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fettuccine all‘uovo No94 (the carbonara poem)

our pasts lay desiccated
tangled pasta nests
in glassine windows

waiting to be saline,
salient, pliable grist

as coal miners we emerge from black dust;
you add the rendered events

rough-cut jowl
and the pecorino romano
of umami’s imperfect memory

and make fat silk threads

- previously published in in Rob McLennan's Tuesday's Poem Series (16 June 2021)
Journey to Xishuangbanna

the old country stashes swamps in the far southwest
breezes are claggy, sweetly miasmic
jungle sweat drags out the dawn
sallow orb: flicker on
a cacophony of shrieks and chitters

pedestrians crack peanuts at the roadside
dancing speckles cast in the understory
leafcutter ants on a mission for the holy seven
firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, tea
fodder for sex, sorcery and seasons

humvees bound for Rangoon steamroll through
black market betel and china white
a propaganda party
they brave the Mekong on braided rafts
while fisher girls leap in and out of catfish form

stalks protrude from the marsh at night
thirty stories tall and turgid
carved-out condos in the purple landscape
iridescent windows, polka-dotted eels
they reel me into the deep

when summer monsoons bathe my skin
devour sinew, then bone
the city submerges its name
returns me to primordium
until time to congeal again


- previously published in Arc (95, Summer 2021)

Stump

branches with inflamed apples
sag over the backyard fence

I leave a metal pail beside your shoes
one week later still

a folded ladder
buried in red rot

I sift through the tree for answers
aphids, fire ants, no fruit


I bite midway into a kiss
your slug of tongue

the parting scarcely saved
by a thin spit trail


this for three more years

until a bear discovers our unkempt garden
mauls our flea-bitten dog

the city forces us to chop down the tree
we pass the hatchet back and forth



- previously published in Grain (47.3, Spring 2020)


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