A bird squawks "Magruder! Magruder!" so early this 
morning. Across the river, sirens cry out first breaths 

of life. Fog – a caul shrouds the skyline – our faces grey 
and bagged, struggling to inhale through umbilical faith 

in dawn. I wipe sleep's vernix from my eyes, afterbirth 
of dreams waxy in my hands. Magruder! Is this a call 

to prayer for the newbird genesis, redbreast Pope of 
Weehawken? His umbraculum sky unfolding over our 

heads, anointing our foreheads with bird shit and 
rainwater, ashes and wine. Magruder! A name that 

washes the feet of the poor in sewer water, absolves us 
of our vanity, absinthe veniality, an archangel from our 

swipe-right Saint dating app, martyred in the avenues 
by dollars and donuts, Uber and Paypal blinking at the 

coffee truck that only takes cash. Magruder – make the 
holy three pointer from beyond the paint! Magruder! 

Show us the way of the damned, the N train to Queens. 
Magruder! Your name cries out for redemption.

For Shay’s Word Garden

I believe in the church of 0% Plain Greek Yogurt – 
hymns of milk solids, blueberry rosaries, the

redemptive crunch of granola. It's like believing 
in Jesus with no added sugar or fat. But not at 

all like believing in gravity and hammers, which I 
have more than once dropped on my foot. And

most certainly not like when I placed an hourglass 
in the lemon squeezer when I was pressed for 

time, with broken glass everywhere and I got a 
mouthful of sand. Maybe belief is slippery, like 

a soapy bar of truth that I can't catch in the tub, 
or believing I can play Rock, Paper, Scissors with 

God, but God won't ever throw Rock when I am 
scissors, and we know how that turned out.

For Shay’s Word Garden

I ride shotgun in Heaven's ambulance –
graveyard shift don't you know –

Picking up the bodies and the wounded,
the parts and hearts torn open like a can-opener.

I read psalms out loud before ripping them
from the Bible, crumpling them to pack in gashes,

Stanch the bleeding and the grief. 
I’ve made a tourniquet from Ruth 1:16  – 

“Whither thou goest, I will go” – my nitrile gloves 
red and salty. Sadness pools under the gurney.

The halo lights cast ringed shadows as we 
cauterize and stitch what’s left of hope, then

Wheel both those awake and those asleep
through the pneumatic doors of dawn –

The hospital of sparrows and tulips, 
glittering with redemption.

For Shay’s Word Garden

a tickle of bees their buzz fuzz tenderness vulnerability 
wrapped in barbed wire the high-flying drone no-flies zone 
early summer when stones lose their gravity worldly heft 
left to breaking daisies broken ground the sun mad with 
wisteria madness of our noses full of honeysuckle snuff 
the stuff of naked skin white as orchids burning in the sun 
spying on us like chasing ants with a magnifying glass lens 
we run faster than clouds faster than rain faster than kudzu

For Shay’s Word Garden

Because what ricochets from me to you 
from ground to sky our light and touch 
that gravity our souls bend across the back of the sun

Broken by dawn, returns us shattered  
in shards in the cut-glass life we scrape together
until our hands bleed

Sweeping ourselves like crumbs off the floor 
what we do every day
to continue 

Our nerves on fire brainstorms of sheet lightning
eyes sparking blue flames the mind's 
power lines down in this hurricane of need

Tossed wave after brainwave on the shores 
of corpus colosseum, corpus coliseum, 
colossal failure 

We're tied to the mast the sirens calling  
cop car lights flashing the getaway car leaves 
us holding the bag 

Heart-armored cars robbed of our love
Glock bullet kisses that blow a hole in your mind 
all gone in a Tik-Tok stick-em-up robbery

No one to save us no heroes no Batman
No Hatman no whack-a-mole Slapman 
only winners and losers, sinners and users

Pushed into cacophony sycophancy immediacy 
a symphony of grand larceny us trying to steal away
on our hard luck pony down in the teeth so much

Rotting fruit crushed between our fingers 
dogs lapping at the juice of 
our very worst selves

We've crawled inside our own carcasses 
pulled down behind us the rib-cage door 
of our panic rooms

What will we do next
for warmth 
for survival                                     

For Shay’s Word Garden

I woke with my hair standing up 
like stick winter grass
craving rain.

