WILL HOCHMAN
Not a condition, sure
they simply call it
old skin, so Sylvia said,
a grandmother many times
as she rubbed her arm
and her flesh crinkled
as she gasped a bit,
so I should know by now,
she continued, walking calmly
by the shore of her age
her laugh said bruises and beaches
are old hat, but after tonight’s stride
it was the windless cove of her gaze,
a strange knowing,
they call it almost sleep, she said,
with torn crags and dark sand
only a dawn could love.
Not a cut or break like that time
with the lawn mower
when she didn’t know
how much hand had been lost . . .
two fingers came up bloody
forever changing the way
grasping works, accidents,
Sylvia said, are only stupid
when you think they won’t happen,
and beautifully human
when your luck
sees the healing ahead, yes
human in just knowing
we are still attached, maybe tidal
in our comings and goings, perhaps
earthy in the way two hurt
fingers touch a whole body’s pain,
yet somehow we can still make certain
that something holds on
to something more
than flesh and bone,
lost or not.
PREPOSITIONS PAINTING
LAWRENCE’S TAOS WINDOWS
Too chile hot these framed glass windows
Make mountain cliffs ache to fall before rain
Curly purple sage pigments dot the floating landscape
With nurturing figments not imagined but planted
In circulating air embracing red dirt clusters in a grasping
Of motion knowing the earth is hot, and sensing an atomic come-on
That explodes alive with molten morphing and a fire burning
below
Fusing New Mexican landscape into color’s wordless kingdom
A sunflower’s amber molds heat into gold’s tawny
truth,
A poppy’s petals become the red legend of Mable Dodge
Water rules and is the color of everything and nothing,
While turquoise tries desperately to cool Lorenzo’s flailing
Into swimming oceans of light, into rhythmic attempts
At speeds of love a heart can stroke a brush to
HYPERTEXT’S ABSOLUTE ZERO, NO RETURN
Start with zero
Arithmetically when you get
To the end of the story
O’Henry
You’ll show
Percentages perhaps
Good enough for tipping
Icebergs
Otherwise you don’t know
From nothing, not even
How zero really works
Or where it sets and hops
Bunny-rabbit cute
Between numbers and letters
With curves almost stalled
Zero Zen, four pawed
Too lost to find your empty
Self absolutely in the first place
You hop mostly moment to moment
Zero-multiplying
Koans to realize finally
How harsh facts
Can never count you home
Until you are not there
