"The Raccoon" by Michael Collier

The Raccoon
by Michael Collier

Outside our window we hear it licking
its paws on the fire-escape landing.
If we drew back the curtains, we'd see
its night eyes and the way it presides

over the hollow bones of a pigeon,
and how the air shaft is a vertical tunnel,
a passageway to the roof where it lives
among tar buckets and discarded mops.

Nightly we hear it praying the prayer
of paws passed over muzzle, the cleaning
and washing before it eats. We see its
shadow descending outside, beyond the opaque glass

of the bathroom window, hear the click of its nails
on the metal stairs. And what does it mean
to always see your passion embodied
in some other life, to stand near the one

who has prayed over your body and listen
together to what's beyond, what's outside,
and to know that what's missing is not something
the future will bring or time complete?

"2212 West Flower Street" by Michael Collier

2212 West Flower Street
by Michael Collier

When I think of the man who lived in the house
behind ours and how he killed his wife
and then went into his own back yard,
a few short feet from my bedroom window,
and put the blue-black barrel of his 30.06
inside his mouth and pulled the trigger,
I do not think about how much of the barrel
he had to swallow before his fingers reached the trigger,
nor the bullet that passed out the back of his neck,
nor the wild orbit of blood that followed
his crazy dance before he collapsed in a clatter
over the trash cans, which woke me.

Instead I think of how quickly his neighbors restored
his humanity, remembering his passion
for stars which brought him into his yard
on clear nights, with a telescope and a tripod,
or the way he stood in the alley in his rubber boots
and emptied the red slurry from his rock tumblers
before he washed the glassy chunks of agate
and petrified wood. And we remembered, too,
the goose-neck lamp on the kitchen table
that burned after dinner and how he worked
in its bright circle to fashion flied and lures.
The hook held firmly in a jeweler's vise,

while he wound the nylon thread around the haft
and feathers. And bending closer to the light,
he concentrated on typing the knots, pulling them tight
against the coiled threads. And bending closer still,
turning his head slightly toward the window,
his eyes lost in the dark yard, he took the thread ends
in his teeth and chewed them free. Perhaps he saw us
standing on the sidewalk watching him, perhaps he didn't.
He was a man so much involved with what he did,
and what he did was so much of his loneliness,
our presence didn't matter. No one's did.
So careful and precise were all his passions,

he must have felt the hook with its tiny barbs
against his lip, sharp and trigger-shaped.
It must have been a common danger for him-
the wet clear membrane of his mouth threatened
by the flies and lures, the beautiful enticements
he made with his own hands and the small loose
thread ends which clung to the roof of his mouth
and which he tried to spit out like an annoyance
that would choke him.

"After" by Martha Collins

After
by Martha Collins

After the scattering, after the night of shattered
glass, broken stones, scrawls, marked
houses, chalked walls, after the counter-
threats, shouts, shots against the scattered
unhoused stones, after the bombs from over
the ocean, the desert, after oil has mixed
with blood, after the blossoming desert is bombed
to sand and risen again to blossom, though this
is more than the story tells, the story, simply
begun with the scattering, ends with the gathering
in again from distant cities, countries, corners,
basements, caves where children were hidden, graves
whose bones were moved to be burned, ashes that would
not burn, from earth, from air, the people will come
together, they will ride in carts and trains
and cars, they will walk and run, and this
is the story, the people will cross the oceans,
they will cross the rivers on bridges made
of paper, blank and inked and printed and painted
paper bridges will bring them together, over
the waters the borders the wars will be over, under
the paper bridges that bridge the most the best we can.

"Dotted Line" by Martha Collins

Dotted Line
by Martha Collins

Cut here, and the line
disappears, step up,

please, fill in the blank, Jesus
wants you for a sunbeam.

No to God? Then Someone's
coming, or can we piece it

together, with only our arms,
when they're armed to the teeth?

Last night, guns held
by the citizens killed the citizens

of a country, see, on this list.
We bought the guns, our money

burned the crops.
(But hey, kids, we're still

your folks-we name our planes
for girls, our bombs for boys.)

Torn paper, rip, slit where things
keep falling in or out, it depends

which side you're on-
But give us a hand

and we'll give you tow,
if you look the blank

in the face it's a door,
opening onto fields where wheat

is waving Hello, it's bread
for anyone's table, even yours.

A Home, Unwelcome

Written during a class exercise on 4/1/10.

A Home, Unwelcome

shadows stretching across

wooden planks of a foyer

solitary lamplight glowing softly

hallway framed in bright white

a child’s handmade teddy bear

lying in the interrupt of light

one buttoned eye, the left went astray

half disappearing

in living room obscurity

"Drill" by Michael Collier

"Drill" by Michael Collier

When the fire bell rang its two short, one long
electric signal, the boys closest to the wall
of windows had to raise the blinds and close
the sashes, and then join the last of our line
as it snaked out the classroom onto the field
of asphalt where we stood, grade-by-grade,
until the principal appeared with her gold Timex.

We learned early that catastrophe must always
be attended in silence, that death prefers us
orderly and ordered, and that rules will save us
from the chaos of our fear, so that even
if we die, we die together, which was the calm
almost consoling thought I had each time
the yellow C.D. siren wailed and we would tuck
ourselves beneath out sturdy desktops.

Eyes averted from the windows,
we'd wait for the drill to pass or until
the nun's rosary no longer clicked and we could hear
her struggling to free herself from the leg-well
of her desk, and then her call for us to rise
and, like herself, brush off the dust gathered
on our clothes. And then the lessons resumed.
No thought of how easily we interred ourselves,

though at home each would dream the mushroom cloud,
the white cap of apocalypse whose funnel stem
sucked glass from windows, air from lungs,
and made all these rehearsals the sad and hollow
gestures that they were, for we knew it in our bones
that we would die, curled in a last defense-
head on knees, arms locked around legs-
the way I've seen it since in nursing homes

and hospices: forms bedsheets can't hide,
as if in death the body takes on the soul's
compact shape, acrobatic, posed to tumble free
of the desktop or bed and join the expanse
and wide scatter of debris.

How To

How To

breathe, Megan, breathe

inhale the sweet scent of Spring

pollen catching on nosehairs

descending to lungs, alveoli

there it rests

builds

breathe, Megan, breathe

take in the smog of your city

the fumes of exhausts

carcinogens invading

the body’s sanctity

is lost

breathe the sweet in

with the sour

the pleasing in with

the displeasure

breathe, breathe

breathe until you have

no breath left

no will in your body to live

all life’s breaths escaping

in one long exhale

and know that

this

is how to breathe