---

^{_{—Super Powers—}}

I imagine again the power

to move the pavement with my mind

on my walk back from the ATM

and stop traffic by willing

a Volkswagen out of my way

just as I am about to cross.

In today’s fantasy I am burning

up all the trash along the road

by a telekinetic muscle 

that grows stronger in my daydreams,

and hovering over the otherwise

indifferent crowds in angelic glory.

It is an enchanting temptation

to want to ease the anxiety

of uncertainty and fragility

with power to shape reality,

making your circumstances 

match your understanding

instead of the deeper work of changing

your understanding and being shaped

for the way the world should be. 

As if with secret codes I could

push the right buttons and withdraw

from the world of becoming.

But the universe is not a machine

for dispensing lessons or blessings

at auspicious times when planets align

by hidden mechanical rules.

We are made for being and being here

now and with the properties that make

the world temporary and on its way

by a path that requires us to learn

to cross in person from control to trust

in a maker and mover of muscles

and roads and angels and buttons

and codes and persons and magic.

---

^{_{—Morning Has Broken—}}

Morning has broken

my spirit and the blackbird

crowing over the corpse of its prey

has magnified the injury

and the noise on the sidewalk

when I open the window.

There is still light 

in the shifting clouds but the rain

dampens the hope of heaven

falling down today to muddy earth

and the garden statue of Jesus

where something might grow

if a better word were spoken

to fix the morning and the light

my spirit and all the birds 

scatter with darknesses

that are supposed to be

temporary like the sunset.

---

^{_{—Natural—}}

Cruelty spreads in the field out there

As natural as the kindness where

Both buds and thorns, dirty, green

Spring alike from deep roots unseen

Untended earth for now gives way

As mean vines shoot up holding sway

Over good seeds destined to win

Through virtue’s slow cultivation

The mortal fix a guarantee

That unkindness can only be

A temporary thriving thing

Till death plucks up evildoing

And life enduring spreads in me 

Overtaking inhumanity

Whose roots corrode in restored ground

And all the kindness lost is found

---

^{_{—A Narrow Fellow—}}

After Emily Dickinson

The road sighed in relief

A mud puddle fills the void

A few hours after raining

And leaning from the sidewalk

I can’t see myself at first

In the still and shallow murk

And didn’t try to look again

Wondering what I would have felt

To see my dirty self look up 

A narrow fellow in the street

Lying still but still aware

With suspicion in dark eyes

At my feet as if from death

Or swimming up from deep beyond

The boggy waters to the ground

So I take a shaky breath

Keep my reflection to myself

And step inside at home alive

---

---

june afternoon

heat

like a kitten

snagging 

my will 

to stay 

awake

in its claws

toying

with the 

remains

of my 

weekend

---

---

^{Ariel II}

We were living in a horse trailer the first night that it happened,

travelling from New Mexico to Texas and further East

to sell at some big shows my father had heard about.

I was sixteen, maybe fifteen—I just know it was a year or two before I left home—

my brother two years older.

Texas made sense because Austin had some festival. I remember my father sitting out on the bare plywood tables after dark, watching. He shouted a warning 

to someone who he thought was an innocent being taken in by a stuffed bra and false lashes.

She shot back: “I’m pretty sure he knows what he’s getting into.”

Louisiana didn’t make as much sense though.  We encountered nothing there but long stretches of highway 

going over water,

roadside signs for towns hidden by trees,

and vapory air that made my eyebrows itch.

Her mother was back home in New Mexico watching the baby. I rode up front, passenger seat, nearest the window. 

Forest green diesel pickup truck.  Caved in with dents.  Paint grayed over with age.  

I need to tell you details to put you in the scene. Are you there yet?

The problem with putting you, the reader, into the scene is that no matter how much I say I won’t be able to sense you there,

no matter how many details I give you you’re still in another location,

decades ahead of the event.

(Why am I giving you a map to a crime you’ll never be able to solve?)

My older brother would be locked in the horse trailer while we were on the road.

(It is because I want to warn you of something?

Of roads?

Of small spaces?

