Excerpts from Walking Tooth & Cloud
French Connection Press, Paris 2007

THE PODIUM

The poet approaches the podium.  Once there, he bows and grabs firmly each wooden edge, like a bull by the horns—so much so that it becomes a bull’s head and horns, no longer a mere simile but the real thing.  He is in Pamplona, the crowd shouts “Trompa de lirio por las verdes ingles” (horn of the lily through green groins!).  In the ring he stumbles among crushed wax cups, hot dogs, and roses, addressing the frenzied crowd with his terror, his poems now woven into a single red cloth.  He is chased viciously around the ring tormented with imminent mockery or even worse the idea of his death.  He is soon pinned against the far wall, face to face with the bull’s nostrils which are spewing forth ash from the incinerated bodies of small children.  In an instant of blind fright the man lunges and grabs the bull by the horns, like the square, ferocious edges of a podium—where he greets the audience with his first poem called, “The Podium.”

NINE WINDOWS

A man walks out of a Cumulus flooded apple with a nine pane window painted on his impossible sternum, his torso steaming at the woody core.  You can see the nine scars of light through his bone.  He counts off the scars on each finger.  Not knowing what to do with the one finger extra, he hacks it off against the moon’s crescent blade.   The single finger is left to worm its way home through the turreted orchard, where it sits in the shade drawing clouds and apples in the grass.

THE CANDLE

On a lank and crispy winter night, in a mountain town called Waxen Springs, a man settles down to a hearty bowl of steaming yellow soup.  It is thickening as he drinks as his thoughts and the mountains around him thicken.  He soon realizes that it is not soup he spoons within him but rather a mirror of wax rapidly solidifying.  Soon he will be asleep.   His mouth is now propped open and tilted toward heaven, a small wick sprouts up between his teeth.  After dinner his wife comes in to kiss him good night, but instead lights the wick and kisses the flame.

THE SCENE IS THE END

The scene is topped with clouds and steam, blurring an archway where a pair of crossed hands emerge from a leaden egg.  I find it to be my very own, the only lead egg I’ll ever birth.  The soft metallic shell peels away like damp pages, laid round upon some neatly patterned cobblestone.  It is lit gently from within.  The handy egg is rolled to the foot of a wrought iron gate and wrings darkness through its wrought iron fingers.  The end.