"My Daughter Asks Me to Write an Honest Poem" and "What's New"

My Daughter Asks Me to Write an Honest Poem

And when I ask what she means she says a poem
where nothing impossible happens in it, just the truth,
and I say OK and put her in this poem and she sprouts
forty two robin wings down her neck and back and legs
and she says why would you do that, that’s not true
and I say OK I say Sorry and I put an orchard
in her arms, a huge orchard, with rows of pear trees,
and it’s spring and a million white blossoms fur her skin like snow
and she says DAD she says THIS ISN’T REAL and
I say I am sorry my love I didn’t mean to it’s just that
but it’s too late, she’s gone upstairs, I hear her feet
march across the floorboards, soft claps
like a dozen cages closing in a bird shop that specializes
in songless birds, and once more winter settles softly
in my mind, I walk my orchard’s empty rows and remember
how full my arms used to be when my daughter was young,
how busy my hands, my sad, empty hands
reaching for this liar’s pen.

What's New

Peak Fall the world a picture book campfire
and some sonofabitch has been kidnapping dogs
and spray-painting them pink and green. I mean
life is great but also I can’t remember the last time
I dipped bread into wine or listened to Whitney Houston
or whiffed the copper flower of a newborn’s scalp.
I've been getting into bourbon the way
Narcissus would get into large bodies of water.
I'm waiting to hear back from Dictionary dot com
about adding "like drowning in a Finger Lake"
to the definition of "peaty." When someone says
"life is complicated" they don't mean "you'll forget
so, so many dead animals" but they should.
They should say every summer from your childhood
will eventually gel into one single summer in your head
and from this you'll sketch out a draft of the afterlife.
The thing with chasing down a dog that's been assaulted
with the colours of spring is that even if you know its name
you can call a dog and there's still a chance it will run
into traffic. So, yeah, I've taken up running
in front of cars and waving my arms. I'm taking long baths
with stray animals and hoping they won't bite. I'm getting into
printing FOUND posters for telephone poles that say things like:
eyes the grey of wishing fountain coins; tongue the black
of your father's belt; fur soft as the warmth pulsing in a gym
hosting a middle school dance and a slow song's just come on.
We're all there, waiting to be asked, to be held. We all feel
that burst of cold when the doors swing open and somebody leaves.