The sky becomes what is added to it–
      a radio tower, a stratus cloud, a fleet of Chinese kites–

until one day, a day like today when winds gust east, then
          west, blowing hard off the lake, 

the sky becomes what is taken away,  

      a vapor trail vanished.  The absence of geese.  A gaping
      space where before there was none.

Begin, again, the slow math of loss.  Use feathers, flint,
         whatever is around,

until the sky, once more, fills with that which is offered to it–

our love-cries, curses, kaddishes, our whispers, our howls,
      our longing, our singing, our long, long, keening.

The above interview aired on the radio program Eight Forty-Eight on April 26, 2006. It details my multi-media performance “How to Catch a Falling Knife: the Illuminated Text.”

Then, quick and blue, I saw
my first bird: again and again,
beating its beauty against
the clear windows of my new home.

Same year I asked my dad for boxing gloves,
Boom Boom Mancini killed a man

with his hands. A Korean boxer in yellow trunks,
who went down twice in the twelfth and didn’t get up.

I got the gloves anyway, ruddy leather mitts
weighing a pound a piece. Georgie and I

could barely keep them aloft
as we circled each other in the basement,

an egg timer ticking away on the ping pong table.
We’d duck, bob, and duck

to boos from the stands and flying beer cups.
Lazy hooks sailed wide. Jabs died short.

Only once did I stand over Georgie,
the way I’d imagined. Blood

wormed out of his nose. His eyes fluttered shut.
I raised my gloves above my head,

then ran from the house.

]]> http://www.danielbjohnson.com/index.php/?feed=rss2&p=141 http://www.danielbjohnson.com/index.php/?p=113 http://www.danielbjohnson.com/index.php/?p=113#comments Sun, 04 Mar 2007 04:51:23 +0000 info Poems http://www.danielbjohnson.com/index.php/?p=113  
Always Watching Light
and Shadow Skinny
as a Willow Switch
are names I would choose
for the boy skipping stones
across the flooded quarry.
In high summer his hair
is milkweed silk;
thrown into a well,
his voice sinks, thins,
and rebounds,
reedy still.

Look after this child,
cowlicked and burred,
at least out of the corner
of your eye. Selah.
Let him sit late in the day
where he can’t be seen
from the house, Petty Thief
Stripping Petals from a Peony,
white as winter breath:

God is my judge. God
is not. God is my judge.
God is not.

Let petals snow on the lawn.
Let no harm, let no harm come
to the Collector of Small Animal Skulls.

what I meant: the sucked orange

is not a symbol or the deer nipping
shoots outside the missile site.

It’s not the year of the rat or the year of the snake

and the fat, yellow moon, despite what I whispered
at the top of the stairs, is only the moon.

I have no kinship with steel,
no understanding of clouds.

My family is becoming
a bucket of teeth

but numbers are more exact than words.

This table, this chair: I forgot
to describe this table, this chair.

Strike the word mother wherever you see it.

50 and 6.

Rip those pages out.

Clattering off taxi cabs, catching
the sun like ice skates,
this shower of sheet metal
is ruining tonight and its soft
accordion music. I cannot hear
the silver slap of your laugh
on the water. Pass me
the dish of butter roses,
love, sounds like something awful
and permanent. I’ll always be
your long blue bottle of sparks,
you scream, but your French
is broken and our waiter weeping.
“Girl with the Flaxen Hair” I want
the accordion to play, for you
twirling a pink cocktail
umbrella, wearing shattered
glass in your hair.