Sitting with my daughter and her iPad, we
fill in boxes that pose questions about
Greek Civilization. Art = statues, writing=
Plato, upper classes made laws, were
citizens, slaves did what they were told to
do. Box after box on the screen, covering
500 BC to 146 BC, until Rome conquers
Athens. Less than memorization, we cut and
paste words from other screens into hers. I
imagine Socrates in the agora, watching us,
wondering what happened, how we stopped
interrogating the machine, our flesh fingers,
puppets, moved to reduce everything to this.
Camp Fire California 2018
all the air isn’t air
ashes, dusty bones, charred remains
houses gone in flames
owners up with wind
Paradise lost
all the air isn’t air
hangs like fog, toxic smog
i can’t see the bridge, they say
san franciscans miles away
Paradise lost
all the air isn’t air
masks they wear masks
white covered faces after
the climate changed
Paradise lost
all the air isn’t air
endless clicking on screens
will the forecast change?
smoke only smoke
Paradise lost
Before Bedroom Light
I wake before light
before bits of sun streak
under shades, memory whole
in this place, this silence
I should thank you more
for life shared
where diapers once were
pitter-patter of feet
us tucked together in
warm white sheets
Hiroshima
smudges, they became smudges, places where people
used to stand, sit, exist, before the blast, easier to
see shadows than the melted faces, missing eyes
enola gay, little boy, happy nursery rhyme in the sky
where men dropped the end of life, bulbous war container
children in the death zone like charcoal burned with no grill
truman’s august angst, questions like grant’s total war to
conclude inferno, force bushido to surrender their young kamikaze
suicide desperation, a nation’s emperor unwilling to stop suffering
until finished, after nagasaki, inception of nuclear era
destruction, non-fiction, we know, we know, but better
to kiss strangers in streets than think of erasing future’s time
Pontiac
my daughter already talks about the
car she wants an Audi, new, shiny
that her friends will admire like
her iPhone with apps that take
wrinkles out of faces in photos
I tell her about my maroon
dented station wagon, Pontiac
1986 Michigan-made to barely
last past puberty
I parked it with pride
my piece of remembering
that life is unreliable
always ready to
start then stop
blind to history my daughter
will never know the struggle of
driving a car that quit, gave up
for her they don’t exist
like rotary phones
like an indigenous name
turned into painted steel
Paraguayan Heaven
Sitting shotgun in a truck, 3 of us squeezed in the front (Cayo, Ernesto, Me), no seat belts, sipping yerba mate. I’m speaking Spanish, asking questions about recycling plastic and filtering water with chlorine. Cayo drives, points his finger up at the windshield, motioning to each vehicle we pass on the two lane Caazapa highway. Yvaga, he says, cielo, heaven. That’s where you will go when you die, his finger silently communicates. Watching this ritual I see the other drivers smiling at us, their fingers also pointing upward, telling us the same thing.
Cayo asks me about California. The Paraguayan campo has no cable TV, no CNN, no movie theaters. He doesn’t question me about celebrities or our president, he asks about the land, trees, animals, what the air smells like, feels like. I tell him about non-native eucalyptus trees, how they suck water out of the earth, take nourishment away from other plants. He understands. The conversation is easy, like the cumulus clouds that float like cotton above us.
Ernesto speaks and at first I think I comprehend, the cadence sounds the same, but then I’m lost in a time before Spanish, before South American roads. I close my eyes for a few seconds, a lightness takes over. I’m hearing a Guarani language not of an evangelizing church or of plundering capitalism, but of a people, a community. A few minutes later we slow down, pick up a hitchhiker, normal in this part of Paraguay. I see the guy sitting in the truck bed, a large heavy sack between his legs. A man on a journey, we both watch the road, I look out the front, he looks out the back.
When the Roses at 7-Eleven Spoke
We sit in this white bucket, usually once a year to
rest on the counter near lottery tickets and cash
register. In warm water, spayed, our thorns are gone,
left somewhere in Ecuador, swept off the floor,
before they packed us tight to fly far away, then taken
in trucks all over paved roads into rectangular buildings
where fluorescent lights are always on. We watch them
buy beer, cigarettes, some stare at us in wonder that we
have petals, red color, were once alive. They touch,
fondle, rustle our leaves, remembering a moment
with us, that wasn’t us. Others grab us, a dozen at a time,
the number of true love, when money doesn’t matter at all.
Days go by and we start to droop, no one smiles anymore,
wilted, jilted, until one day, they just throw us away.
When The Glass Water Bottle Spoke
I see all the plastic bottles filled and shiny,
pasted labels over clear water within. I’ve
never been jealous of that crinkle sound,
sad little ache after the last drop is gone.
Always wondered what disposable meant,
dented, crushed, twisted, one on top of the
next, in bins, trashcans, on streets. Others
tossed off boats, or tide taken away from sand
into sea. Gulped by curious pelicans hungry
for more than digestive death.
Me, I like lips that touch my rim again and
again, tender sips when I’m brimming with cool
life-giving liquid. But I’m a romantic, I believe
in everlasting love, that you will want me forever.
21st Century Moon
It only keeps track of everything.
Goes by many names: ai, alexa,
amazon, fitbit, iphone, social media,
gps. Records electronic visits,
transactions, steps, sleep, calories
burned.
Dazzled, we are, to attach
ourselves to these portable pieces
of cyborg technology.
We ache deep down for robotic
efficiency, perfection like push ups
and botox injections, owned by the
machine, until we are never lost,
never found, only controlled by
predestined patterns moving our
minds this way and that, a 21st century
mechanical moon making our waves.
Girl Reads Civil War Poem
This poem is called Maggots,
Samantha stands in front of the
classroom with a sly smile. Her
piece inspired by historic conflict,
skips Gettysburg, Antietam, and
all the words of war. No rebel yell,
or regiments, she leaves nurse
descriptions and widow tears for
other poems to divulge. Starts
at the end, she speaks her black
beginning, maggots chewing,
spewing flesh of men without faces,
corpses all in their places for the feast.
She maintains throughout, that nature
intended such death, that it was all
meant to be. Not for North or South,
but for the legless larva to probe
darkness, with their bloody glee.
Daniel W. Polk 