Signature Editions

Paper Oranges is a poetic response to Vladimir and Estragon, Beckett's infamous pair, who pin their hopes on salvation that never arrives. It explores the notion of human existence as an extended wait characterized by quiet desperation, loneliness, suffering and the search for self. People who find themselves suspended in time and longing for something to alleviate their boredom tend to idle rather than move forward in any meaningful direction. But could there be an alternate narrative? If so, what shape would it take and how might it forever alter those whose "graveyard lives inside them," those who fill up their days waiting for the next thing — the better job, the bigger car, the perfect spouse, the next terrorist attack?

Using the metaphor of flight, these evocative poems examine how habit and daily routine, societal convention and moral obligation trap us in the emotional death of repetitive cycles. Perhaps the only truth in this random universe lies in the present moment. To waste it waiting for an illusive Godot is tragic and absurd, for it is only by confronting our existence in the now that we can act, leap and make bold choices, mindful, always, of the accountability that accompanies freedom.

The Graveyard Lives Inside You

You taste bone in each sip of water. News-
print, bits of the previous century, straw, musk.

Those who did or didn’t make a sound when they died,
who whimpered, who trumpeted, who hit the road jack,
who refused to go gently, day or night; those

whose eyes shot forth, whose pores cried
blood, phlegm, urea, whose guillotined heads
flew, whose sponge fed the mad cow, whose
heart kissed a bullet, whose lips turned black.

You know it as Infinite dusk.

Paper Oranges

You’re trapped in the cage,
the weather, life, against you:
sleet’s ermine shawl,
groundhogs making meat
of your pumpkin. It’s defeat
everywhere you look:
lean muskrat gardens, graveyards
of mangled sinks and telephones.
Not once, but twice, you mistook
your son for an iPod.

You’re desperate to believe in God
but what inhabits you, locked
behind a chain-link fence
is the blinkety-blank road,
the same slovenly dog
mutating into something bigger
and uglier each day
hoarding the inadequate light.

You long to wake up just once
with an original thought
in your head, an image,
some beautiful impossibility

: paper oranges.

My Tahiti

I’ll know when to pack up and call it a life.
Plumbing the depths of my January cocoon
I’ll do it in style, in my best summer whites.
Don’t expect it to be on Saturday night,
it might be midweek, say Tuesday
in a raging snowstorm. Instinct will tell me
the time has come to put it away
in the bottom drawer with my winter wools.
A bright blue package will arrive with an invitation
to comb the dumpster for my island paradise–
ferns and wild banana trees, beatnik fauna.
Coconuts growing sideways beneath the lucid stars.
I’ll pour a flute of pomegranate wine,
watch Casablanca one last time.
The room floating, the mind bathed
in Gauguin’s aquarium light.

On the runway, a plane will be waiting.

Point of No Return

You’re at that point on the journey, familiarity
waning with every click of the speedometer.
You no longer know which negligible
pile of brick is actually your old house.
It could take days to find your way back,
despite the elastic light. The spaniel you left
pattering in the sprinkler
might as well be dead for all he remembers you.
It takes all your effort just to call him,
and even then, his name catches in your throat
like a small burr, gets belligerent
with the wind, jousting a little
before getting sucked under your Michelins.
Through the rearview mirror,
you’re suddenly aware of firewood
jumping off your truck, a couple
of grey canisters, your old man’s tackle.
You don’t even care
that you are swerving. What was once a dot
on the map is now less than an afterthought,
a box of spare parts
banging together in the dark:
your neglected porch swing, a moth angry
with its lightbulb. Right now,
the instant is all you know: the sun
breaking out up ahead, contented fieldstone.
An elm in the distance, springing new growth.
The secret is not looking back.