​Keepsake for Isky
response to Iskandar Haggarty's “Keepsake”

the final night of being three, I fell asleep
on a rag rug on the floor belonging
to a friend and colleague of my mother's

I fell asleep to the quiet knock of a sewing
machine's treadle, the lulls and whispered
shifting of the fabric beneath the needle

a dawn, and after the ladies had taken cups
of tea for breakfast, I was given a soft
gift like a small pillow, stuffed turtle

with a circle of green and purple tie-dye
for its upper carapace, deep blue belly,
head and feet and tail, these last all flat

and could be tucked up, hidden underneath
the body. sixteen years later, a friend had
graduated with an archaeology degree, was

traveling to southern Europe and the Mid-
East to work on digs, and she made space
inside her suitcase for an ancient turtle

with a green and purple tie-dyed carapace,
and she took the comfortable companion of my
childhood with her, back across the ocean,

and when she was in Turkey, and encountered
an empty-handed child on the street watching
other children with their toys, she offered

that soft gift that meant so much to me when
i was small. and that child, if living, is also
now no longer a child, and I haven't heard

from my ruins-loving friend since just after
when she told me of the giving. it's been
twenty-eight years more, and I sometimes

wonder, find myself browsing the internet
for turtle facts and wondering: yes, it was
a small turtle, and the smaller species mostly

live some thirty, forty years, but the larger
ones can live for eighty, sometimes more.
nothing I have found in online browsing is

definitive, I've found nothing that rules out
the possibility that a green and purple soft-
shelled turtle of uncertain species couldn't

still be in existence out there somewhere.





Interval
for Jim Lewis

sometimes the intervals between
the five-times prayers become
suddenly drought-stricken, parched

and barren. the oases we've come
to expect upon the map of day
shimmer once and dissolve into

whatever sort of heaven has been
established for mirages. and in
that haze, those dusty moments,

i've found an unexpected haven,
a measure of relief and peace
in remembering that this small

planet's round, and even though
i myself am dehydrating in between
the five-time sips of the divine,

somewhere on the planet it is also
dawn, and somewhere midday, late
evening, just before and after sunset

and others in those places stand
and kneel, even now, and these
postures of devotion rise and fall

as waves around the globe. and i
find, also inside this blessed vision
of refreshment: you. somewhere,

some when upon some clock in
some other time-zone, you are out
there somewhere, pen to paper.

and truly, this is all i ever need.

​



Rough Beast
poem beginning and ending with lines from “Poet's Passion" by Robert C. Knox

Large truths, the simplest ones really,
stumble into the room / and you hug them
and cry. Adulthood, and some poets have

become black walnuts. What's of value 
in us is encased in a hard, protective

shell, and around that, a further layer,
fruit of sorts, but so acrid that when
a bag of it is crushed and dropped into

the creek, bluegills and sunfish rise
and float along the surface, bellies up.

Also a dye, like those ink bombs they
attach to clothing to discourage stealing
expensive pieces from the fancy stores.

Who taught us this? When did we become
convinced the only way to be of value

is to become untouchable and difficult?
Who taught us that what treasures there
might be hidden deep within us require

Cerberus-class security to prevent them
from being stolen? We have twisted myths.

Cerberus was never as much a guard against
thieves and intruders; he has been charged
with keeping those already in the chasms

of the underworld from leaving the Hades,
shades of our own making, dark caverns

of stagnation. Cerberus is fiercely loyal
and obedient, but only to his master. How
can we, caught behind him, return to light?

Tell us, enlightened one, / ‘What is life?’
It’s love. Next question.