Always,
when you leave the house,
step into a car or off a bus, prepare
to die, let the accident that takes you
be one you embrace—the metal
that crumples as it cuts your body,
the stranger’s knife that enters you
sweetly, the stroke that fells motor
control—quick or slow, it’s coming.
You pass the date every year without
recognition, but it’s coming, so kiss
each day not knowing which one
will wear the magic number
of your decay.
Let every walk
you take be your last, let the resiny
pine sap on your hands be the sweetest
perfume, the knock and rock of the canoe
passing on the Connecticut river
you’re walking to be music, the downed
birch you step over decomposer’s heaven.
The mushrooms from last night’s rain
have been ushered into being. Birch-birthed
mini homes, tempting the bone-handled knife
you carry to cut them free, dirt to be brushed
off, then ferried home gently, sautéed
in butter with slivered garlic and a touch
of fresh grated ginger.
Put the one
that could kill you in your mouth;
savor your death, then spit it out.
Lake Squam
—for my brother Marc
Stroke for stroke in sync we kayak out,
our paddles cut and pull water past us.
I close my eyes for the count of five
and still come up swinging in time
with my older brother, born into this
rhythm, self same twist of wrist
and shoulders—what family’s must feel
singing in harmony with their other selves.
Here we are—poles apart politically--
living halfway across the country, but
this push-pull paddle stroking pulls us
together as we pull together, turning--
as one—into the channel the wealthy
Wheelock boys dynamited to create
two islands from one, grooving this
snake-like fifty-foot-long channel.
We take it in one hard pull and glide,
ducking branches, breezing over sub-
merged logs, until we break into our stride
pulling ourselves out on the other side.
David Allen Sullivan’s books include: Strong-Armed Angels, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a book of co-translation with Abbas Kadhim from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet, and Black Ice. He won the Mary Ballard Chapbook poetry prize for Take Wing, and his book of poems about the year he spent as a Fulbright lecturer in China, Seed Shell Ash, is forthcoming from Salmon Press. Nightjars, a long narrative poem about the friendship between an Iraqi interpreter and a US soldier is searching for a home. The first section won the Golden Walkman aural chapbook award and is available as a podcast. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz with his family. His poetry website is: https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website-1, a modern Chinese co-translation project is at: https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website-trans, and he’s searching for a publisher for an anthology of poetry about the paintings of Bosch and Bruegel he edited with his art historian mother who died recently.
when you leave the house,
step into a car or off a bus, prepare
to die, let the accident that takes you
be one you embrace—the metal
that crumples as it cuts your body,
the stranger’s knife that enters you
sweetly, the stroke that fells motor
control—quick or slow, it’s coming.
You pass the date every year without
recognition, but it’s coming, so kiss
each day not knowing which one
will wear the magic number
of your decay.
Let every walk
you take be your last, let the resiny
pine sap on your hands be the sweetest
perfume, the knock and rock of the canoe
passing on the Connecticut river
you’re walking to be music, the downed
birch you step over decomposer’s heaven.
The mushrooms from last night’s rain
have been ushered into being. Birch-birthed
mini homes, tempting the bone-handled knife
you carry to cut them free, dirt to be brushed
off, then ferried home gently, sautéed
in butter with slivered garlic and a touch
of fresh grated ginger.
Put the one
that could kill you in your mouth;
savor your death, then spit it out.
Lake Squam
—for my brother Marc
Stroke for stroke in sync we kayak out,
our paddles cut and pull water past us.
I close my eyes for the count of five
and still come up swinging in time
with my older brother, born into this
rhythm, self same twist of wrist
and shoulders—what family’s must feel
singing in harmony with their other selves.
Here we are—poles apart politically--
living halfway across the country, but
this push-pull paddle stroking pulls us
together as we pull together, turning--
as one—into the channel the wealthy
Wheelock boys dynamited to create
two islands from one, grooving this
snake-like fifty-foot-long channel.
We take it in one hard pull and glide,
ducking branches, breezing over sub-
merged logs, until we break into our stride
pulling ourselves out on the other side.
David Allen Sullivan’s books include: Strong-Armed Angels, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a book of co-translation with Abbas Kadhim from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet, and Black Ice. He won the Mary Ballard Chapbook poetry prize for Take Wing, and his book of poems about the year he spent as a Fulbright lecturer in China, Seed Shell Ash, is forthcoming from Salmon Press. Nightjars, a long narrative poem about the friendship between an Iraqi interpreter and a US soldier is searching for a home. The first section won the Golden Walkman aural chapbook award and is available as a podcast. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz with his family. His poetry website is: https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website-1, a modern Chinese co-translation project is at: https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website-trans, and he’s searching for a publisher for an anthology of poetry about the paintings of Bosch and Bruegel he edited with his art historian mother who died recently.