La Puerta

Close the door, she says. We close it, and stand outside, scrunching against the walls
to get nearer. The bullfrogs along the Rio Grande turn off the blues music and go silent.
Close the door, she whispers again, and we all hear her with our ears pressed to the wall.
We respect her privacy as we jostle for the peephole, in this dream of a world where wishes,
though unobserved, have meaning.
posted by Adam at 9:38 AM [edit]

Mike’s Subdivision

Mike, when you subdivided
it was both tragic and frightening.
I liked you better whole, the way
you used to hold a guitar though not
knowing how to play. I understand that
sometimes it is easier to subdivide than to say
goodbye, but I think two is too many Mikes, Mike.
On a surfboard in the sea one of you is convinced that
all we want from life is party. In a bathroom in someone
else’s house one of you is rifling through the medicine cabinet,
looking for the waves. What you find when you close the door
is simply a mirror, and you don’t need me to tell you what mirrors
show us when we are at our weakest, our most rabid, or are simply
subdividing. Mike, I have shaped this poem to the best of my ability like
a staircase, in the hopes that you will climb up, and find there above the title a
way to change it. I am giving you another chance in the way that I know how.
Maybe you knew how to play the guitar all along. Who am I to guess? And maybe
you know how to sing. None of that matters, though, unless you climb, and unless you
undo your subdivision. Before the changes become permanent. Before the Mike on the
surfboard playing danger, or the Mike in the tile bathroom with the bottles, starts to drown.

posted by Adam at 8:48 PM [edit]

Amada Acres

Who made me so lucky? Who gave me
this year, to enjoy slowly like a butterscotch
dissolving on the tongue?

Colin showed me what it is to love land,
and then South Texas showed me what it is
to need it.

These beloved acres are made firm by the passage
of trucks and tires and a thousand words
that were not understood in Washington, nor by me

as they flew out the windows of passing traffic. Who
gave me these messenger wings, which let me fly freely
from the full refrigerators of declining cities

to the aging silence of Rio Grande skies?
In the browning grass I look for you and do not find.
In the tower of my luck I look for you and do not find.

posted by Adam at 8:41 PM [edit]