Lyman, a glory hole

Before noon, the Lyman Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
floods its congregation into the streets,
but the holiness evaporates in half an hour.

On hollow flats, the city acres stretch along
Interstate 80, Wyoming Highway 30,
removed from Bighorn and the buttes
and away from Green River and green Idaho.

Here, the Shoshone came for piñon harvest
in late summer but now New Americans
come for cheap real estate—a solace
for isolated families and broken bachelors.

These men talk of the past and Boise
where they could find an honest strip club.
They carry knives to carve their vocabulary
into diner tables and stab a glory hole into the toilet stall.

Though, none have courage enough to fuck a stranger
as they fester in work then liquored exhaustion.
Elsewhere, they would manifest crime and perversion,
but this town gives no opportunity for either.

I accelerated a 16-foot Penske back to the interstate
with blended bourbon and gasoline,
leaving Lyman, its Christians,
and the grime of isolation.

Family, join me in a tradition of joy

Family, join me in a tradition of joy
we never cultivated before.

Sow christmas and cinema
and 'company at the door'
across the warming spring dirt.

Winter has been my forced strength
and solemnity has been yours;
silence has been my defense
and morality has been yours.

At nine, I was stubborn at each command
to read aloud or volunteer an answer
of 'milky way' or '56' or 'Jefferson.'

I taught myself resistance
to Mom's goddamn protocol
of openness and kindness
to my unknown cousins.

My silence bred quiet pride
at a classmate's misspoken word
or Pastor's mistaken Salvation metaphor.

I gained too early the habit
of erased contentment.

I let myself be unknowable
for the safety of my pride
and false construct of my happiness.

Family, come with me and kill
this thief of joy.

I made art my joy's surrogate,
enraptured in the lines and space and color
of cheap cereal packaging
and company letterhead.

I bore my faith through
eyesight and fingertips,
shaping glass into broad elms,
paint into planets, and ink into
the silhouettes of four women.

I measured myself against Monet,
thankful for the impossible distance
and willing to let his godly brushstrokes
be my severed inroads to joy.

Family, find a new direction; don't follow me
when I'm outside my mind and inside film.

Poetry grew downward through us all
the way rain dampens an old oak--
from father to sister to each brother to me,
and I'm nourished by the trickle.

In the ink rows I find the margin of Impressionism,
freeing me from my sureness in color.

Monet lets me doubt the blueness
of morning port, and Manet reminds me
the surreal tint of blood red.

Family, walk in step with me
and let approximation free you.

Dad made breakfast

While I awoke to sweat, stress and a raw heart,
Dad made breakfast in a once-blue bathrobe.

His quiet concentration of prayer and tiredness
were hemispheres to mirror the morning Earth.

He joined ancient Hebrew texts with the American
tradition of employment, then unemployment.

He purified his heart over oatmeal and fruit—
a heart, whole, like a bread advertisement.

Early, I fought brokenness with only cold water.
God forgive my slowness in understanding him.

Ninety-five

"I think I would live to one hundred,
but I've run out of husbands,"
said Grandmother
on the eve of ninety-five.

"Oh, but God gave me good ones,
they never cursed or yelled,
they were good to me.

"On our move, Bill told me
'I'm going to spend the rest
of my life making you happy'
and I just laughed

"that will last three months, I thought
but he sure was a good husband.

"The cigarettes caught up with them.
You know, in my generation,
if you were a man,
and you didn't smoke at thirteen,
you were a sissy.

"It would be something to live
to be one hundred, yes,
they were good men."

The wildflowers

The wildflowers from your wedding strain
from my windowsill to filtered sun.

They grow soft like hair from black soil,
roots contained in peanut butter jars.

You were braided together with rings,
sowing, even in summer, a new plot.

A conversion

My mother cried, my father frowned,
and the living room grew tense and full
like the Tolstoy I sheltered behind
as my brother admitted atheism.

Calgary customs

Calgary customs dissected my heart,
opening handwritten notes
collected in my wallet,

unpacking my clothes, and cycling
through photographs and phone
calls like a gossip.

I was whittled down to my marrow
and brother to a guitarist with
his pockets out too.

The empty airport exhaled when I,
like a stray, limped outside
in search of sanctuary.

White practice jerseys

White practice jerseys and shoulder pads outpaced my
lungs each season and I lagged heavyhearted.

So instead I learned the light patterns of my checkerboard
campus with a camera for companionship,

but black, knit flowers in hovering lace swathed
her dress and me—I never could breathe.

Open air

Grandpa made hot air balloons
from light bulbs and wire.

I imagined them sailing
through the kitchen window.

I too needed an escape
to fresher sky:

he with emphysema,
and I with asthma.

Ninety-three

After ninety-three years of her life
and twenty-one of mine,
after she learned the date
and told stories
of her children as children,

Grandmother said to me,
"You're a good man–
you have the integrity
of your father."

I bent down and said I hoped so,
maybe someday at least.