Of men?)

You are not there; you feel that you are.

I like using semicolons because it makes me feel like less like the girl who didn’t go to school.

Now that I think about it,

my father used to say riding in trailers was unsafe:

“What if the hitch breaks?”

I only rode in the horse trailer a few times, when I needed to cook something on the little camp stove hooked up to a propane tank.

Now that I think about it, that would have been doubly dangerous.

Maybe I just need you there so I can think about the situation from an outsider’s perspective,

From a normal person’s perspective. 

I’m hoping you are normal. 

I was always told that that there’s no such thing as normal, which always made me feel a little bit queasy. 

When I used that word I just meant

a part of the unknown space I didn’t know how to enter

where people went to school in the kind of busses that my father hoarded and parked all over the property.  He’d remove the seats and install shelving, line the shelves with banana boxes full of beads that I’d string, and sort and pack and unpack for shows.

I don’t know how I made soup, good-tasting soup, in a moving trailer—in the front part, right near the hitch where the floor bobbed up and down the most—without spilling anything

“You’re a good road cook”, my father would say. 

He was smart about people. 

I’m sure he knew how much of my desire to do rested on these compliments.

The Bayou.

The odd names for towns hidden in trees.

I should have been afraid to sleep

in the back part of the trailer in the wild 

in the pitch dark

in the middle of nowhere.

I don’t think I had seen enough movies

or read enough news to be scared

(I always dug for the funnies section whenever I came across a newspaper).

I slept on the plywood boards stacked in the middle of the floor,

my brother on an empty section of shelving.

Father, I think we called him Joe back then, slept 

where the stove and the propane tank and 

the foam mattress and the Pendleton blankets were kept.

This incident, the first time it happened

wasn’t admissible as evidence when I testified. (Courts are finicky I guess?)

Something about it being outside of the state of New Mexico. 

(Did that mean it was irrelevant?)

I remember the hollow sound of the trailer door, the scraping and banging, the metal on metal sounds the sharp squeak of ungreased hinges and deadlocks being rammed into place.

My mind has erased the specific lilt of the other sounds.

There is another person in this story.

She didn’t consent to be here.

I’m talking about my memories

which are enmeshed with hers

though we are separated by something more than a wall,

by the same force that kept me from opening my mouth or moving that night,

that kept my brother and I from ever mentioning the things we both knew,

the force that kept mothers in other locations—

the same stupid force that had my brother holding a funeral for my father when he died

instead of tossing his body in the river to be torn apart by fishes,

the same force that has me frozen in place sometimes for no reason,

that has me stuck in endless, endless loops of self-questioning.

I don’t get nauseous every time I see a horse trailer.

Memory is not that simple.

Sometimes it tears through the soil,

sometimes it roots under and leaches out my strength

(Everything seems secondary to reliving that night.

I have this life to live.

People know me and want to talk to me.

There is paperwork,

bodily functions,

and things that Absolutely Must Be Done.

I have to say things like, “I don’t know why I’m so tired”.

Why do I keep writing these letters?

Why am I telling stories no one wants to read?

When I open my mouth my tongue gets caught on a thorn, loses its roots and starts to wilt.

Why do I talk? Why do I talk?)

If I’m loud enough I can speak across time.

If I string enough lines together I can reach her and give her the words that she needs.

I was told that if I stayed quiet I could leave

I want to undo the magic that has me believing the contract,

I’m not a mermaid anymore

I belong on the world

I don’t need to trade in my voice

to get legs.

---

^{Your Own Way}

There’s that moment

before you push off from the shore

where you wonder

am I run myself dry searching,

going past all of the solid things 

and ending up 

with just air?

But then 

the water looks so blue and clear 

under your boat

and you start to fall in love 

with the feel of your muscles 

straining 

and knowing it’s your own strength getting you 

past the waves.

It’s like you’re reading your own story 

for the first time in your life

and you want to keep turning the pages

to see what comes next. 

