Stanzaic Stylings

DEAREST DEBORAH    Sometimes behind a curtain, An antique closet with a hundred pieces of gold Or a young man carving Jatoba wood into frames Or monarch butterflies, milkweed, and healthy hair.    Behind the door, a simplicity of sound And in this room, the sweet sweat of huckleberry juice. I cannot choose enough of any of these. I can choose you, like a forest of rain.   Never is it enough to seek a clean place Freshly imprinted with the small of your foot, Decorated with the easy touch of your fingerprints, And all of the breath in my world Has this need to be knotted with All of the breath in yours.   Will crab grass grow stronger after the storm? This part is not in me. I can Build a porch, change a fitting, Lay out a pallet of down. This is in me. I can quilt a blanket, Tune the strings of my kora, Find a place to be with you forever And later, when you come upon me late, It will not matter wh...

BEGINNINGS   You know everything has its own inherent qualities. Mine are to be deep and hard to cross.                                      — King of the Ocean to King Rama in  Phi Kah Phi Lam   FIRST   I have the strangest dreamslide. Images slip like smiles through landscapes of fence and caressed brush. I never imagined a line of hose could stretch so far or that I could run as fast as the spray of water.   Everywhere is a story sky and the Tree of Life misplaced in the  Garden  of  Eve comes to seed as stock root reinventing itself after the picking, comes to fruit like the head of Bathala after the burying.   Look to the herb bunched with yellowed fingers. Study the face of the coconut. Find the slits in the bamboo. Seek o...

A TRAIL OF GHOSTS AND LEGENDS   That year winter did not come and we waited for it, the wind from the south  forcing the tree to throw away their possessions. Evergreens gathered the colors of blood and coagulated browns and a great smoky mix rose  from the ghost white strands  along the  Missouri . We walked  the track Lewis and  Clark  walked stopping before the pawpaw tree  where, almost out of food, one of them ordered the men  to gather as much fruit  as they could carry and then  we continued walking what they walked.

THE ROOM OF MEDIATION I no longer can tolerate this repetition of speech as if As if You only visit the stone room.   The stone room?   The whisky spit, the beer gallows, the wine cells, vodka vodka, The noisy space of drunks Crushing the night with loudness and crow caws, Off-colored perfume breath, Off-colored odors of body  Too much of all things.   Oh.   Son, "oh" is not enough.   "Oh" is all I have.   The stone room is only one room from the bone board And the bone board is too close to the sea. You cannot swim. I have seen men drown is the flesh of air, Blood from carcasses and corpses, Broken glass and shards of shell. Oh. Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Po...