en titled

Possible next book titles!

My favorites in no particular order

Weeds in a Changing World

Reusing Old Graves

Waterproofing Your Child

People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How

  They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting

  Bystanders and What to Do About It

away

Miranda Lake

I'm off for a few days to write, visit, walk by some water,

look at my quote un quote manuscript, clear out a bit.

Here's a poem by Rusty Morrison from her book,

The True Keeps Calm Biding Its Story, which uses

the language of the telegraph -- as in "stop" at 

the end of a line -- as a kind of structure for 

connection or maybe missed connections. 

I've just started to read it.

The effect is disarming, somewhat annoying as I imagine

is the intention. She just won an award from the academy

of american poets. The book is published by a press I

admire, Ahsahta, which makes really lovely books.

I think I'll add this to my book bag. 

(Of course blogger screws up line breaks in poems 

like this.)

please advise stop

like water-spiders on a pond the hours pass overhead stop

with each perfected dexterity I thin the surface that carries me stop

traces of an otherwise indiscernible consensus collect under my fingernails please

his face isn't lost to me but traveling now and mostly untended stop

hereafter wil I apply rules and avoid content stop

braid wildflower stems peeled of petals stop

scrub gently with a brush to relieve us of the historical present please

listen for the entire circumference of the screen door's arc but hear only it slap stop

even incoherent babbling is usually phonetically accurate please advise

check check check it

A collaboration up at

qarrtsiluni

missing

photo by Ellen Kooi

Seeing Whales

You can go blind, waiting

Unbelievable quiet

except for their

soundings

Moving the sea around

Unbelievable quiet inside you, as they change

the face of water

The only other time I felt this still was watching Leif shoot up when

we were twelve

Sunlight all over his face

breaking

the surface of something

I couldn't see

You can wait your

whole life

*

The Himalayas are on the move, appearing and disappearing in the

snow in the Himalayas

Mahler

begins to fill

the half-dead auditorium

giant step by

giant step

The Colorado

The Snake

The Salmon

My grandfather walks across the front porch

spotted with cancer, smoking

a black cigar

The whales fold themselves back and back inside the long hallways of

salt

You have to stare back at the salt

the sliding mirrors

all day

just to see something

maybe

for the last time

*

By now they are asleep

some asleep 

on the bottom of the world

sucking the world in

and blowing it out

in wave-

lengths

Radiant ghosts

Leif laid his head back on a pillow and waited for all the blood inside him

to flush down

a hole

After seeing whales what do you see?

The hills behind the freeway

power lines

green, green

grass

the green sea

-Matthew Dickman