---

---

Common Redpolls

I didn’t know I’d seen them

for weeks before I found them

conducting a census for science

with binoculars hanging around 

among the die-hard regulars:

two common redpolls

then day after day I’d count

those uncommonly singular two

until there came a third

one day I counted ten

soon estimated dozens

for statistical purposes

Those first two would be heroes

among the commoner redpolls

if any knew which they were

if they know themselves

and haven’t forgotten the time

they were pioneers

though for all they knew

maybe last survivors

who found this place with seeds

and seeds and seeds again

so you could stay forever

you’d reasonably believe

if you hadn’t been through it before

and learned not to think

this is the place 

that never changes

I kept my studied distance

not to lose those two

but now when the flock takes off

as if it shared a mind

that minded my approach

the odd one stays distracted

from me and not by me

and if what it attends to

draws it close enough

sometimes I can see past

the pointy yellow beak

that marks it of its kind

to its mouth’s meaty hinges

and my hand feels fleshy echoes

the ticky tack of toes

the ghosts of feathery breath

I’ve held before

and I see it in the way

I’ve been surprised to see

become incarnate 

in cardboard final nests

each crashed and broken bird

patient of helpless care

not under observation

beheld as it lives

a moment more

and a moment more

---

Rabbit—Highway—Midnight

He was in the middle 

of a frantic pirouette

spinning scissor spotlights

cut away the night

saw himself surrounded

lost but not surrendered

usually I wonder

(maybe you do too)

why do they always wait

until you’re almost there

as if you’d hit a trap

set up for you to spring

this time it hit me

(you might wonder why)

he panicked in the light

and this alone he knew:

because there was still time     

because it was still there

it couldn’t be too late

he hadn’t gone too far

he knew the way by heart

he knew it in his bones

he knew he would be safe

he knew he’d go to sleep

after he’d stopped shaking

wake up having almost

totally forgotten

how he’d been so careless

drifted without thinking

line by line by line

and let it come to this

one thing he knew alone:

he had to go straight home

---

Survivors

We are all 

survivors

from the wreck 

of a ship

we don’t know 

we were on

and the wreck 

of the ship

we don’t know 

we’re on now

we may also 

survive

---

On Letting Things Go

Forget it, there isn’t any

stopping it—once the leaves are

yellow they won’t be coming

back anymore—so listen,

why don’t you let it go, look

forward to spring, think how

the tulips will bloom— 

                                       and so I

look at a dried-up stalk and

split-open seed pod that I’d

secretly sheltered and I

wonder like always will it

get to re-seed itself, do

tulips re-seed themselves like

daffodils do if no one

chops off their heads because they’re 

done and they’re dead and so they

have to make way? I want to 

bring them all back or stop them

slipping away at least and

nothing will quite convince me

nothing will work—I give them

water but they’re already

wet or try fertilizer

but it’s too cold for that to

do any good. If I’d give

up on them then I guess I

wouldn’t be sad about it—

that’s what they say. It makes me

wonder how many things they’ve

given up on themselves so

they can get through each passing

day without crying. Though they’re

already gone who’d let them

go without trying? And it’s

true that there’s nothing you can

humanly do—but that

includes the one thing they’re always

telling you to: you can’t let

go, don’t let go, hang on and

hold them and hold them here, I’m

holding them here, right here, here

---

What Loss

What loss—

failed and fading flower flung

across the casket counting crazy 

one: two: five: two: three: two:

to waste away a way the way from

one to two to three to two to

here hear or listen listing 

lost and founder frail and ailing 

bowed and bending back break 

apart a part played out laid out and 

waiting weighing heavy hand on 

heart beaten broken stopped: shock:  

restart start over start again

start: over: over: over: stop— 

what loss

---

And I’ll say the first heat of our song, pounding like a pair of hounds on our hot and happy piano, bitten with breath. And nobody fought anybody for rhythm, for the fitting together that steamed like a pot of Chai. Whole foyers at the Guthrie gawked as we walked together, after playing 

with Shakespeare, after sitting near, with no reason not to touch the other. We were noble without knowing why, kinsmen who’d seen Eden without our eyes. We made tales and apples grow holy, reaching with each other’s hands as we stretched toward adjectives that hung on the limbs of our 

