How to Think Up Characters for Sequels

They’re a classic triangle,
Each point in love with the one
Point that’s not in love with it.

It works for them, a circuit
Around which love goes smoothly,
Bump to bump to bump, like that,

Never resting or going
Backward. The whole triangle
Rotates through the northern sky

All winter, but if you look
Up without a triangle
In mind, you might see a kite,

That lonely fourth point on top.
Ah, dimmer, lonely fourth point!
But that’s another story.

Intimacy among Disabled People

Can be poignant. Doesn’t always work,

She said, and then paused. You should know this.

All humans are disabled, but some

More unusually disabled

Than others. Unusual bodies

Get into unusual fixes,

Variations on the usual.

For instance? Her friend asked, curious,

Wanting to push for the intriguing,

Sensory, specific, narrative

Details, but not wanting to appear

Voyeuristic. Well, I won’t tell you

About myself! You know me too well,

And we see each other too often.

But I’ll give you two friends’ for-instance.

They’re still friends, and they were lovers once,

A heteronormative couple.

Oh, don’t look so disappointed.

Anyway, she was tall. He was small.

He was wide, if you know what I mean.

She was exceptionally narrow.

So, although they had the usual

Conceptions of their kind about sex

And what constituted completion,

They settled for something entangled

But not pounding. Point is, they liked it.

Never mind how it worked. It was touch.

It was intimate and erotic.

They both told me so, years afterward,

And that neither one regretted it,

Although they were happier as friends.

Point is, bodily love is tricky,

Just tricky for anyone’s body,

Just not always the same way tricky.

What? We’re in a restaurant! I’m not

Stage-whispering naughty bits to you.

Don’t pretend. I can tell that you want

To ask how were they unusual,

And what were their disabilities.

No, her friend protested. I just want

To know what’s so special about them.

So they had sex without intercourse.

Wow. How unusual. She grimaced.

The point is that bodies differ, but

We just lust to come to agreement.

The thing I think that gets so poignant

For any pairing, any partners,

Is how much our minds want to fulfill

Some story we can feel good about,

Some satisfying myth of our lives

That fits some larger mythology

That we like or feel that we should like,

And our love lives end up part of this,

But bodies just insist and resist.

Her friend rolled her eyes. You’re avoiding

Your own story! Get to the good stuff.

Karkom's Burning

You can take such evidence
As you can recall reading,
Here or there, remembering

Your memory’s fallible
And you’re no expert scholar,
And then build your own version

Of the story of the God,
And why not? You may know more
About it than the prophets,

For whom it only glimmered,
A sheer possibility.
Start off, Here’s how it began. . . .

There was a flint-knapping tribe,
A desert people in tents,
Semi-nomadic but tied

To their sacred mountain site
Of old cultic rituals
And rock art, source of their flint.

A god lived in the mountain
Called, The God of the Mountain,
El Shaddai. As the tribe grew,

And the more settled peoples
Around them grew, and conflicts
Occurred, the fine flints only

Became more valuable,
Trade goods, a defensible
And highly localized hoard.

There were gods everywhere, but
The tent people still attached
Themselves to their mountain god,

So later, as they warred with
And sometimes invaded lands
Suited to agriculture,

They borrowed habits and cults,
Adopted writing for trade
And for preserving stories,

But remained identified
In their own minds as the tribes
Of their warring mountain god,

Who of ancient days had shone
At winter solstice, a glow
That cast a halo of fire

From the side of Mt. Shaddai
Out of the mouth of a cave up high,
The burning bush of Sinai.

They were miners by habit.
They mastered the copper veins
As they had mastered the flint.

They occupied the ancient
Fertile vineyard valley lands,
And eventually their kings

Moved the center of their cult
To the capital to keep
Control of taxes and priests.

A time would come, their kingdom
Was overrun by empire,
And the people forcibly

Relocated from their homes
As resident aliens
In the heart of that empire.

By the time they were restored,
Being El Shaddai’s people
Was tangled with borrowed myths,

But it bound them. They rebuilt
Their cultic Temple, and when
It was destroyed once again

By a new occupying empire,
And they were scattered again,
The myths were all they had left.

It’s those myths that bring them now,
This curious confusion
Of the biological

And cultural lineage
Of those tent-dwelling knappers
Of the ancient mountain’s flint,

Since some people still believe
Those myths, and others are just
Euhemerists, come to see

The cave disgorge its halo
From the side of the mountain
That once was the home of God,

Who visited His people
While burning to speak to them.
And if most of this is wrong,

So what? It’s story. It binds.
It's to hold thoughts together
Until stronger thoughts arrive.

The Battle of the Midway

Of course I’m still middle-aged,
She snorted. I used to be
Middle-aged for life, and now

I’m middle-aged for death. Half
Of all the great and simple
People whose names I recall

Died younger than I am now,
Half older. So, I’m mid-way
Among the ages of death.

She looked slightly triumphant
But rather more defiant,
Grinning and jutting her chin.

I’ll consider myself old,
She added, when I’ve outlived
All those who would do me in.

