Laying in bed in Ashland, OR

Hello, Northwest - I missed you

I Would Steal Horses

for you, if there were any left,
give a dozen of the best
to your father, the auto mechanic
in the small town where you were born

and where he will die sometime by dark.
I am afraid of his hands, which have
rebuilt more of the small parts
of this world than I ever will.

I would sign treaties for you, take
every promise as the last lie, the last
point after which we both refuse the exact.

I would wrap us both in old blankets
hold every disease tight against our skin.

Maybe I Need You

This month has been one long search to places I didn't know were inside me. I'm pushing them out -- I'm depleting myself of the things I should have destroyed and conquered long long ago.

"Maybe I need you the way that big moon needs that open sea.

Maybe I didn't even know I was here until I saw you holding me.

Give me one room to come home to."

This is what we shall conquer when the earth is no longer ours

"Air Empathy" Jeffrey McDaniel

On the red-eye from Seattle, a two year-old
in the seat behind me screeches

his little guts out. Instead of dreaming
of stuffing a wad of duct tape

into his mouth, I envy him, how he lets
his pain hang out. I wish I too could drill

a pipeline into the fields of ache, tap
a howl. How long would I need to sob

before the lady beside me dropped
her fashion rag, dipped a palm

into the puddle of me? How many
squeals before another passenger

joined in? Soon the stewardess hunched
over the drink cart, the pilot gushing

into the controls, the entire plane, an arrow

of grief, quivering through the sky.