My daughter writes a poem
Rings in the water multiply with each drop
One more songbird is born to the stone forest
One more pair of wings over the smoking crater
Arturo Gatti vs Micky Ward, Round 9
May 18, 2002
What held them up
After so many strikes to body and head,
Both bleeding, bruised, and battered,
The canvas bespattered with their blood,
Blow-by-blow the brawlers battled,
They punched with pain and passion,
Their pugnacity profound and pitiless,
Their courage conjuring Greek gods of war
And a tragedy of trajectory
In which a fight can never end.
“Come on, come on,” the combatants
Beckoned to each other.
Dying, they never felt more alive.
The Backs of My Hands
“Look, I’ve written your names
on the backs of my hands…” Isaiah 49: 15-18
I look at the dorsal aspect of my hands,
The skin is growing transparent,
It looks like rippling waters.
Whatever else is in my veins
Runs out the tips of my fingers.
Age spots no longer distress me,
There’s nothing I can grasp
With the backs of my hands,
Nothing I can hold or possess
Except the names written there
And the heavens above.
The Tears they Shed
I regret not giving you diamonds
But it’s a spring day and snowing
And on every spring leaf
I give you the radiant jewellery
Of freshly fallen snowflakes
And the tears they shed
Death and the Green Moon
Visiting the forest
You experience change
Trees start to waken
Relaxing their limbs
Like the old doing Tai Chi
A few move about
Looking for water
To put down roots
Others you’ve known
For many years
Aren’t breathing
They might not be dead
Listen and they speak
It’s nature’s peace
To die and rot
To be and not
There’s a presence
Both in earth and air
Exult in your age
The forest is saying
When you look up
And see a green moon
Forget everything
You are everything
Jazz Show
for Josie
That jazz show raised the dead
They danced like the bones of music
The music was pumping blood
Animating their dust into flesh
That music was shooting guns
Into the streets of being alive
Drums unsettled the serpents
The earth opened under them
Trumpets were speaking
In the tongues of angels
The sax deep-kissed a lover
Until both felt the rapture
Over the devil of time
The bassist thrashed at a rhythm
And the piano lifted all her legs
Like a spider dancing on a web
Day Before the Eclipse
Nature is already in preparation
The sky puts down large blankets
For the sun to lay its head
Hospitals plan for the abandonment
Wiccans gather in circles
Scientists mark the minutes
In black books no one will see
Birds will fly into the penumbra
Like ashes from a dead fire
Statues of faith will be blinded
Gabriel will blow his trumpet
Somewhere a war won’t end
Everywhere people are suffering
Some will become zombies
As though in the occultation
Five minutes of fentanyl
Will occlude eternity for all
Those Who are not Loved
Are like prisoners of life
The minute born is time served
They crash imaginary borders
To enter the freedom of a cage
They are like the dust of Gaza
The diseased of the desert
The displaced of war
And untraced of genocide
The unloved and innocent
Are enemies of entitlement
The poor and the unloved
Share an address in a living hell
They are like the unborn
Bearing our burden
Close Encounters in Costa Rica
Yellow eyes of an eyelash viper
The sun in a coil
Seeds in the lotus
A venomous flowering of vision
Fruit with fangs
Our guide stops my hand
From reaching for the illusion
The Sweeper
After my father cut my hair
I swept up the clippings
Something about doing that
The peace of it
The closeness
The sweeping motion
Of my mind
Made me think I’d existed
Many times before
And so did I and I
Salvatore Ala 