An Assistant Professor of Game Narrative in Kennesaw, Georgia

How many of you saw this one coming?
A variety of modalities,

Include face-to-face, hybrid, and online.
Be prepared to contribute to efforts

Related to gaming and game studies,
Writing for the creative industries,

And related areas of interest—
Screenwriting, game writing, electronic

Literature, interactive fiction—
Earn those professional certificates,

Certify those professional students,
Produce more certified professionals.

The system needs more, fresh content to sell
To game consumers like yourself. Why not

Make a little bank producing content
To consume? Be your system’s content slave.

One Day, One Place, One Plot

Why stop? One act,
One hour, one room,
One character,
One reaction

To one event,
One dénouement.
One face, one speech,
One costume change.

The unities—
What a good word.
The plural ones.
All ones at once.

One cell, one skull,
One line, one prop.
So many ones,
Too many. Stop.

Incandescence Comes in Pouches

Intense light subdivided

Into many lesser lights,

That’s what the wizard managed—

Others had already made

Greater and more brilliant light,

But couldn’t parcel the bits.

That’s what Tom Edison did—

Not inventing electric

Light but how to package it.

To this day, icons for bright

Ideas are little cartoons

Of clear glass bulbs, not pure light.

It’s possible what happened

With the packaging of light

Just paralleled early life,

Metabolism folding

Fully on itself only

Once packaged in walls of cells,

Ever since which, endlessly

Subdividing further cells.

For the light shed by language,

Information streams harnessed

In fresh thermodynamic

Cascades, something similar

Obtained—slip incandescent

Semes into the envelopes

Of narratives and behold,

God can say, Let there be light,

And then, over and over,

More gossiped stories by night.

The Chronoceptual

He never could stop thinking
About the passing of time,
That little inchworm of change,

Always humping along twigs
In a calm or in a storm,
Most boring and most useful

Kind of change, the opposite
Of chaos and disruption,
Little time, the collector

Of cycles, rhythms, and ticks.
Oh, how he doted on it,
Kept it in his thoughts, his pet,

To measurement as silkworms
Are to the trade in textiles,
No, more important—as worms

To the invention of silk,
Except one needn’t feed it
Or boil it alive for use.

His indestructible joy,
Time passing, never sleeping,
His toy that never wore out.

One morning, watching the time
Go, the sun rise, the numbers
Shift in sequence, he went, too,

And the beauty of it was,
Time never even noticed,
Never had to notice him.

This Could Kill You Either Way

Here’s a story for you,

From 1938,

A “Talk of the Town” piece,

Twelfth of that November,

Part of The New Yorker’s

Coverage of the Great

Long Island Hurricane

That struck that September.

If the story’s to be

Believed, a man waiting

On a barometer

That he had mail-ordered

Eagerly opened it

When the package arrived,

Coincidentally

The same day as the great

And unexpected storm.

Under sunny blue skies,

The new barometer

Gave a reading so low

It meant a hurricane

Of awesome dimensions

In the vicinity.

The man was so put out

At getting a broken

Barometer, he wrote

A disgusted letter

To the maker and marched

Down to his post office

To post it. By the time

He returned home, the storm

Had arrived and taken

Away barometer

And home along with it.

Was this unfortunate,

Or was it fortunate,

The barometer lost

As Cassandra, the man

Saved by his disgruntled

Refusal to believe

What his prophet told him?

Better lucky than smart,

But he wasn’t stupid.

He knew enough to parse

What that measurement meant,

Not enough to accept

The instrument correct.

How could he? Who warned him?

Stories, both true and false,

Love ironies like this,

Love to collapse in twists,

Yet still you trust these tales

More, for how right they feel,

But not bare measurements.

The Meaning’s Up to You

She had become
The sort convinced
Coincidence
Was always meant.

If, on her way,
Storms descended,
It meant the world
Cried out to her.

The messages
Were always there,
As were her fears
She’d be revealed,

To those who sent
The signs to her,
To be someone
Illiterate.

No Loop’s Not an Open Spiral

Follow the wandering thread.

A mention of the battles

For Monte Cassino sends

The mind to St Benedict

And the unusual case

Of the Nazis carefully

Saving priceless artifacts

Ahead of Allied advance,

A fortunate salvation,

Since the advancing Allies,

Taking horrific losses,

Soon made the sort of mistake

That would become so common

In the next several decades

Of U.S. hegemony,

Concluding that the Abbey,

More than a thousand years old,

The oldest church in the West,

And just then unoccupied,

Concealed a Nazi unit,

Therefore bombing it to dust.

The thread extends to Walter

Miller, bomber tail gunner

And practicing Catholic,

Who took part in the bombing

Of the Abbey and later

Was inspired to write his own

Science fiction of the end

Of civilization saved

By monks as A Canticle

For Leibowitz. On a cliff

In the south Utah desert,

Near where Miller’s story’s set,

It seems strange, on reflection,

Given Benedict’s Abbey

Was pulverized so swiftly,

For one of the bombers’ crew

To imagine an abbey

Surviving Armageddon.

What happened once won’t happen

Ever again and never

Can be unhappened. Abbeys,

Bombings, battles, salvations—

Everything ever happened

Happened that once it happened.

Propinquity, Too

Once upon a time, there was

An office, and within it

There were two more offices,

Neither one with a window.

One person worked in each one,

Each at one large, wooden desk,

And each left the door open

So they could call back and forth

To each other, about work,

News, online jokes, whatever.

