bearing time

slogging through mud in hip boots
baby takes time, the crush of flesh
against flesh, nurse clucking at his resistance
to the pulsing insistence of vaginal walls
and the cold bright world he will meet
when his face breeches her hips
and tired flesh ejects him

it grows at night when no one watches,
slips from your head, micro by micro
revealing shades of red and blond,
each new shaft in morning light
displays a millimeter of shine
so incremental no one comments
oh my, your hair is longer

at the dmv, latitudes and longitudes,
arrows on signs, doors and desks
point and lead and direct and insist
this way and that way and over yonder
till you have passed the same redhead worker
three times in one afternoon and
still not renewed your license

thick like family secrets or ketchup
dried on the dashboard, your words
slow-poured, and me savoring
a fresh sense of heart
check my email one two three
times daily, but words come
in their own time, when you press send

Lake Maiden

Water ripples along mud shoulders
where ice binds two small islands into glistening
nipples. Her marshy bottom fills with cast-off shells
shaped in an unseen mosaic. Rain melodies
dance in divots—winter’s frenzy
whips dirty lace along her saw-grass hem
where toads sink deep in her fertile belly
for a long sleep. The mystery is always
whether this is the last season or whether,
when winter passes, she will press her toes
against the far shore, arch her back,
deliver tadpoles, ducklings, spring.

Unsent Letter To the Man Who Raped and Killed Her
for Jessica

Had I lain panting while you bloodied your way
into the world, I would easily forget your trespass
as you latched to nipple and nursed at swollen breasts.
Impossible to fathom what wrenched your baby fingers
into these callous hands; which wretched moment
fused your heart and head into conspirators of horror.
Easily forgotten, the violence wrought upon vagina
when you come as babies do. Incomprehensible,
your replication of that destruction as a grown man.
How could you bestow such rage on any child?

Easy to Miss the Symbiotic Dance

His bark is tough
enough to withstand wind,
though it may succumb
to boring insects
and water creeping in.

Her reputation is invasive
as she creeps
up the stalwart trunk,
expanding her green reach
toward his welcoming limbs.

Ivy penetrates fir in ragged
notches,each protecting other
in what some perceive a strangle-
hold. Others call it love.

Years Blow By

Monday, poolside, pre-dawn,
2003. Broken straps of the pool chair
slap the deck beneath me. Engines rumble,
lugging Mercury across rough sea.
Wind shears the surface of the pool
spraying the fiery-eyed Cyclops
curled in the palm of each early riser.
I scan for evidence of the sun
rising, find only miles of dark sea.
Wind lashes my hair in strands of
torn sails. Smoke wafts toward

Saturday morning, early,
a Chevy pick-up, 1969. Jimmy and I
curled in sleeping bags and old coats,
slam against the steel bed of the truck
as dad rumbles along Weyerhauser roads
spotting for buck to feed us through winter.
I scan for signs we are headed home,
find only a sea of evergreens
cut in wide swaths by perilous gravel roads.
Dad sucks Benson-Hedges, flicks his ash
out the window. Jimmy and I
hunker down for the long haul.

April is National Poety Month

so i am taking part in a challenge to post a poem every day. To see how I live up to that challenge, stay tuned.

To read more about Saenz' work:
Benjamin Alire Saenz

Grave Stone

A bowl of rocks, a bird of stone.
Gray granite heavy and flightless
like the flies whose wings my brother pulled
before singeing them black with sun-
light shone through glass.
When you look close, things burn.

Rock forms to fingers for digging
or killing: stones won't tell.
A half-rock the size of a chicken
heart heavy in the hand.
I picked it up in Dachau: a token
dark as blood.

M & M Poem

Pot Watchers
for Nils

women watch
pots mirror
vessels yield
lush light

How to Do Friendship

Build a fire and let it heat
the room. Invite one you must know
inside. Walk loose, limbs dangling
like limp piccolos with nothing to do
but whistle the tune that you, wise child,
once knew by heart. Sing
flames that singe and wither.
Be unafraid of intensity—glow
little ember, flicker and grow.
Give yourself space to be fierce
and thunderous. Be dark as you must.

Stomp.

Storm.

Splash in murky puddles.
Listen to the hiss of water
tossed on lost dreams, blackened
edges where others fail to consume your offering.

Stand tall, shake the ash from your wings.
Fold shoulders back until blades clash
like swords slicing at armor you wore
to protect heart: its seeds, its hulls.
The charred remains help separate destiny
from twirling whimsy. Breathe soft
and slow. The embers of every blaze
you have endured and every torch
you will ever light smolders within.

Strike your eyes in hers.

