Somewhere between
unlatching the freezer door
and pushing past the peas
for a frozen pop,
she is a stone skipping
across a frozen pond,
searching the vibratos
of burning logs
for her lover.
For Hana
Gavin W Sisk
.
.
Thaw
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Tag Archives: poems
Richard
March on. Join bravely. Let us to it pell mell
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.
Such are fuses:
bright, but shorter than than their aim
to chinks in shells in tubes in turrets,
mistaken for wombs, stirruped
for birthing shoulder blades
to fall and plow vermilion fields.
Hunch-backed madman,
you knew they’d raise you from the dead.
Flags and faith blow all ways
and men are easy to aim.
King, we bury you.
Yet, tomorrow you’ll roll and rise again.
Gavin W Sisk
Landings
When I was ten,
my mother changed my name.
Nothing improved.
She changed it back.
Could you confuse a crow
by conferring knowledge
of its crowness
unto itself?
Would it see its tail
for the first time
and question flight,
thus falling to a gutter
with no plan,
nor fare for the bus—
so hobbling to
a storm drain
to ask the alligators
how they get along?
Would it wonder if its
pinions should be crooked
into fingers
for smoking cigarettes,
and its beak smashed
into lips
for arguing politics?
Should a boy
hatch black down from
his flannelled breast,
tuck his feet to his belly
and caw
when his mother
kicks him from the porch;
then genuflect, confused,
to black murders
tossed in winding arcs?
Would he flutter to a
rose window
to ask the angels
how they get along;
surrender cap guns
and chocolate cake
for a barn-beam nest
out of the rain?
Or remember his feet,
where he left his bike,
and ride off to the park?
Gavin W Sisk
Crossing Lines
Father drove us from Spokane to Coeur d’ Alene
for a summer picnic by the lake when I was six.
At Idaho I wondered, waited, for the fat map line
the nuns carved in chalk from Canada to Oregon,
Would the brown scrub turn green, and blisters
of basalt lie down suddenly and turn to parks
with swing sets, shaded pools and apple trees?
None of that as the sun hauled us along.
But none the worse as we rode home late under
a water-colored sky, our happiness spilling out
the car’s windows like smoke from Dad’s cigar.
And now, no less sweet than an orchard breeze
sweeping through the grass on his grave.
Gavin W Sisk
Jan. 2021
Raising Rain
I think a lot about
who might call me at night,
that it might be a woman I know,
crying.
And it could be about the thing
I cry about too,
or one of the things.
Then I might tell her, I’m so sorry.
That kind of happened to me.
It’s so unfair.
He needs his balls kicked into
his empty head!
(Perhaps I’d promise to do just that.)
I’d turn the TV off
and stretch across the couch,
brush the cat and the cracker crumbs
from my sweater and imagine her
sitting on the floor in her kitchen,
knees pulled to her chin,
tear-damp fingers winding her
long brown hair into coils.
I’d empathize, I get it,
some people are so cruel!
This is what to do.
Life is about this.
Love is about this.
Survival is about this.
Tomorrow is…
(Tomorrow is another day:
the silly phrase I chant
before my eyes unshut at night,
driving home on the wet highway,
after counting,
one thousand one,
one thousand two,
one thousand three,
one thousand…
for however many seconds
I dare to measure my temptation.
But that’s between the car and me.)
Or some other woman would call:
the taller one with black hair and
the small chin that quivers
when things go wrong.
Maybe instead of the floor
she’d be sitting on a cold park bench,
but not too far from
a softball game or family picnic,
somewhere that’s safe.
And I’d check. Do you feel safe?
How are your kids handling it?
I’d ask lots of questions.
I always mean well.
There would be my own story too,
my libretto,
maybe from The Tales of Hoffman:
“Le temps fuit et sans retour,
Emporte nos tendresses.”
Or maybe not.
Librettos seem empty without their
scores, and I can’t speak French or sing.
Instead, I’d demure, I don’t get all this.
(I don’t!)