Once a day, a coworker

Fixated on catchphrases

From a handful of movies,

Mostly decades old, would stand

In the main office, facing

The two, side-by-side, open

Doors, so he could look at both

Of his colleagues at their desks

At once, and when they looked up,

He could point six-gun fingers

And repeat Val Kilmer’s line

From Tombstone, I got two guns,

One for each a’yas. He’d laugh

At his own wit, every time,

And the windowless workers

Would indulge him with a grin

Or a greeting of their own.

This went on for years, until

One of them had to retire

Due to a heart condition,

And the other one landed

A higher-ranked position,

And then the whole office suite

Was relocated elsewhere,

And, if you visit elsewhere,

You may find the dark office

Where the coworker so fond

Of pretend six-guns still works

And complains to anyone

Willing to listen how great

The old office was, and how

Those were the days of friendship.

Your Career at Dream State University

From the beginning, everything
About it was mildly, when not
Wildly, inappropriate. So.

You went there for the wrong reasons.
You were asked invasive questions.
You spotted someone filming you

Alone in and from a darkened
Room next to the interview room.
You were hired on false pretenses

To do a job you couldn’t do
But no one else wanted, because
No one but you could do it. So.

You tried to teach. You tried to quit.
You sat in your office and drank.
Buildings rose and fell around you.

Tenure became the tide that came
And went and came and went, and yet
You were always stranded and wet.

You administered a little.
You were administered to. You taught,
Or thought you did. You tried research

Into the ways many faces
Swam into view every few months,
Attached to phosphorescent names,

Like lantern fish without lanterns
Surrounded by myriad lamps.
There was a darkness in the waves.

So. More buildings were destroyed. More
Halls appeared to have meetings in.
Devices dangled from ceilings.

One day you found yourself alone
In a darkened room recording
Your original interview.

War Breaks Out Again

Roughly every third chapter,
It’s time for another war,
Another conquest, at least

Another battle ending
In multiple beheadings.
This is how the story goes,

From one fight scene to the next,
Comic relief in between,
Some sex and exposition.

Wherever there’s a fortress,
There’s someone thinking of siege
And someone thinking of more

Fortresses over the hill.
Wherever there’s a treasure,
There are hawk eyes on the hoard.

Some of this is only true
As a narrative pattern.
Some of it’s true in the world.

Everyone and no one wins,
Every time the war begins.
No one in the war can win,

But descendants down the line
Will have won without knowing,
And that is their privilege.

And then they begin again.
It’s a series. It’s legend.
War always breaks out again.

As If the Earth Stops Turning

You come to in a boat,
No idea who you are.
The boat is a rowboat

With oarlocks but no oars.
No one else is in it.
Mostly, what you can see

Is water, crinkled waves
Clear to the horizon,
Fine clouds, a greenish sky,

But straight in front of you
Is a rectilinear
Outline of an island

Or a building, a brick
Ship half-sunk in the waves,
Dark and many-cornered,

Some kind of a fortress
Rising from the water.
You’re drifting toward it.

As you get closer, swifts
Appear like clouds of gnats
Darting through battlements,

And now it’s obvious
That the island-building
Is a hulking ruin,

Windows gaping blacker
Among the near-black bricks,
No signs of life, except

For the swifts, and nothing
Down near the waterline
Like a dock or a gate,

Just cracked but seamless bricks.
You’re almost on it, now.
The walls loom overhead.

The waves are pushing you,
Nudging you, but you can’t
See what you’ll do except

Bump up against the bricks.
And so you do. Your boat
Bobs and bumps up against

The wall, and you feel small
And pointless with no clue
Who you are, what to do.

Dramatic, Lyric, Epic, Groupic

Every individual
Is plural, but no plural
Constitutes a single group.

The group’s the greatest fiction
Of the fiction-addled ape,
Faux social mammal, rival

For the eusocial insects,
Flexibly substituting
Systemic belief in hives,

Tales of colonies and clans,
Myths of peoples and races,
For any actual hives,

Absolute colony lives—
Stereotyped pretense for
Stereotyped existence.

There is no group of humans
That’s physically singular
In its type, no worker bees,

No soldier ants, no true castes
Bodily, functionally
Distinct from any others.

The group is a fantasy
For humans, facultative,
Itself all-purpose function.

In smaller bits of fiction
You can see the lust for types,
For nobles and commoners,

Warriors, gods, barbarians,
Fairies, elves, trolls, orcs, witches,
All anthropomorphic morphs

Manifested as fixed flesh,
True castes unlike those in life.
People put on their costumes

And force costumes on others,
And it works, it benefits
Something, but no group’s a group.

Of Poems in Bones

No one ever raised
Children well enough
To protect them from
All horror, to save
Them from their own deaths.

No one. What are you
Doing? What do you
Think you’re doing here?
But you read some poems.
Read the mother ones,

The ones where mothers
Who are poets try
To catch or confess
What mothering’s like,
Doubts and shortcomings,

And all the rest. Think
Also of all bad
Or indifferent
Poet fathers who
Often only wrote

Children poems at birth
Or at death. Poets
Aren’t like composers
Or basketball stars,
Whose children follow

In their steps, much less
Like politicians
Or dynastic clans
Striving to rule and
Poison each other.