very slow syllables, sighing through stories we didn’t have to tell. I remember how each other’s books turned each of our heads like the looks a girl can get from hard hats, from those guys who’re up and ready, and I was, and you’d been to school long before for just that, knowing no difference 

between your nearness and what others felt you’d baited them with, your lure my laughter, mine, your love of things dumb. We ate goat from chipped plates in downtown Minn MN while I wore a Somali jellabiya found in the resale shop, all white and wintered up, wanting you to want me to 

wear it one day, to pray O holy the blood of men whose breath can walk slowly over the phone’s tightrope of our talk. And me, an undercover counselor, eying what you never felt you’d deserved.  You wanted dirt and coverings of it, and you said over nachos in a village inn that I was your savior. 

I remember whispering only to myself that that’s what I wanted, too.  And I tipped the waiter a distraction so that I could stay right there, longer than I deserved, before the bill would arrive, years later, asking me to pay for all of this.

---

Inclined to the immediate 

replete in its complicities.      

It ferrets out all the details,    

regardless of hostile power. 

Engaged in dialogue,                   

rude with a phantom.  

(There’s always                              

rude phantoms      

 in the works.)        

Serving as a third party,          

they’re uninvited guests.      

Witnessing confessions,          

they’re invisible arbiters       

in a comfortable alliance. 

---

The Same

Do caterpillars dream of flight

the same way we fall

in our dreams,

only to wake up,

feeling safe in our belief

that nothing has changed?

---

The Closest I’ll Get to a Green Thumb

T.S. Eliot planted a corpse

in his poem,

giving April a metaphorical garden,

where the rain meant more than overly ambitious

nimbostratus clouds, while this poem

makes footprints, hastily tracked 

across a fresh snowy field,

the closest I’ll get to a green thumb-

my lost mitten finding a stern lecture

about the cost of things,

but even in my childhood,

I had no expectations that it would all sprout

into this.

---

---

Beneath a storming vision two cry

Love like music soars and urges shine

Need springs from girl to dream

Sing to me honey, I ache

I go mad for a picture, a tiny gift to worship

Delirious, I lust and fall with one whisper

Gone, crushed, drunk

My sweet sun, dress my life in light

And shadow only these sad bitter places

Your beauty floods my blood, it robs me of sleep

We watch, want, fiddle over love 

---

Rye Brayley was born in Queens, NY, in 1974. Rye has spent the majority of his life there but currently resides in Ybor City, Tampa, FL.

In my father’s body shop, the dual

action air sander’s muffled screams

drown out the pain of the country 

music station. Within the cloud 

of Daytona paint particles, I strip

the luster off a Chevy’s fender. 

And within a fog of questions

I wonder if the cerulean I see 

is the same color as my mother’s ocean. 

If the ancestors I seek would recognize 

the color of the blood within my veins.

But a breeze pushes the clouds

above my head to the once white, now 

gray fiberglass batt on the ceiling. 

Beneath that storm cloud, I wait 

for my father to tell me

I can go home. 

---

Sunset Salsa

Bodies burning like fire,

Red skirts and red flames.

Everyone moving.

Spinning round some

Invisible axis.

Smashing and crashing,

Imploding like atoms.

Body to body,

Hip to hip, breathless,

Slick sweat running down

Bare backs. Strangers

Moving like lovers,

Each of them pretending

To love the other back.

---

Tutoring

I was never any good at math.

Doing sums was like

Reading hieroglyphics;

The longer I stared 

At the page, the more

Peculiar they appeared,

Like a chain of code designed

To keep spies like me at bay—

A turncoat who couldn’t 

Tell you the difference between

Square roots and fractions

And only knew enough

To count change and settle debt.

Of course, my father 

Never knew. He was too

Busy seeing himself in me

And I was too scared

To admit that I never

Saw myself in him,

Both of us unwilling

To let the other down.

Doing our best work

When he’d help me out with

Homework and I’d pretend

That I didn’t need his help.

---