Mendel’s Peas
A shovel and buried stone
barely ring. Buds tough
as buckskin rattle in wind—
not enough to sound,
nor enough to chant to—
variety rising without
music. Mendel fingers blossoms
and rues silence.
What they won’t tell, he
codes as confusion. Call this one
Little “r,” this one big “R.”
They are not their parents,
each is its own trouble.
Souls invade roots
mad for water, and born,
life unrolls.
Gregor Mendel was the Franciscan Monk who pioneered genetics, uncovering the secrets of dominant and recessive traits through research on pea plants. He signified dominance by using a capital letter for a trait and reserved the small letter for recessive traits. Recent reviews of his data suggest he may have “fudged” some findings to make his research more incontrovertible.
Reconstructed Hours of Captivity
All objects are made
yours by use, each one a doll
of your affection.
x
At the end of chains
pocket watches twist, speaking
their one utterance,
x
prayer machines sewing
time together and forming
sentences. Which day
x
will “open” open
into what it is? Today
bodies float in space,
x
their umbilicals pulled taut.
Tomorrow, maybe.
Time’s Reach
I’m thinking of replacement, cell by cell—
how every moment is renovation,
rehabilitation. Is time saying
I need correction? Is nothing yet right?
In my book, the error is too far back.
Buds proliferate on a tree, branches
divide again and again and just won’t
return. Maybe way does lead on to way
as Frost said, but what can we know besides
where we are? The rest is dreaming. The rest
didn’t happen. I look at a new leaf,
tender as it is, beginning right now
to fade—yet its green watches, in worship,
the eternal flight of the arcing sun.
A Boy’s Discovery
He found the beetle’s
empty torso in the snow
and thought the brittle
x
bottle might hold new
inhabitants, lost patrols
from ant colonies
x
now frozen in sleep,
families of tired fleas
sick of jumping, or
x
maybe the precious
liquid that’d rouse the beetle,
the one drop it needs
x
to grow legs and become
the boy’s newest friend.
The Lucky Bone
Beggars used to say
a small bone in a sheep’s skull
meant acquisition,
x
a day stuffed with fat
potatoes and bread. The trick—
as with all my life,
x
is finding the luck
to wait, finding the luck to
know an occasion,
x
the luck to believe.
Sheep wander pastures under
casing clouds. The scene
x
dissolves. In its place is my
mind dreaming bone.
Death of the Unknown MFA
The writer perished
repeating “opus” after
a morning grooming
x
vowels and fricatives.
Brilliance emerged from his mind
like French poodles from
x
fur, and his body
combusted. The pages flew,
littered with scribbles
x
like droppings. The work
is interred with the artist,
no piece worth saving,
x
no other writer’s words worth
gracing the tombstone.
January Morning
The reflected sun is a tiny flame
drilling through sidewalk ice,
and the blue sky a measure of cold, its depth
a field without interference. Little moves
x
between here and wherever.
Corners hide the steps you hear. A door
shuts somewhere. When you think no place
is truly still, wonder is rest, nothing
x
interrupting and nothing
to interrupt, time at last quiet,
the cogs of this vast invisible machine
melted into one another.
In the Fifth Grade
Randy Carlson dragged two satchels
to a one-piece desk, and settled,
a weight of ash, a giant borne in
by wind. Who watched? Everyone knew
his homework was in neither satchel. Each
held blank worksheet layers of years two
through five, yesterday’s empty page
somewhere amid sheets and sheets
of phonetic code trapped by a locked
clasp. He had to be asked:
x
“Randy, do you have today’s assignment?”
Then came the wails. Nasal language
not human, descriptions of the bars
of an unseen cage. His hands
shuffled before Miss Stone’s irritation
until, abandoned, he mumbled “Sorry,”
and became a mass again. He never
raised a hand.
Litter
Hamburger wrapper,
only I see your leaden
steps in winter’s gust.
x
You move as I would,
should I leave this room to walk.
It’s too cold outside.
x
Furnace steam skirts
along rooftops, and the wind
carries home spirits
x
away. Soon I’ll need
to be ready, but first I’ll
watch. Gray sunlight dawns.
x
Shadows materialize
from every object.
A Dead Sturnus Vulgaris*
Ants clot passages
into his breast, curtaining
the rooms inside and
the secrets of their
devoted emissary.
One eye faces up,
its focus broken,
stuck on distance. His oiled coat
hides spots too dim to
read in flight—who would
ever be this near?—but some
royalty hangs on
that—even in death—
won’t quite let us know him.