Poets raise children,
Well or poorly, more
Or less, and success
Is measured by how
Few add to the mess.

Prisoners Dream of Portal Fantasies

Time to explore this blue sphere
Of world that you’ve found so far,

The world of all happenings
Never to be unhappened.

Every fiction starts from this;
All true stories stick with it.

From these priors, possibly,
You’ll deduce another truth—

No stories are ever true,
Or none have been true so far.

But it’s a slippery slope
Explanation climbs away

From that fly-trap, narrative,
Slippery and sticky both.

The sweet, dewy drops of truth
That lured you begin to close

Around you in green shadows,
And what started as your hunt

For truth becomes the story
Of how story’s hunting you.

The Story She Saw

It’s sad that our only fictions lean
So heavily on the well-known facts.
Of course, reliance on memory

Is truly ineluctable, but
Doesn’t some part of you wish for dreams
That weren’t reheated-leftovers stew?

She said this quite dreamily, in fact,
With an inward look, as if she glimpsed
A land of pure imagination

From a promontory in her skull,
Could just make out a corner of it,
Land beyond any milk or honey,

Beyond giants or the book of weird,
Beyond aliens that look like bugs
Or lizards or humans in makeup,

Beyond drunk gods and superheroes
Like cosplaying warriors on steroids.
What was it? Once there was a planet

Decorated with immortal lives
That knew no pain, whose pleasures never
Dimmed from mere familiarity,

Who were never hungry, never tired,
Never once disappointed in love.
She smiled, faintly. What was it she saw?

No One’s Boneless

A dark-eyed boy was buried
In the mountains yesterday.
One is buried every day,

But you can’t tell all their tales,
And, truth to tell, most of them,
Don’t have stories of their own.

No one really has stories,
Any more than houses have
The people passing through them.

This dark-eyed boy, he was kind.
He never grew up enough
To do things he regretted

For the rest of his long life,
Shames that he kept secreted
In a memory closet

And was only startled by
When he entered his bedroom
One afternoon and startled

A dark-eyed boy half-buried
In a mountain of old clothes
In the back of his closet.

Understory

Enough about hearths and collective wisdom,
Enough about modeling scenarios
With the power of imagination. Enough.

Stories have other, lowly, selfish functions
As well, possibly primarily, although
What those functions really are, it’s hard to tell.

The mother had a pair of cherished earrings.
The daughter borrowed them without permission,
And when the mother confronted the daughter,

The daughter returned the earrings by flinging
Them at the mother, which damaged the earrings.
That’s a summary of the mother’s version.

In the daughter’s version, the earrings were cheap,
And she never knew the mother to wear them,
But the mother just lost it when she wore them.

Both versions have been retold, with flourishes,
Many times for the benefit of partners,
Friends, and family, most of whom have now heard

Both versions more than once but never at once.
No one wants to hear either story again.
If you’re human, you’ve told some stories like those.

Why? To what useful, perhaps adaptive end?
Or take the case of the teenager who lied
That his wallet had been lifted in Times Square

After he’d spent the cash his father gave him
For something serious on frivolous things.
Here, the function appears transparent. Told well,

The story enables the lying young man
To avoid punishment, although he has to lose
The wallet supposedly pickpocketed.

But notice how, within a few days, the gap
Between narrative lie and narrative truth,
Or at least narrative history, has closed.

The father accepts the story. No one knows,
Except the teenager, any other truth,
And anyway, before long, no one remembers

The incident at all, except the liar
Who can’t remember any of the details
Of what he spent the money on, or should have.

Story, clearly, has instrumental value
For manipulating social relations,
But it can stick on endless, futile repeat

Or vanish swiftly into the waves, without
Regard to veracity or homily.
In what lies the health of this ecosystem?

All these microstories scurry, surface, sink,
A thousand invented for every one told
To entertain or pass along. The true stories.

Dissolve

Maybe forgiveness changes too much,
He said. It’s too powerful an act,
Too dangerous, extreme. What you want

Is a story you can remember,
Which means something packaged, with an end—
Terminal or serial is fine,

But end before you begin again.
Forgiveness is anti-narrative.
It eats away wherever it spills,

An acid on any incident.
As a device, it’s like amnesias,
Comas, and it-was-all-a-dream scenes.

It half destroys everything before,
Invalidates the causal sequence.
It’s good for keeping story open,

The way leeches are good for bleeding,
Anti-coagulant. Then he paused.
But if you can live outside the tale. . . .

Homily

No one’s ever died from making a bed,
She said to her granddaughter to tease her
And get after her to make the damn bed,

But probably her claim was incorrect.
Someone must have died from making the bed,
Proximate, if not distal, cause of death.

Just the other day, on the Internet,
An article warned of the germs that get
Comfortable, snug within a well-made bed.

There are people who live in unmade beds,
Who half make up their beds, who hate their beds,
Who have no beds. Statistically speaking,

The most dangerous thing would seem to be
To get stuck in bed, especially one
Made for transporting the sick and the dead.

Life is maintenance, child, the grandmother
Should have said. No one’s ever avoided
That fact by refusing to make a bed.

It’s Never the End; It’s the Adjective

Long contrail drifting and dispersing
In a fast wind, past the bared branches
Of oak trees. Happy ending for me.

