Invisible Giant
We cracked
Cold pops
In the desert air
As boys in a Ramadan
Twilight
With what coins
We could
We bought
Hot candies too
And settled
To enjoy
Them on a flattened
Construction site between
Honeycomb condominiums
Dust and Barqawi’s
Gauloises cigarettes
Then it must have
Been one of us first
Maybe a little playful
Toss
So one stone
Landed
On one boy’s
Patella
And as suddenly as dark
Arrived fully
Two teams were magicked
Into place
Opposite each other
On this expanse
Flattened for building
And rocks flew through
The air unseen
Until they exploded
Amid shouts on
Piled rebar these
Projectiles that felt
Like seamless baseballs
In my right hand
Then midair became
Very real rocks again
The kind that could split
Foreheads zinging
Gleefully with the threat
Of blood which
Foreshadowed
Itself in my bellow-like
Lungs so I could
Taste
The eventuality
That never came
Because the murderous
Play stopped before
Anyone realized that end
As we grew tired
Or more accurately
Saved face
By clutching our chests to
Cover our fear
And looking back
I’m no longer sure if
We threw these
Everyday weapons
At our friends
Or if an invisible giant
Towered between teams
Dodging the stones
At the top of their arc
While we tried to kill
Him together.
And/Or
Piles of heavy
keys that
stand in
for doorways you
once could
stand in;
Cartloads
of watermelons
that unfurl
in place of
flags;
The making of
a people
into a question;
And/Or
A particular
dirt;
Perhaps
an old olive;
And/Or
Sacred aslyum for
former locals;
Date palm
fronds
etched with
the Word;
An orange
rolling
through time;
Its seeds
spread by a
people insistent
on existing;
And/Or
That river
we all
sing about;
That river
we seem bent
on replacing with
darker waters.
Pigskin
The good hometown families gather at the
Brewery on Friday afternoon and because it’s a
Brewery not a bar the children play also
In the woodchips and through the ankles
Of old men who howl with laughter slamming
Pint glasses down a little hard on the table so
Some beer spills into little frothy rings that
Settle and link smiling faces across the table
While across the street across a long lawn of
Short cropped grass behind the matte walls
Of the windowless contemporary factory without
Smoke stacks the clean shaven men who were
The boys at the high school who so excelled with the pig-
Skin who defeated our enemies at homecoming
On a lighted Friday senior year now wrap up their
Workweeks this way wrapping the nitroglycerin picric
Acid lead azide neatly in titanium alloy with care and
Ease no sweat risking to drop from a brow so clean
Behind the matte walls and put a last one for the week
In a box that will board the Burlington Santa Fe line and
Make it’s way to the mighty port at Houston to glide
Hugely crated across the tamed Atlantic sliding along
A dotted line to a hangar where crewcut boys unload
The same ones who will send these packages spiraling
Through the sky per the old men’s directions these
Packages that will slam down hard on a Friday
Afternoon on families with children just out of
Prayer spilling out of the building across the grounds
Just as the packages slam down hard leaving just
Rings just ankles and woodchips the
Distant handiwork of the hometown boys
Who defeated our enemies at homecoming.
Skookum Atlas 