I woke up with my hair staggering,
a forest of hibernating animals 
tilting out of their lairs.

I woke with my hair clutching at sky
alongside she-wolves
hunting the moon.
 
I crawl from my cave of
bonestone stalactites 
dripping dreams into dark pools.

My brainstone cavern where epitaphs
are written in glow-fire
tracks of blind worms.

Deep chamber of sorestone, 
touchstone, bleedstone, bloodstone,
hollowstone.

My mouth is a weir below the falls
where hello is tangled with fishing line
and hooks.

My eyes will eat 
from what jackals left behind
of dawn.

My ears hear the hours
sticky with sap
in truncheon jaws of beetles.

Long is the name of this hunger 
in my body.
Long are the names of the earth.                                      

For Shay’s Word Garden

By Denise Levertov


Your beauty, which I lost sight of once
for a long time, is long,
not symmetrical, and wears
the earth colors that make me see it.

A long beauty, what is that?
A song
that can be sung over and over,
long notes or long bones.

Love is a landscape the long mountains
define but don’t
shut off from the
unseeable distance.

In fall, in fall,
your trees stretch
their long arms in sleeves
of earth-red and

sky-yellow, a little
lop-sided. I take
long walks among them. The grapes
that need frost to ripen them

are amber and grow deep in the
hedge, half-concealed,
the way your beauty grows in long tendrils
half in darkness.


                                                 Paris Review issue no. 27 (Winter–Spring 1962)

For Shay’s Word Garden

Recording on the airport tram says please collect all my belongings but my heart slipped out of my pocket and now it shuttles endlessly

From Terminal A, to B, to Baggage Claim and back it must dodge the feet of passengers from Paris, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Waukegan, Moosejaw

Like a tiny shore bird running from the waves then back again, I've no claim ticket to prove its mine no Find My Heart GPS tracker no

Ribbon tied around its handle to mark it mine sliding down the chute the woman at Lost and Found says "You're SOL, 

Sugar" and I am, clearly, SOL, what am I going to do without my heart? I was bringing it home to you duty free along 

with a scarf I picked up in the airport store and some Toblerone triangle chocolate that rings in the mouth like a sweet bell, breaking 

news, a lone-wolf heart has hijacked a plane in Tacoma,  handed a letter to the flight attendant full of longing for you, it's my heart!

Demanding a duffle-bag stuffed with a million trifling excuses and the blues and a parachute, bailing out the back of the plane over the mountains

My heart is the goddamn D.B. Cooper of love! Yes! You go little fella! Never to be seen or heard from again, no bruised and broken heart curled in a muddy stream

My love will be legend, I will be your mystery man your ransom note your forever wild and wandering heart.

For Shay’s Word Garden

Remember when the phone company lost a big whack of text messages, then years later accidentally released them?

Zombie buzz on people’s phones from now dead friends and family: “Having a wonderful time in Hawaii!!! XOXOXO!!” from the day before they drowned

Or dropped from a heart attack. The lost messages going way back – Jesus texting Mary “I’ll be home after basketball, just stopping out for a drink with the boys.” Menelaus drunk-dialing

Helen of Troy “Come home, baby, I love you, I need you.” Lincoln to Mary Todd: ”This play blows.” God to Job: ”JK!!!” I got your text from October 1973

The month you died. We never found a note, just your clothes folded on the foot of the bed. "Dinner in the oven" I guess will have to do,

I wonder where it was you had gone that day, maybe grocery shopping at Safeway or to your lecture, there are no emoji 

For despair, or abyss, or daylight sharded into cracks separating one more step forward from oblivion. Your tweets the last calls of distant birds on their long journey home. 

Apologies dear reader if I spammed you this poem. Understood if you block my number, it’s an old message that found its way to me 

And now to you. A story long in the tooth if we can say the Internet or time or memory have sharp teeth.

For Shay’s Word Garden