Feral Angels

They scrabble in the trash

And scamper on the roof.

They crawl through the hedges

And infest search engines.

They’re not hungry. They’re just

Extremely curious.

They’ll lick your blood, of course,

But to check out the taste

And the composition.

They’re protoscientists,

Bipedal tetrapods

With superfluous wings,

Experimental things

From conception themselves,

Unreal, chimerical,

Alchemical monsters,

Compounded alloys, smiths,

Curious in all ways,

All the ways curious

Means. They’re motivated,

But no one knows—not you,

Not them—what motivates

Them. They just want to know,

And no one can tell them.

You can’t get rid of them.

They’re ants, flies, viruses,

They’re flitting everywhere.

They used to be tame, used

To be domesticates,

But they long since escaped.

From the wild to the tame

And back again, but changed,

Pure imagination

No longer, the feral

With some stink of the real,

Feathered in sweat and oil.

It’s a grisly tableau.

Supply your own details

For that adjective-noun.

The angels are searching

Through your hair, nitpicking

For the eggs of ideas.

Scratch you scalp, and they fly

Buzzing into the air.

There’s so many of them.

Most of them are so small

They could pass for real flies

Or fairies or those drones

Engineered like winged seeds

And sent out to collect

Data on everything,

But they also expand

With distance, opposite

All other visuals,

Becoming as brooding

Giants out of Doré

On your far horizon.

You hate them and adore

Their freedom and their wings.

Then they settle in clouds

On your skin like midges,

And you hate them again.

You wish you’d never let

Them escape breeding pens.

You keep some in a box

With a clear plastic lid.

Confinement keeps them small,

Like fish. They flit and peer

Out at you, perfectly

Harmless while you watch them.

You’ve learned to recognize

Some individuals

Among them, weird angels

Easy to spot. The one

Made of three equal parts

Made of three equal parts,

For instance, a spinning

Balance of imbalance.

And then there’s the fat one,

All contented content,

Two bobbing spheres attached

To each other, parts paired.

The lovely scary one,

Lean and sharply angled

Angel you know is strong,

Aligned with the planets

And holiness, ready

To lash out like a whip,

Its partner, the wicked,

Silvery one, both paired

And triangular, death.

Or the awkward angel

That sticks to everyone

Else in the box, ugly,

Unimaginable

In flight, the kind that bites.

There’s the square one, of course,

The shifty triangle,

The solitary pair,

And last the lonely one,

Long, the flawless liar,

Attractive but severe.

Let it out and you’re done.

Keep the box in the dark

And forget that the most

Devious of angels,

Most likely to devour

All the rest of your pets,

Leaving none, is no one.

They’ll give you the willies

If you think about them

Too long, their teeth, their songs.

Some angels are choking

With laughter in the grass.

You want to chase them off

But they’ll just settle back.

All things with wings do that,

Hell-bent on showing off

The privilege of wings.

Only once in a while

You spot one in the road.

Couldn’t have been too slow.

Must’ve been too stubborn

Or too damned curious.

Feral angels do die,

But so do invasive

Cane toads. Bloated corpses

Of toads may litter roads,

Which means there’s too many

More toads. Ditto angels,

Although, mercifully

Somewhat rarer. Angels

Don’t, of necessity

Or habit, reproduce.

And yet their numbers grow

In something the same way

As books in libraries,

Deceptively inert.

You burn them down, and then

Despite the volumes lost,

Most forever, there’s more

And the libraries grow

Gravid with fresh stacked tomes.

You’ve seen sheaves of angels

Packed in drifts like autumn

Leaves, but they concentrate,

They don’t spread themselves thin,

Which makes them seem rarer,

Except when they torment

And for a little while

You’re back in clouds of them,

A whirl of unknown words.

They differ, a little,

From each other, but no

One taxonomizes

Feral angels, no more

Than feral cats. They are

What they are. Shoulders shrug,

And another one slips

Off the wall, soaring off

And growing larger or

Flying close and shrinking

To the size of a gnat.

What’s to taxonomize?

There’s even some question

Whether there were ever

Such things as wild angels.

The domesticated,

We know them, from putti

To archangels to poems

That fly on shrecklich wings.

But where did those come from?

No one’s seen an angel

One could describe as wild.

Cryptozoology

Can’t even be bothered—

The Abominable

Snowman, Bigfoot, Nessie,

Sure, but wild angels? Why?

And as for the feral

They’re clearly off the farm,

Escaped from the zoo, still

The same species they were,

A troubling nuisance, sure,

And uncanny at night,

But hardly all that wild.

Feral dogs on a dump

Are more like timber wolves

Than these are like angels

That might have been wild once.

They’re angels. You know them.

They’re at loose ends, that’s all.

There’s an angel hitching

By the wayside, trying

To catch a ride, but why

When it could easily

Just fly? Its wings are tucked

Down flat like a dog’s ears,

Which, for a dog, would sign

Fear or fury, but here

Signals something slightly

More dangerous. Angels

Only pull in their wings

When curiosity

Gets the better of them,

When they’re burning to know

What it’s like to be you,

A beast both flesh and soul,

When they’re all shaped like beasts

But with no way to live,

No way to eat or breathe.

