Elliott

Today is Elliott's funeral.

He is twenty-years

-ten-months-

and-twenty-three

-days-old

according

to the minister who droned through the twenty-third psalm at the prayer service

last night.

I warm to myth

although it's frightening

Eighth grade,

Elliott is ADD

and Caleb, labeled

Gifted

They make an odd pair:

Elliott, 5 feet

Caleb, 6 feet 5

Elliott, adopted

Caleb, his mother's prize

The three of us drive

this highway everyday.

We pass the anti-abortion

billboard.

It's a yard ornament

in a politically active

farmer's front yard

This month

the image pasted-

up depicts

a rotted fetus

in a woman's outstretched

hand. Her nails are perfectly

painted red.

The caption reads

God knows all that you do

What was that character's name

in the Great Gatsby?

The music plays too loudly,

the corn, on either side

of the shoulderless roadway,

looms, an unbroken wall

of green. The sky scintillate.

A few clouds cast quick

shadows that run ahead of us

across the landscape.

We pass our opinions

to our kids.

Caleb scoffs at the image.

Elliott is quiet.

The music roars,

the car flashes east,

the wind sends the clouds wherever it blows them,

And then he speaks,

and the story is all cliche,
except the part when
his grandparents get political,
pound an "it's a boy"
sign in the sixteen-year-old,
rich jock's yard. Unless that's
cliche, too.

She could have aborted me.
Those who consider their lives accidental.

Baptism is language.

We're a group

of adults driving east.

Then four years pass.

Then an ice-blue dawn sky.

Then the car rises-up

like a monster

writhing from earth

and leaps into the air

and it's too late

and it's always dark

and Elliott is a little drunk

and they've all just graduated

from high school

and the minister browbeats

us, everyone one of us,

for over an hour

and the car writhes

and Myrtle couldn't stop Tom

and Elliott couldn't stop Myrtle

and he was born

and now he's dead

and today is his funeral

in a church the shape of Noah's Ark

Writing Exercise

What type of cage

will you build for it

The compost

The orphanage

Aperture

Or a scabiosa?

The mourning bride

The mournful widow

The pincushion flower.

Have them bring their own

and cut them up.

Put the tissue-like

petals in a box.

See what you get,

not what's right

in front of you.

What else is there

What else can we do

What if we said this:

The longer you write,

the quicker you are

to detect your own bullshit.

The Tram Dream

Climbing over people

at several hundred feet

the fair-like atmosphere

and lederhosen

the woman next to me

has a rubber-band

stretched around

her head

she's wearing an operating-

room mask

she complains

that the grass

needs mowing

and she points

"See," she says,

"a shame"

so I look

it's too far down

and I see something

like the Royal Gorge

through the space between

the wooden-plank deck

of a suspension

bridge

"Don't worry,"

you say. You

are always

saying that

bird-like, loud.

When I rented

the place, and

called out,

looked up,

waved too

Shoulder-blades

black hair

white,

round head

wing-span

talons

beak__

black

white tail-

feathers

blue sky

wing-span

wooden bench

arms stretched

its length

blue sky

"Don't worry

you can fly."

Dream-sense

The first meaning for bury 

in this dictionary

is "to hide underground"

In the store

at the mall,

I try to buy chicken.

Drove the car

to the black guys house,

inside his friend 

keeps telling him

I am going to get 

a bra-job,

but he means 

"boob-job"

He said this

and pinched 

my nipple.

Look,

missing, 

being late,

mistaken,

driving off

with the keys

you needed,

or worried 

that you had,

the store 

was closed.

We both knew

it would be.   

In Even Measure

In Even Measure

The sun rises

the moon sets

in even measure

the grass is brown

the grass  is green

in even measure

you press violence

into my open palm

source energy

tenderness

in even measure 

poem by Denise C. Banker

All one thing

A field sloped 

to form a gully

along bottom land;

water gathered 

in spring,

wild poppies,

red and orange, 

clotted in among shy-green

blades of buffalo grass.

Life maintained the mare

there, or so we thought,

confined, as we are 

in our minds,

and we delighted

somewhere deeper.

At one time 

horses crowded

a field 

Presence leapt

and ran; nudged

and hid. 

Pranced alone,

too, and bucked

at branches, 

wild in the wind.

And we saw 

all that we saw 

was us. 

And, grimly, we 

kept moving 

in our direction

along the indifferent 

footpath. 

Poem By Denise C. Banker: After the Funeral

After the Funeral

Grace says to Sarah:

Who would have believed

she'd stand there alone

(for too long a time)

to hug every guest

(they formed a long line)

and not notice the pervert

who paused there three times.

poem by Denise C. Banker

In the Produce Aisle

a woman's grapes,

unbeknownst to her, 

kerplunk

through the wire squares

of her grocery basket,

and the wobbly wheels 

of the cart a man pushes

up behind her

crush them,

as though deliberate. 

This wouldn't happen

with plums and peaches

too big to slip between

the cage-like, 

crisscross bindings. 

Denise Banker

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