poetry

Limbaugh

Limbaugh

O, America
how you reward
the most vile of men
and how I want
to finally quit you

all us women
battered by the words
of these irredeemable
powerful men –
we must leave

if you think
it can’t get worse, it will
it’s time to find a place
where people are calm and kind

we must up and go now
and take all our sisters
(and, yes, the moral men, too)
with us

we’ll just walk out
and leave the dishes in the sink –
leave them the mess of
guns and banks and greed –
until they’ve stolen it all from each other
and shot every living thing dead

then someday
when the coasts are finally clear
if the land calls loud enough
we may return

poetry

red white and blue flags

red white blue flags

estranged from a country
I’m supposed to call mine
a place meant to stand for something:
freedom opportunity refuge equality
all of those abandoned
subsumed by oligarchy’s will
I see in this new little land
a model that seems unreplicable
a country where the words are going wild
back to the rich Māori meaning-laden names
without the people really noticing
they’ve dropped the English that doesn’t serve
a country built on second chances
filled with nature souls
who want to be out in the bush
in their little kiwi baches
windows fronting the sea
they revel in feeling small
here is a place with an island stripped bare
the people say, together we’ll plant it
and they do
now it’s bush so thick
you wouldn’t believe it’d been farmed

I think of all the reasons it wouldn’t possibly work
at home
look at me – I can barely say Hinóno’éí
let alone speak one living word of it
look at our restoration attempts
riddled with weeds

here in Godzone country
everything seems easier
(except the quakes)

but the locals squint back and shake their heads –
No, it’s not.
New Zealand only found its Māoriness around 1996.
Before that, the Māori language was banned.
We’ve got a noxious weed problem, too,
she says, but we volunteers pull them.

maybe it’s not too late to change
to bring back some substantial bit of
what was lost
maybe our big godforsaken country
could grow a little less corrupt
a little more wild
a little more native
and whole

poetry

Found in Enn Zed

Found in Enn Zed

other countries you don’t know where the hell you are
this country’s small enough you don’t get lost
even in Christchurch you can climb a hill
and see the sea and
(Allan nods)
know, oh, yeah, that’s where I am!

aren’t we all looking for a place we won’t get lost?
where Tāne Mahuta will watch over us?
where mana doesn’t equal money
and the power and design
of an unfurling fern frond
is revered by everyone?

actually, no,
I suppose most Americans
aren’t missing these things
which makes them all the more
bittersweet to find
at the antipode to my existence
where I’ll never be home

poetry

Kiwi in Disguise

Kiwi in Disguise

in New Zealand
I try not to speak
each syllable gives me away as other
my fat flat short American a’s
broadcast my origin

I’ve read so many books by (to me) foreigners
mentioning that abrasive American honk
our loud crass obnoxious accent
I try to turn mine off
order tomahtoe sauce instead of ketchup
speak of rubbish bins instead of trash cans
ask if someone is in the queue not line
get directions for the toilet not bathroom
take the lift not elevator
go to the car park not parking lot
am tempted to just talk like the locals
lips stretched out into a thin line
talking about those swimming shelled reptiles:
turdles don’t have any ees
but I will never add up
to more than a Kiwi in disguise

poetry

learning how to wait

learning how to wait

we Americans don’t know how to wait
like other people do:
burning long days
in the broiling tin-roofed tuck shop shack
waiting for a grubby kid
to buy a single pack of candy
comfortably squatting flat-footed
in the consulate’s courtyard for days
with only cigarettes for diversion
staking out the harbor
(any harbor anywhere)
now and then querying transport?
sitting in the Singapore doctor’s office
waiting for #1750 to appear
in red dot digits outside exam room A7

in the lands where queuing is a verb
an action one takes
an inescapable reality
they know (sometimes)
how to give themselves over
to the suspension of time
savor the need to not do
for an interminable spell