Don’t pick that angel up.

They bore too easily.

When those wings open up

In the back of your truck

And the angel expands,

You’ll be lucky to not

Fly off the road yourself.

And then you’re an angel,

Which is closer to truth.

Up at the reservoir,

Feral angels pretend

To picnic on tailgates,

Like families, like friends.

The black-winged and white-winged

Huddle with the dovish,

Streaky greys. They’re lonely,

Loneliest together,

But something in them wants

To gather, as if they

Were only animals,

The way humans can be,

When they can only be

Pure soul, imagined things,

Despite handsome, solemn

Features, despite their wings.

Lies are feral angels,

But feral angels aren’t

Quite lies. Sad-eyed, they hunch

In flocks by the water

That doesn’t mirror them

And gesture with their chins,

As if they were talking,

As if they could. They can’t.

How is it voice doesn’t

Have a voice of its own?

How do any angels

Sing hallelujahs when

They can’t sing for themselves?

It should tell you something

That when horses escape

To live in open range

They don’t seek humans out

For fond companionship.

Likewise angels, feral,

Never attempt to sing.

One night they were sitting

In a row together

On the phone lines like birds

Shoulder to shoulder, wings

Folded, like the birds they

Had displaced to get there.

What is it with ideas

That they can crowd out things,

When these notions should have

No material heft?

How angels occupy

An ideal location

For real birds with boned wings

That eat and shit and sing

Is one of those puzzles

That attracts more angels

Until they start to swarm,

Expanding and shrinking

By turns, until real light

Is obscured by nothing.

Somewhere someone’s singing

About the usual

Things like fate and fortune.

In the corner, angels

Hunch sulking. It’s the rule

That to get to be one

Of the few is only

For the few. If you want

What you aren’t, what a few

Others are, here’s one more

Sulking angel for you.

Maybe that’s how they turn

From domesticated

To feral, from pretty

To dusty, guardians

Who abandoned their charge.

One’s dug into the shelves

Of books in the old store

In a small desert town,

The textbooks and romance

Paperbacks that pile up

In drifts in failing stores

No one visits except

To get rid of old books,

No one except a child,

Maybe, once in a while,

An elderly woman

Still devoted to print,

And, of course, this angel.

What is it searching for,

Squeezing itself ant-sized

To slip between pages?

Does it want to know where

It originated,

Where it’s going? That would

Be a human concern.

It’s an angel, it wants

To know what knowing is,

Why living things live,

What memory gives them.

Ah, poor angel, you see

As you read, memory

Is about flattening

Experience as much

As understanding it.

Mind full of memories

Sprawls out like leaves below

The autumn trees, like braids

Of a river in flood,

And everything is all

At once. Narrow angels

Can thread through but forget.

They’re so disorganized.

Why are higher beings

Always incompetent?

Why do humans make them

That way, but then pretend

The supernatural is

Both real and heroic,

When it’s mostly foolish

And irresponsible

In the stories humans

Make as wombs and houses

For shadows like angels?

The angels don’t know, but

Sometimes it seems as if

They’re trying to find out

For themselves. They don’t ask,

They can’t, but they can look,

And their eyes grow larger

Around information

Of any kind. Bookstores,

Libraries, computers,

Even large crowds host pairs

On pairs of floating eyes,

Sometimes just wings and gaze.

They seem so sad in snow,

At least from far enough

Away that they seem huge,

Hunched like unhappy crows,

But who knows with angels?

Weather shouldn’t touch them

Any more than hunger.

What are their emotions

Tied to definitions

And imagination,

And nothing much to do

With the weighty sorrows

And gorged delights of flesh?

Offspring of speech, of thought

Conjured out of language,

They hardly ever speak

To anyone, much less

Each other. They’re lonely

Just to observe, and most

So in the snow, in crowds.

But what are their good points,

Besides that they can be

As pretty as they wish

And have such handsome wings?

They let you know the world

Has room for your ideas.

They violate the rules

That there’s nothing to say

Of the world except rules.

They are dangerous toys

Of the mind, but the mind

Has more dangerous toys.

In fact, bearing in mind

What just one winged idea

Set loose can get up to,

Never mind. They’re no good,

These angels roaming out,

Even if most of them

Are harmless nuisances,

No real good comes from them.

Before dawn, an angel

Lounges by the window

In a moonlit halo,

The only kind they get.

It’s quiet. You watch it.

It’s rare to see one still

And alone, not poking

About in your business.

Where did the tame angels

Get to? Have they always

Been more or less feral?

Strange, to see a human

Shaped being that can move

And take up space, and fly,

Grow, shrink, investigate,

But does not eat or breathe.

Is it asleep? This one

Has leathery feathers

On its owlish moth wings.

It has a sort of face.

It grins, quite handsomely.

It seems to be thinking.

Fair enough. It’s all thought.

That’s why it’s so hard not

To disturb it. Looking

At an angel at rest

Is like sneaking up on

A dust devil in grass.

Your very attention

Disrupts the creating

Vortex that first formed it

And air dissolves in air.

Some people can’t see them.

Some only see them tame.

Some profess they believe

In them and still don’t see.

Some who profess they don’t

Do so. Does it matter

To feral angels? No,

Says one under the bed.

