circus day

Turkish women watch their children play
as they talk away the waning day.
Men unfurl the tent, its red and white
stripes speaking of a simpler age.

A boy, hat turned to its side, kicks a ball
up and down the left and right sides
of a mown park. The innocent clinks
of the hammers nailing pitons, spikes

into the moist turf, eight-foot poles with spikes
like spines supporting the scaly skin
of a maker of childhood fantasies, like dragons
shirtless men carry large loads.

Women shake their hips, suspending hula hoops
as kids cycle loops around the park.
The trucks, flatbed, stage their production,
a celebration of childhood memories.

An elderly man lunches in the shade
watching life progress as his waves
from the campers step strong men
who lug huge loads to and fro.

One of their husbands arrives, come from work
and sits amid the six women, legs akimbo,
joining his family in the afternoon
around tea time.

The circus family emerges from a camper,
the young children scampering down the makeshift
steps, as one young mother changes shifts with another
shouting an order to her man and chastising her young son

and her own lack of chastity, and as the afternoon
winds on they launch a motor revving.
One kid raises a red flag as her siblings run
about, a lone soccer ball between them.

The Turkish mothers, the German mothers --
all stay at home as the men go to work alone
or in groups for the laboring class,
trying to cover the costs of the burgeoning EU.

alto adige

Life moves at its own pace
or rather stands completely still
in a stone house high on a hill.

As tiny autos wind their way
switching back and forth across
the fields grow wild and forest with moss.

Wildblumen wave in whiskers
of grassy wheat curling back
toward the hilly expanse from wind

men mistrust the gusts
clip drying clothes to lines
the only straight segment anywhere.

The roads as lined with walls of stone
along tome stretches one alone
can pass to cross the stony bridge

the brook passes rushing beneath
as Italians in their daily way
pass us without pause or care.

We are truly visitors here,
but then why oh tell me why
does it feel so much like home?

ex

After twelve years apart
we're reunifying our lives

You have another lover,
and I'm bringing my wife

The party will be us two
singular and duly appointed

In our roles as the family head
we grasp tightly the reigns

Trying to arrange these strange
encounters in the fantasy of void

Without witness to our recollections
lest they be both suspect and annoyed.

early retirement

Today my father
would have turned
sixty-five, reached

that career pinnacle
a well-earned
retirement

instead he chose
between a nicotine
forefinger and thumb

hitched an early out
a buyout on his
contractual obligations.

all that life's lived
all the wisdom
concealed in his tight lips

could not reveal
the will to live
beyond his rustic roots

in Carolina's fields
strewn with tobacco
the barns drying

the filtered taste
of warm smoke
years of life wasted.

I still occasionally
light up myself;
I'm not so bright.

my colleagues / the sun's dawn

my colleagues at school
place distance between us,
seeking to bury axes

in my hatchback commute
hunchback from a packed
backpack and a gym bag

filled at the library,
late night research for
last-minute assignments.

In my age summoning the size
of stamina for night after
all-nighter bleats my eyes

making me a B-student
across the multitude
of disciplines invented

to spread my mind against
to jam with into the night
dance up the sun's dawn.

raven mad

that same dead bird
back two days ago
sat staring up at me

with a lone eye
cartilage missing ripped
from its flapping abdomen.

Have I mentioned
I've passed on over
passed now beyond my own mind

Have I noted
that infinitely singular
sensation that

loneliness of intellect
that moment before sunset
when death comes to collect

back taxes to that day
when you flow in
down into your mother's arms.

He approaches with piqued interest.

may day

a day of many sirens
buses crashing
into brick walls

passing one another
on the road, dialogues
across dotted lines,

a day of communiques
to long-since seen
friends and family.

these days linger on
beyond the walls
of sleep, beyond

the satin of sheets
against which and
sandwiched by their

where is castro
on these once
celebrated days?

raul has certainly
wrested full grasp
while fidel rests

in peace.