we drift through high plains
memories from movies
& dry dust surf rock soundtracks

beneath an overturned mason jar
gears drop into that smooth oscillation

how we dance now we dance how we dance

Pony Express

I wish I was an Iceland gull
soaring over stormy seas

I’d act like I belonged there

there like tiny purple flowers
in green grass, sparks & eruptions

where killdeer poke along
a summer road

twisting down the mountains
ran a river road

we knew it so well
knew it wouldn’t end

but we’re clocks
& we cannot tell the time

voices in the dark

I want to open
every night
knock on candlelight

talk to something frightening
secret, somehow

a way to see

///

Erasure poem from Number the Stars (p22) by Lois Lowry. We took pages from an old copy that was falling apart and bound for the recycle bin and distributed them to our classes to make erasure poems. This was mine.