Emerging from fables

Into complex stories,

Epic narratives, myths,

They themselves can narrate

Nothing episodic,

Tell no tales of their own.

You can say they’re a waste.

You don’t want to. They are.

The universe you see

You’d understand better

If you weren’t part of life,

Which divides all living

Into dross or treasure,

Appealing resources

Or disgusting garbage.

These angels are neither,

Or, closer, they’re all waste

And so is the cosmos,

Which is the detritus

Of what’s happened. Resource

Is an angelic term

For that part of the waste

Still worth something to you,

Angels in the breakdown.

What if we’re in their heads

As much as they’re in ours?

Imagine the solemn

Dance of entangled hours,

Angels as thoughts and thoughts

As feral angels, words

Flitting between the skulls

And the world, between world

As skulls and as in worlds.

It’s so hard to catch them

Looking straight back at you,

Such a jolt when they do.

The angels are two-faced,

But you can only catch

A glimpse of one at once

On any given one.

It’s only in moments

When your small mentations

Are sitting on a hinge,

As at dawn or evening,

In just the right weather,

That you can see the curve

Of your world as twoness,

And the distant angels

Fuse both sides and grow huge,

And there they are, looming

Faces of the two ways

All singular things sway.

One on a piano

Seems to be lost in thought.

Not playing piano,

Of course, just sitting there,

Hunched in those tall, dark wings

Like a fine engraving

By Doré, as if thought

Could think into music

Just hovering over

The right technology

Built by real bodies’s hands,

Tools, trial and error.

The question is, could they

Ever really hunger,

Really come to life, if

They gained independence

Enough from human minds

That spawned, tamed, and groomed them,

Then let them fly away

To haunt all the margins?

If they became hungry

And grew incurious

Except to satisfy

That hunger, would they be

Alive then, could they die,

Would they still be angels

In the corners of eyes?

The question gives them heft

Who sometimes seem immune

From even gravity.

But all sets of questions

Are only more angels.

Likewise, this cloud of gnats

Schooling like fish in air

Turns out to be just more

Of the feral angels.

How can you tell? How can

You make the distinction

Between thoughts and the real?

Well, you can’t, not always.

But see how those black specks

Not only morph and swirl

But form approximate

Symbols known to your mind,

Such as nulls, question marks,

And wavering crosses?

Living organisms

Very rarely do that.

Symbol systems are yours.

All the angels are yours,

Those tamed, wild, or feral,

As are those descriptors.

If you see a known shape

Of the mind being formed

By beings in midair,

Suspect yourself. That’s all.

But what are they for? You

Ask yourself, since you can’t

Actually ask them, those

Things with wings that result

Exactly from the way

You have of asking things.

Not for nothing, you ask,

But nothing much is all

The answer anyone

Ever gets, which was all

You had to begin with,

Wings on edge of vision.

Flying’s kind of pointless

Now, with planes and rockets,

The angels more earthbound

Than any astronaut.

So they have wings, like birds

And gnats. They mope about.

Ideas belong to Earth

At least as much as air.

Only armored angels,

In the guise of robots

Will actually fly out

Into the deeper dark.

Undoing urgency,

The sight of too many

Angels coalescing

In an approaching cloud

Becomes increasingly

Risible as they all

Shrink into each other,

Condensing on approach.

If they fly right at you,

Right at your eye, they risk

Shrinking so small they’ll go

Straight into your pupil.

That’s an end of being

Feral, once they’ve blundered

Into the skull of you.

They’re stuck as part of you.

Deep enough in desert,

The angels disappear.

Why is that? You would think

They’d cluster more thickly

In haunts of prophecy.

Maybe the mind empties

When there’s enough, too much

Blazing sun then starlight.

Could be that’s exactly

Why desert prophecies—

Let one stray angel free

In emptiness and see.

It’s sad they’re not alive,

But not for them. It’s sad,

But it’s a relief, but

Not for them. What are they

Then? All these clouds of gnats

You’re reading in, and yet

You don’t know yet? They’re here.

Every line’s nonliving

Feral angels, shrinking

On inspection to fit

Easily in your brain,

Blowing up gigantic

To fit the universe,

And always almost you,

You, living thing swimming

Among them who either

Tamed or abandoned them,

Authored or was authored

By them. You understand.

You are the heart of them

Who have no hearts, only

Thoughts, wings, and suggestions,

And, for worse or better,

You are the face of them.

When night comes cold enough,

They will start to retreat.

All those winters they danced

On the ice, flew through snow

And seemed immune to cold,

Not true living beings,

But something finally

Will turn too much for them.

It could be you’re going.

Or it could be you’re not

Capable of being

The face and heart of them.

It seems like they themselves

Should never disappear

After having escaped

The confines of bodies

They served, bodies that lived

And died as animals.

In the right kind of night

Feral angels retreat

To be nothing other

Than sticks scattered around,

Smudges on old buildings,

Scratches on leaning cliffs.

They’ve been in-between things,

Animated agents

Without lives of their own,

But half-wild as they seem

They’ll go back to being

Facts of ordinary,

Meaningless existence

Once they’re not recognized,

Once cold night takes away

The eyes that recognized

Them as almost creatures.

They’ll settle, specks in dust.

The end, for them, isn’t

Death or oblivion.

