New School

At our first PTA meeting at our daughter's new

school, my wife has to give me a little bit of a prod.

The dad in charge of the dad's maintenance muster roll,

Paul, gives me a firm handclasp and a welcoming smile.

While we talk, I notice details in the multi-purpose space:

faces of celebrities drinking milk, the piano, the stage.

Age has made me able to enter a school by the front door

grace on my shoulders, but I flash back to third grade.

April we moved to a new school in Hawaii, a new place

all over. The school buildings were military barrack style.

God, I stared up at the windows that opened with a long pole

through group time and reading time and math squad,

poor new kid, trying to keep the tears in his head until two.

Homecoming

I’ve been edging toward your return since last Saturday.

There’s no question that serving as you have is selfless

in a way. When you flew out in 08 to put your life

on the line for this country and its changing ideals,

Katelyn, God bless her, hardly knew that you had gone.

But she grew to feel it. From me, perhaps. I can’t reckon

if the emails and videos and Iraqi Xmas gifts helped her

touch your presence or your long absence. Anyway

I told you how she salutes each and every American flag,

the ones in the neighborhood and the one at the mall.

Believe it or not, she’s turned six and grown so tall

and graceful. She’s pushing her boundaries, says her dad

is on her side, it doesn’t matter if he’s so far away.

You know, she can read most of the Berenstain Bears

by herself. Did I tell you? Our pastor and our flock

have changed minds about things I thought were certain.

I hardly know anymore what to tell Kate is really real.

Now here you are in your kitchen again with your wife.

Anyway, I don’t know where to start to confess

about what’s gone through me since you were away.

Everything that starts does not have an end [Song]

Everywhere I put you, you span outward again

I cannot place the breath sounds of your voice

Which seem to peter out towards the end

As if what sustained you was stopping short.

Some people make more promises than can be counted.

Some people don’t belong to a place on a map.

Some people carry their heart full of holes, unrepaired.

Unrepentant,

Unrelenting.

Don’t tell me it’s holy, as if you cared

As if I was some kind of reckless sap

Who could be turned cartographic by you, after you flouted

Every highway ribbon, unbolted the cavorting

horses on every carousel. As if to send

the breathless breath of every choice

Flying outward, placeless, never to land.

Another moon

Another moon

It must be a different time as the hour is late & I finally got enough sleep tonight.
It must be another moon as ours set in the dark a while ago now.
It must be another you as yours went to bed knowing when.
& here I am beneath your kisses from up high
light filtered shadows cast figments of polka dotted sighs
as fingetips grasp wisps of skin.
Bend down bough
& let me get on & ride you into that other moonlight.

IMUNURI prompt: Onion Rhyme

Write a poem that uses rhyme after the pattern inside an onion.
In other words, the two lines in the middle of your poem should rhyme. The lines before and after this central couplet should rhyme with each other. The lines before and after the central quatrain should rhyme with each other, and so on, outward, so that the first and last lines of the poem rhyme with each other. (You will probably be writing an even number of lines.)

Sample rhyme schemes:
6 lines: abccba
10 lines: abcdeedcba
20 lines: abcdefghijjihgfedcba
52 lines: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedbca


keywords: onion, poem, your name