Poems

Fold out evenings, chairs in the street.

‘See Iridium?’ Making out the satellite pantheon:

efficient gods that do return our prayers

(small voices cast across our desert spaces)

                                    like stars —

                                    like Clint Eastwood

                                    riding impassive

                                    through our networks of desire.

From here the Palisades are another country,

their brindled cliffs seamy with snow,

the Hudson in its Acheron vein between us,

a hawk patrolling its course.

hi friend im a guy who loves

deeply and cops love pounding

and still a nice rootable future

looking for someone needs arise

in a few words a besides the

all ex i adore

and a telephone number

woe betide my joys and sorrows

ill reply to all letters signed 68kg

uncut cop the reply letters all

hi guy woe im pounding i

adore ex cops and my

future nice guy friend im

the reply number arise needs

joys still im hi friend and deeply

ill i love someone besides a few

rootable sorrows and looking for

words i adore my telephone numb

er the reply cops pounding

the letters uncut and

ex looking words

Grennan takes another corded strand between his fingers,

moves it through a plane, then interlaces it to add dimension,

utility, beauty; then he takes a swig from his bottle,

The statues in the ancient museum
The ones of young women, the kohl
Dripping tears of the centuries from
Their luminous eyes, smiling that
Detached ironic smile never doleful,
That’s what gave her a gift for it.

The Sioux, believing ponies should be pintos,
Painted the ones that weren’t.
When they saw the Iron Horse
They must have wondered why the palefaces
Left it a palimpsest.
Bruno Schulz said an artist must mature

This six a.m. moment
in the cool-blue cool
of early morning
is not eternal.

             ‘In Jamaica , we have a saying, that a person
              should take the sour and turn it into sweet.
              We took the sour and we made lemonade!'
                         Rita Marley with Hettie Jones.
                         No Woman No Cry: My Life with Bob Marley

A man remains in his car while his mother is buried.
What I know of them is unreliable, a cousin to truth.

A master bedroom, a stripped mattress
dead centre of the floor.
Plastic dishes in the kitchen sink,
soft toys kicked against the wall.
Ikea furniture flat in boxes,
I assemble you without a key;
no need for Swedish instruction,
these hands know your symmetry.
Finished with bedevilled edges,
hewn from raw blonde pine,
inner suburban by desire,
Scandinavian by design.
I build a little house where our hearts
once lived – remake rooms I cannot find.