Who does not love an action verb,
the way it shouts, smacks, flexes muscle?
No matter how sinister—when it stalks, stabs,
fires, strangles, bombs, explodes—
you must admire its energy, and even
when it whimpers, cringes, shrinks, 
slumps down to rest, it jazzes up
our lines, foams like just opened beer.

But I’m also a lover of adjectives, side-kicks
of nouns, workhorses that provide
the scaffolding, landscapes, bodies,
furniture of our poems.
So many ideas suitcased in things.

My favorite adjectives shape-shift
from nouns or verbs—
summer, shuttered, weeping, shattered,
squat, curled, skirted, quarantine.

Not the adjective slackers—good, bad, ugly, nice—
the lazy, vague, overused, cliched.
Not the first thought, but the third, fourth, tenth.

Sometimes an adjective tells us just
the bare-boned facts or crucial detail—
is the tire flat? the wound festering?

And what they pair with matters—as in those buddy movies, 
nouns and adjectives can’t be too similar, need 
to have rough edges rubbing up against each other.  
Flesh not rotting, but corroded. Water sniffing.
How a well-placed adjective can skew 
an image—a woman pregnant
with fear. Smuggled words.
Alphabetized dictators. 

Taken to extremes, the oxymoron— 
a verbal tug of war that requires
the weight of a telling adjective,
a counterbalance that thrills.

Rusty, fickle, woozy—bring them on.
Sun-burnt, raw, knotted, crushed—
treat them right, give them a challenge,
they’ll rise, modest or bold or lithe, 
team members who know how 
to pass, or run with the ball.
                        

No more dog-eared yellow legal pads
with whole paragraphs xed out,
no more arrows and brackets like giant tongs 
lowering supplies to beleaguered troops,
no more replacement words flying over 
sentences like a squadron of jets.

Despite the ease with which it explodes 
wrong words and ferries lost lines
to their proper destination, not even
the computer could save this battle
we now try to teach, as if 
teaching such havoc were possible.

Who taught us? We don’t remember
anyone showing us the process, 
maps diagramming divisions
of thought, strategies for bringing
reinforcements, questions, 
lists, freewriting. Free!
Each arm and leg chained to ideas 
stampeding through a minefield. 
Bridge building, razing, patching, 
who taught this? Surely each of us
stumbled on it alone, hacking 
our way through the jungle
single-handed. Surely we never
talked about this mission. Wasn’t it 
damning, the sweat no spy
wants interrogators to see?

Not that we mean to slight our own teachers,
whose question marks parachuted down
our margins, dropping behind the lines
to infiltrate a country in chaos. They helped
as much as they could, but they let us know
it was our country, we had to save it.
                        

I flew because I prayed 
there was time to see her. 
The air was like gray fleece
and rank with decaying 
leaves. No one was there 
to meet me at the airport. 
I flew because I’d chosen 
to fly away. I promised 
my father I’d take 
the train but flew in, early. 
I would do it again,
for I knew he was lying.
I needed the truth 
he'd give me face to face. 
I flew—a protest, a waste,
a vain rebellion—
when nothing could fly me 
to her fast enough.