Burn.

Two Girls 4 and 6 Twirling in the Park

I stood under the hundred year oak
watching little girl bodies intersect
at the belly where one lay across the other
at right angles on the doughnut-shaped swing
and a young man—clearly not their father—
spun them round and round.

I got dizzy watching
in the warm afternoon wind,
worried what to say, not knowing
any of them-- just gaping
like some voyeur, sordid and obsessed
with the relentless need

to stare and the nudge of something
in my gut. Maybe it was
how his hands moved so quickly
to spin them; the little one's cries
rising in near delirium, clamoring
for him to stop while he kept on

twirling them round
and round and round
on the city park's Big O
tire swing until they melted
into tender, mewing kittens
willing to be held.


"Two Girls 4 and 6 Twirling in the Park" first appeared in Green Monsters on Red Moons.

You Do Not (de-doo-dop)
Need Her

Go ahead, resist her
de-doo-dop
incandescent lines and taunting
sensibilities. Each awkward angle
relinquishes proportion, tempts
distortion where she dangles
in your periphery. Cage your
dismissal. Pretend
she is invisible when the breeze
ripples and your tie loosens
chokehold, it is not
de-doo-dop
her
and when the wind messes
your silver tresses capped closed
you can bet she’s not-got wicked fingers
tangled there and her tongue isn’t
slipping lobe to lobe, circumnavigating
the northern hemisphere
of the globe you so-tried
to fence from view.

You can lock it up
chalk it up or blame
it on the arrogant wild-eyed
minx who refused to cop a trade for someday
antics and cheap trinkets. She wants
it, flaunts it; the thrilling filling haunting
every single solitary pulsing
molecule— each cell
swirling, twirling
reflections multiplied and divided
in dazzling
de-doo—dop
dance of your prancing
duality. Take her
face in cupped palms,
succumb to breasts pressed
close against the child-shamed chest
float
sink
swim
in the essence you struggle
to repress. Go ahead,
resist—

You don’t really want her
to be your
de-doo-dop
mirror anyway.

Do you?

Calculated Response
for Gary Stogsdill

What first irked Frege about calculation
described as aggregative mechanical thought
is that such conjecture is wasteful,
fraught with temptation toward hasty admiration
for what we think we know we know.

Do laws exist to suit the objects
about which they are thought? Mechanical speech,
he might assert, is about as thoughtful
as a parrot whistling a skirt. Calculation
equals aggregative mechanical thought?
Gottlob Frege: Definitely not.

Skipping Stones

A rock will call you, its color catching your eye,
the weight or shape offering rightness in your hand
as you bow to pluck it from its settled place.
Texture, smooth or rough,
forms against you in an act of solidarity.

A word will strike you, the rhythm, or syntax
from tongue to ear, or pen to eye, as familiar
as old friends who know one another's cadence.
The context reveals the connection
between intimate and unfeeling
in its familiar molecular docking.

Pebbles jingle in pockets and words in minds.
Pick a stone that fits your palm well. Carry it
in your pocket like champion marbles; hard-won
against pocked cat's eyes and battered steelies.
Skip a word across smooth water.
Notice how many times it taps the surface
as it carries you, the way it pulses like a metronome
to keep time with your clamoring heart.

surviving extremes


should not (i know) venture here
and yet (rovers must be prepared)

i streak across time and space
(for the unexpected) encounter

(nature is) what i feel
(an arbitrary teacher)

(to prevent hypothermia) your skin
screams (strip naked) touch me

across the space (find a protected area)
where minds drift (and lie close together)

a dangerous course (to maintain integrity
of the body) permit (and ensure) hands

head and heart (sustained
warmth) unfettered flight.

Mouthwatering


She dances
like rain falling.

He drops his umbrella
and catches her
on his tongue.

"Mouthwatering" first appeared in Erotic Readers Association in 2004.

Challenging Gottlob Frege's Notion of One

…if we were to say 'a means a number,' this would be open to the same objection as the definition 'one is a thing.'… a does not mean some one definite number which can be specified…With one, however, the position is essentially different.

The problem with ‘it takes a village’
is that it did not take one to create a child,
and while one benefits from positive factors
in the family, the exponential is not true
in the personal: a mother is not the same
as the mother, as the one mother
one had when one first had a mother.
(One mother plus a mother) minus one mother
does not equal the mother.

Any child can do this math.

Brazen Crow at Rosario

on the white white plank
a black crow waits
his cloud aura
puffed up proud
against blue blue sky

a black crow walks
the plank
chattering at sailboats
trying to fly

black crow you caw so
much mess
cook frightens you off