On Hating Superman

How I wish your respite’s rush had failed
as your fallout’s arc sweeps
like the sweaty arm of one drunk
along knife-scarred oak,
clearing the way through pint and shot
for the flannel-cloaked back of another,

then drives like a curve of horn
through best bone, gild and blossom
yielding like the ground along a slipping fault
while saucers smash and teacups
shed their curves like leaves.

But worse than breaking, the demolition
clouds settling like snow around your victory,
is the cheer the watchers raise,
celebration echoing along a crater of collateral.

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After the Assembly

Whatever the peril was, whatever
the glory, I’d rather be finished,
to turn away even
from the accolades,
to bathe instead
in dispersal and shawarma,
to make believe the work is done,
the next adventure infinitely deferred.

Liner Note

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Ladyhawke

An hour too early, a pattern
of waking thrown back
for the sake of one gamble:

that radio and protocol
might connect our separate sixes.
One arm out from under

patchwork and percale,
absent the lift of lamp
or dawn, thumb nestles

screen while half the world
ahead your day begins to wane.
Intersection narrow as a nail,

as a note, as a blade,
as a page viewed on edge –
words on each face

connate but untouching,
looking out at antipodal aspects –
in sentences at most we say

good morning, good night,
until waking takes one of us,
sleep the other.

Liner note

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The Trainer and the Bride

I want water hauled in wood,
stone stairs, a choice
between sticks and floor, to bloody
knuckles knowing
I could punch my way from a coffin.

I want cruel tutelage,
vendetta and a yellow tracksuit.

In the loneliness of my side,
in the wake of broken oaths,
I want to hear the bamboo fill
and empty at the last
look across the snow,
to be a lioness, to always win
the fight and call him mine.

(Bang, bang.)

On the striped green strip
between window and weights,
while the trainer counts to five and back,
I lift hips and hold, grit against serrated turf.
Given the choice between delivery
and death, I think, I’d choose to die.

 

Liner note

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Sonnet for Madmartigan

A motley-comfort stew of film cliché,
Heroic jackass, rogue, an Iron Age Han
Ready to be redeemed: Madmartigan.
From first unwashed appearance, hanging caged,
All coarseness, bluster, pretense soon upstaged,
His role sets out for a predicted run:
To shift allegiance ‘til the battle’s won,
Infant and ice queen softening the bray.
But rising past the journey and return,
The tropes and readings ready to be mocked,
And critics’ easy censure justly earned,
Stands the collective fondness of a flock
Who, hearing one another’s praise, are turned
Toward joyful memories, nostalgia locked.

 

Liner note

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