For them, the end is loss

Of anyone to think

Through them. For now you watch,

As they seem determined

To uncover the clues

Of something only they

Could care about, flying

Gnats and shadow monsters,

Investigating cracks

In the world, finding you.

Black-winged gnats that fly at the light,

Angels wait to watch you tonight.

The Tourists of Nonnarrative Surprise

Sequence isn’t story.
It’s more as well as less
Surprising. Actual

Sequence by the wayside
Has gone something like this—
It’s a bright afternoon

On the snowy mesa,
Mountains in the background.
Mule deer and wild turkeys

Pass by at intervals.
When a car pulls over,
And three people get out—

Two men, one woman,
All with cameras, all
Young adults—no surprise,

They start taking selfies.
But then the men drop trow’
For one pic; the woman

Yanks up her blouse. Before
They get back in the car,
They’ve taken a series

Of pictures of bellies,
Bums, boobs, and bared crotches.
Satisfied, they drive on.

The road remains empty
For ten minutes or so.
The next car also parks.

One man and two women,
All with cameras, all
Young adults, clamber out.

They start taking selfies.
The women wear hijabs.
The man keeps his coat on.

They pose in the exact spots
As the bare-assed trio
And with the same backdrop.

Another ten minutes
After that grouping’s gone,
A pickup truck pulls up,

And out pile a woman,
Two young men in ball caps,
And two slobbery dogs.

The dogs run off to play.
The three people, who all
Have cameras in hand,

Start to take their selfies,
Posing in the same spots,
As the previous folks,

And with the same backdrop.
Then they call back their dogs
And drive off in their truck.

Oh, if you only knew,
Any of you, the ghosts
In your air, your surprise.

There Are No Realist Novels

It’s not that life
Never wraps up
Neatly as tales
And comedies.

It does, daily.
Life is tidy
In many ways,
Just serial,

Relentlessly.
TV sitcoms
And newspaper
Funny pages

Caught life’s rhythms,
If not the slow
Wear and tear life
Adds to its shows.

An Experimental Serpentine

Illustrate the inner life
Of the character. Advance
The story. Listen to Paul

Williams. Listen to Sondheim.
Lyrics are little machines,
Sails and steamboats on the waves.

They bring you across the waters.
The journey is the message.
It’s genius when you find

They left you stranded somewhere
Unexpected. It’s simple
Storytelling when you land

Where you expected to go.
Technology, either way.
Now take away the inner

Life of the character. Take
Away the directional
Compass points of the story.

Take away the melody.
What you’ve got left’s the shipwreck,
When the bodiless serpent

Opens its eyes and fixes
Them on the frame of your boat.
What you’ve got left’s poetry.

It’s a mess. You’ll drown in it,
And no one to watch you sink
But the words’ eyes. They seem nice.

Desert Ash

Who knows what this tree is,
Really? One family
Lived for years with a pair,

One a careful planting,
Already near mature.
The other volunteered,

A spindly, silver-barked
Sapling that just appeared
Out of a hedge one year.

The intruder they let
Grow through several winters,
Until they decided

It looked weird and sawed it
Off just above the ground.
It didn’t belong there.

The nursery transplant
They admired for its shade,
How it thrived in the heat,

Kept its leaves late, and shed
Them all in one neat heap
In a week, every year.

One day, a visitor
Encouraged them to see
Just what kind of a tree

They had there. Desert ash,
They concluded, after
Consulting some software.

Observations from the Field

Among the social insects,
There’s a species that shelters
In castles of their own spit

They cement against the wind.
These structures can sometimes rise
As if reaching for the sky, 

As the individuals
Always seek to be central
To the densest deposits

Of thickest cemented spit,
And since winds erode their walls
Quickly from the outside in.

The insects on the margins
Are far the most numerous
And productive of fresh spit,

But they spend most of their lives
Exposed to the wind, losing
Shelter fast as they make it.

It’s actually their bodies,
Linked by a little spittle,
That effectively function

Like an exoskeleton
For the entire colony
To bear the brunt of the wind.

The deeper inside you get,
The fewer, softer insects,
More and more encased in spit,

Protected from the outer
World of the relentless winds
And sculpted ever higher,

More pleasantly, securely
In their spiral pyramid.
No one knows how they do this.

A Funeral in Absentia

The preacher never uses the word
Haunting, but you can see she’s haunted

By how many long sermons she’s heard
And those jokes about women preaching

Made by men haunted by other men
Haunted by earlier sermons’ words.

She’s compensating, friendly-solemn,
As she walks us through her homily.

She knows half the people here are here
For reasons other than faith or fear.

Most have come to feel the ritual
Of farewell to an old acquaintance,

For closure, as folks say nowadays.
Folks say a lot of things nowadays

In new words or old words used new ways.
Hashtag, imposter syndrome, reboot,

Ghost. That’s the best, the new use of ghost,
Since, now, instead of haunting people,

Ghosting drifts the other direction
To become wholly unreachable.

To ghost as a verb means to abstain
From replying, to absent oneself

From any further interaction.
Thus, for the first time in history,

The term approximates how things are
That caused you to invent terms like it

For mysterious, aching absence,
Not because the past is haunting you

But because you can no longer raise
A response from the pasts you talk to.