World with No Cornerslooking for love through winter, spring, summer, fall— I find the world has no corners the sudden flash— how can I write of a bomb so long ago so far away . . . is it still burning? why did she mail it, this French postcard from the past, from a time when we were not yet lovers up late the night before our flight to Japan— again I zip and then unzip our suitcase my muse returned from vacation today, leaving me dormant seeds— I water them with ink “Something’s already come between us,” you whisper. “Yes,” I reply, “our clothes.” you, tomorrow, are moving away— for me it is as if the moon will never rise again over the endless pines unable to find just the right words, I find myself starting a doodle in my ex’s guestbook are you coming? I say as I pick up the phone— but it is just a charity, when I am in need, asking for old clothing what is the use of a fallow field? is it, as they say, the calm before the storm, the grief of an unused womb? what’s left of our sailboat’s wave disappears in the freighter’s wake shopping bags from the grocery store stacked on the kitchen table— the weight of your call saying you’re not coming the snow has retreated farther up the mountain— for now, we agree not to talk of divorce new moon . . . my son asks where, and my wife says it’s the heart that can always see it old enough now to refuse my hugs, my daughter tells me that she loves me that she always will These tanka previously appeared in the following publications: American Tanka, Atlas Poetica, Conversations in Tanka, with Amelia Fielden (Port Adelaide, Australia: Ginninderra Press, 2014), Gusts, Red Lights, Ribbons, Skylark, Solitary Plover, Spent Blossoms (the 2015 Tanka Society of America members’ anthology, edited by Claire Everett), and Tangled Hair. In addition, “Something’s already come between us” first appeared on Graceguts in a haiga with artwork by Gary LeBel. Thanks to the editors of each of these publications for giving these poems a place in the world. These poems are also available to view or download as a PDF trifold. |