Life is unfair.
I don’t know what to do.
I’m so depressed.
Her: I understand.
That’s so sad. Tell me more.
That shouldn’t happen
to such a nice man as you.
You deserve better!
Do you need me?
(Yes, I’m leaving out one woman,
and she has left out me.
It was about telephones.
Her knees to her chin, mine to mine,
an end to time.
Where Hoffman fits:
“Time runs on and comes no more,
It goes with our caresses.”
Maybe it was about something else.)
For my mother’s funeral,
my sister hired a cantor:
lissome, handsome,
yet demure.
From a respectful distance he sang all
the hymns I knew as a child.
A bit of alter light showed
his simple white shirt,
gray pants and black shoes.
No tie.
No accompanist.
Only clear round Latin notes
raising rain to the clouds.
I could be a cantor.
I should lose some weight
and learn to sing,
but I have a nice white oxford shirt
with a button-down collar.
I’d be confident but humble.
And I’d sing the old hymns
with my eyes closed,
softly finger-tapping time against my leg:
one thousand one,
one thousand two.
I know the right distances
to stand from the alter:
close for parishioners,
a little farther for clergy,
the choir loft for a bishop.
I’d sing for souls and karma and beauty,
and for cash.
I’d sing for my own soul too,
if I ever change my mind about it—
ripe and veined enough with sins
for any grateful God to pick.
One evening, maybe, a woman will call
who isn’t crying
(isn’t fooled),
to parlay less-fragile vows.
I’ll ask her to wait on the highway
under a light,
on the soft shoulder
at milepost nine.
She’ll see the headlights
drifting in the lane,
directed by an eyes-shut crazy man
counting,
one thousand one,
one thousand two,
one thousand three,
one thousand four,
and she’ll understand why.
Because it will feel so good
when I stop.
Gavin W Sisk
Dec. 2020
Two Crows
Two crows on a fence,
disciples, still as iron ornaments,
beaks locked open and raised in prayer
for Godot to come and pare away the sun,
waiting still and matte for the blue evening.
Will he come?
And will the cat wake up,
slit focus amber eyes and stretch,
wonder if desiccated kibbles are better still
than the trouble with instinct, feathers,
beaks and dust on a dead lawn?
Gavin W Sisk
Dec., 2020
Jetsam
They live in two-sided
boxes,
play checkers on
one square.
Speak to themselves,
tongueless but
undoubtable.
Lie anyway,
lay anyhow.
On seafloors,
are sunken but
undrownable.
Who drowns anyway
when there is so much
more
to lose?
Gavin W Sisk
Nov. 2020
Entropy
We are amazing apes:
evolved but alone.
And it is only we
who burn the jungle
in our womb;
slip on the ashes
and fail to learn.
Gavin W Sisk
Nov. 2020
The Patient
When I am late,
find me held to a vine,
hoarding joy in peace,
to be expelled
and timed
into tears to toast
what I have missed—
you,
not knowing
I’ve not missed it yet
while I am blessed
within you.
Resting now,
souvenired with prayers,
declining firmaments
your eyes might draw
in dreams:
designs
not offered to me yet.
Gavin W Sisk
Sept, 2020
The Locust Tree
In a corner of our yard
lived an old black locust,
a thick, unclimbable beanstalk
I never remember as pretty.
Beneath a neighbor’s maple tree
I could lie on my back
and feel my ten-year-old life
working, breathing.
Sweeping my arms up
through the cool grass,
up above my head:
inhale, I was alive;
down to my side,
exhale, I was dead;
sweeping them up again,
I was still alive.
Nothing lived under the locust:
not gardens,
not grass,
just a dry play-field of
dead thorny branches
and tiny, dirty, yellow leaves,
trained pitilessly
on companies of toy soldiers
ranging for fights—
detritus, then,
raked weekends into cemeteries
for green plastic men
who might have gladly
raised their arms,
surrendering
beneath a maple tree.
Gavin W Sisk
September 2020
Deviations Toward Normal 