For Marie Howe

When I read your poems
I see the underdark
inside me

& I can hear it singing

like a chainsaw

like an echo from a tomb
with the stone rolled away

like a cracked melody
in the sore throat
of a drowned god

this human truth
that to be alive
is to be
busy
dying

& yet sometimes a poet
comes along

& says:

I am split open
like you

come wither & bend
& break at
the meadow edge

like a crooked branch
in a spoken epic

Oh Marie—

startled vigilance
intricate affection
unrequested astonishment

these are what you hold
in the two hands
of your poems

we die & die & die
& dance in our dying

& music is all we know
of time

& in the midmost thisness
we find ourselves lost

& the only thing I know
about life & poetry

is to invoke your words:

Often,

I’m lonely.

Sometimes

a joy pours

through me

so immense.

Self-Portrait as a Ruth Stone Poem

The poem of the self blooms into a wound,
a barnacle, a carbuncle, a star
that swoons through the crescent moon an eyelash
blown from a fingertip seems to want to
make. The world is made from such semblances.
Such hysterias decode themselves here.
On the point of a rusty safety pin,
John Milton’s fallen hosts are foxtrotting
through the opening decades of a new
millennium. They are making light of
Einstein’s famous theories. All we have is
making light, and dust motes ascending beams,
and the ladybug you see clinging to
the outside of the window of these words.

Poem Written During the First One Hundred Days of the Second Trump Administration After Learning that Scientists have Resurrected the Extinct Dire Wolf

What I require,
            of course,
is fire,

           a spark to set
the inveterate
           trap of the room

of the world ablaze,
           and so, to consume
itself anew.

           Everything burns
like DNA
           arrayed

in the tooth
           of a truth
that is gnawing away

           at the fray
of too much
           Apocalypse.

I eclipse
           the need
for seeds

           of comfort
in a country
           that constantly

cedes its preamble
           and amendments
to greed

           and other accoutrements
of dishonor,
           the deadbolts

and jolts
           and slain seraphim
of a battle hymn

           hummed in reverse.
I bless,
           curse, and address

this creature in me
           that howls out
across the sacred tree

           of millennia,
to nudge the muzzle
           of the cubs

scavenging the dark
           in the wreck of us,
to be safe

           in the kindling
and kerosene
           of a feeling,

to feel time
           and death
and sunlight

           in my bones,
and to remain
           trained by

the wilderness
           roaming free
through my right

           hemisphere,
and staining red
           the incisors

of my dreams,
           lain open
in a flower’s throat.

A riot of life blooms from a whale carcass

after a school of makos
            tear off its tail & caudal
fin; crabs & hagfish scavenge
                      its flesh, lemon sharks burrow
           through its blubber, microbes course

through the highways of ribcage
           & vertebrae, huge writhing
masses of worms emerge from
                      the ooze beneath its decayed
           bulk & submarine currents

burst it into a flurry
           of nourishing rot dispersed
throughout the globe’s five oceans.
                      Meanwhile, we hominids walk
           the Earth only half-aware

of the biomes & food chains
           we carry in our bones, how
we are all squalled & breaking
                      apart in a vast dark deep,
           feeding into an echo

song that is & is not us,
           sea of seething metered in
first to last breath & all those
                      in between, remora near
           the gill of my own brief bright

saying. Reader, this is all
           I want to sing you: brittle
star, scotoplane, mantis shrimp,
                      nudibranch, hairy frogfish,
           anemone & giant squid.

Pity the Barefoot Pigeon

Whose feet alight on the unfriendly streets

Unprotected from glass shards & garbage

Whose only moccasin is empty air

Whose talons won’t ascend escalators

Plush inside a Ferragamo loafer

Who will never tread the avenues in

Unlaced Timberlands, whose tiny pair

Of limited-edition Grateful Dead

X Nike SB Dunk Lows in yellow

Will remain mint in the box forever

Whose avian orthopedics are

Unknowable under the auspices

Of this poem, but whose commitment to

Staying unshod in the sunlight is worth

Praising because those of us who allow

Ourselves to walk and fly and land naked

Amidst the news of missile strikes and wars

And bad presidents and alligator

Attacks and conclaves and deportations

Will stay open to the wound happiness

Gouges into the hostile boulevards

Flying flying under our hungry beaks

Ars Poetica: An Incomplete History of My Heart for My Children When They Grow Up

Poem: my throat, a crocus opening—

© Dante DiStefano, all rights reserved.