Poems to nowhere

This is a small collection of poems that I wrote recently. I call them The Maps to Nowhere Poems. Some of them are inspired by Alice Through the Looking Glass.


map #28

lost it.
when i find it i
will return it to this spot.

~d.




Mapping the Moon


It was late when we met up.

You know, I had to find out for myself.

You did? What then?

How close you are, how far.

Oh, I’m still as granite. I’m a distant walk away. Up
The hill. My house overlooks a great dry lake.

I will never find you
with this mask on.
I will never find the way
in this atmosphere.
I have stood in circles all this time.
My stomach is buoyant,
I can’t keep my heart in my chest.

There is dust all over this suit
silver as fish scales. When I cry
chalk spills and puffs forth—
tiny spiders into the space outside.

These are the records of my log:
Sulfuric rock. Sulfuric rock. Leaden shards.

You never speak, you.
You hold that stuff in the pockets of your ears.
Maybe, you say.
You despise my findings.
Make a game of hiding and sneaking, I am too light
to jump at you. I can’t even find where you began.
Run.

You were a small ravine once.
You were curly and wet.
You were a mound
And I was never a mound of anything
I was silken and made out of a softer material.
I was more compost, more earth than you.
Maybe I was spider thread. Light-spun.

Ash-black boulder. A shady spot under twin monoliths.
I feel a trail behind me, I feel
that this may work, and am disillusioned
there are silences echoed back through space.

Four steps to north. We are speaking Martian.
We are afraid of our native teeth.
The moon has geographies without lines
It makes me nervous to be without forefathers,
To be mindless and a follower.


Dyad

She wishes she had the ability to become larger.
The monolith is pointing her toward herself.
She hates that direction, better to wash a hand, walk
backward, turn away from yourself, eat the fragments.

Swallow a river of arrows pointed at each other.
This makes you bigger.
Too big you can’t fit in your life.
Swallow a banner fluttering, pointed at home.

Small. She is fish eye, turtle egg.
The first map she makes is on the skin of a cloudy
mushroom. On it is written A Correspondence:

the two selves looking on opposite sides
of a dividing line. Where my hand points the other
is reflected. She is four now, she is an infinite tiny self.


The White Rabbit

It shatters first.
Mirror on hard stone, flint.
No more pretending.
Why are her thoughts so powerful?

She notices shards like arrows
slips of paper, slivers of fungus
the tiniest maps in and around her fingers
arrows pointing, Go that away.

Take a look into the infinite, no life net.
She notices the arrows are all in circles,
the grasses are filled with bird parts,
bone fragments.

It can be scary to wake up at night
The mirror against the bed, four legs,
laying each half against the other.


Map #29

Four lefts, the queen of hearts.
Four lefts, desertion.

This map is made up mostly of hills.
There is a forest here and there and a large lawn of Bermuda grass.
There are three temples in the middle:
the sun, the moon, the temple of the queen of hearts.
A silver mine in the corner,
an elephant graveyard.

The queen of hearts had no pupils when I met her.
I was in the moon
I had waited so long for her
I could taste the shrubbery after she disappeared.
Red roses, rose oil. Moths.

I love you from all the way over here
You had no business looking through that keyhole
The penguins are not for you
Brutus is not for you
You broke it again (in again?)
The springs are still missing with mutiny.




They Were Such Dumb hunks of warm fish swimming inside us

Grandmother sits smoking her PallMalls
on my green velvet chair.
Pavement between us.
My home has begun to resemble a quarry of mockingbirds
Pluck out the separate parts for display
and sing, sitting in the boughs
We look silly trying to sing
the songs of birds

After grandmother died
I dream my rivers have receded
Little claws stick
the warm innards

After you died
I made a diagram of the animals which visit me
Grouse.
Wren.
Hawk.
Crow.
Turtle.
Serpent.

Which are you Helena?
Never said you’d
come to visit
but now I know you’re here
You shuffle in when the window falls
The men smoke in the kitchen


My stomach is buoyant, I can’t keep my heart
in my chest. There is dust all over this suit.
When I cry
chalk spills and puffs forth
tiny spiders into space.
records of my log:
Sulfuric rock. Sulfuric rock. Leaden shards.

I will never find you with this mask on
this dusted surface.
I will never find my way in this atmosphere.
Without floodlights
I have stood in circles all this time.

Maybe, you say.
You despise my findings.
Make a game of hiding and sneaking, I am too light
to jump at you. I can’t even find where you began.
Run.

You were a small ravine once.
You were curly and wet.
You were a mound.

Ash-black boulder. A shady spot under twin monoliths.
I feel a trail behind me, I feel
there are silences echoed back through space.

Four steps to north.
We are speaking Martian.
We are afraid of our native teeth.
The moon has geographies without lines
It makes me nervous to be without forefathers.

The Blackening

The Blackening

It’s tricky to wake up.

When the wind stops
It’s early enough
to take my image in the mirror,
a blackening.

The sun goes, nonetheless,
like the feather back into the skin.
Light behind the clouds.

I tie my hair back
In the direction it grows against.
There’re many of these tiny observations
to break into, at the start.

I boil water for coffee
and I melt a spoon in the cup.

It’s only in the morning that I
ask to be the phoenix,
rhapsodic in her solitude,
a distilled, fiery mess.

I drink dark coffee
and watch what catches fire…
yet, nothing.
The wind quiet through the yard.

There is still too much work to do
before sublimation.

light constricts and a darkening
is expected.
Light filtered through leaves and a crow
by the window.