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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

*Common Name: European Starling