The Old Complaint

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:05:00 +0000

Pinwheeled, I warble.
Toasted my butter, posted
cards, "wish you were here."

Saturday

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:34:00 +0000

Everyone should be happy. I drink bergamot tea
to stay close to him. I microwave water.
I don't own a kettle.
I store maps in boxes and get lost a lot.
I wake up on a Saturday and live
someone else's life.

Poorly catalogued intentions.

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:30:00 +0000

Your shoe atop my toe
should have been the signal to stop.
But I've read Greek drama; this is
where it gets good.

The crack in a familiar voice is a cymbal crash
squeezing through the space of a hiccup.
Intermission came too late and we all
wet ourselves.

Letter to an Aging Poet

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 04:33:00 +0000

for Jim

I've turned through your years
as no doubt you book-marked
through those of your own
aging poets.

In fewer than five years, I've read you to bed for forty-five.

Yet for suffering with you, I'm none the wiser.
Doomed, I'll make the same mistakes and
come to classify them otherwise.

Moving Boxes

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 04:24:00 +0000

A spot in some future tense,
I'll fix for you and fill
with art for which we've
not paid enough,
chairs from cold
countries, a loose
board, and a light
that shines on
applauding bones.

abridged suite

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:22:00 +0000

laying down my arms
on wax, someone
will find your
fingerprints

saudade: vol. 1

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 05:57:00 +0000

The cherry stand marks one quarter
of the climb; I stopped to watch
Armageddon arrest both land
and sky.

I have lost the ability to measure the distance
between things that are not you and me.

another.

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:07:00 +0000

newspaper tent
armed for fantasy
weather

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 06:22:00 +0000

Wrong-done and un-won,
sin engraved in mouth
wide open.

Unlearned step and sandy-sunk,
two roads diverged in
pictures took.

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:29:00 +0000

In the canyon, caught by the
heat of a hundred hands,
kicking carcasses
of days when cops
climbed down cables
and this water was
real.

I ate two tacos, and two
assholes pitched
pebbles at a pair of
copulating lizards.

Suddenly saddled to believe better days
existed before me.
The last one there is rotten egg.

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:35:00 +0000

Peaking again in
a patch of sand,
packaged for
misuse.

This heart should
hide better.

Bench dream.

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:36:00 +0000

Our exit was
a tiny apocalypse.

I'm glad we were
the only survivors.

Hands

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Sun, 31 May 2009 06:29:00 +0000

Tiny island palms
whose beaches
bear no rings.

Door Tempo

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Fri, 29 May 2009 06:04:00 +0000

The phrase, in a measure,
of a door's squeak.
Memorized to sneak
in after dark.

This is my house, now.
That was my home, before.

Bury the hearth in snow
or fog; she will remember.

Lodge a heart to the hilt;
it, too, will find a way to
snap the latch, blind,
and put its beat to bed.

Container

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:20:00 +0000

Pitch these wooden desks and mugs
sprouting pencils into the sun, set ablaze
tools that clutter distance to ideas, if
at all ideas still seed.

I want to take a gardener's hand to
my life, burgle my own dead buds,
like the last night in a rented room,
cleared of a year's collections, when
I put music to the movement of
shadows and kept time in echo.

That night, a man whom I love,
was there. We harmonized like
cicadas crawling from earthy
incubators. Newborn with an
understanding too big to categorize,
too weighty to shelve, so laden were
we, we could only cry from parts of
our bodies for which we had no
name.

Sabbat

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:10:00 +0000

Failed to do the homework. Scratched at
the source of the itch. Broke the skin.

Soggy occasion. Admitting what we mayn't
without whiskey. A coat or cat between us.

These are avoiding days. My nose in a book,
on strike. Wintered cells turn over and yawn.

Rounding out the bases. A little less grief this year.
This coffee cup is not taking this seriously.

March Doesn't Mind Me Staring at Walls

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 04:18:00 +0000

These cherubic hieroglyphs suspended,
no closer to Heaven than to the
continent where their color
was conceived

A hundred times I stuck my pen
in that font, a hundred more
some cloud erased the
inkpot

But, look

The tenants of two new eyes
fall from open windows,
and into mine; knocked
over by a warm breeze

Ash Wednesday in Saint Paul, Before the Snow Falls Again

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 05:08:00 +0000

Below the eaves,
in fossil tones,
limp history performs
her alibi.

I count the
bones of wasted spit;
garnish on an empty plate.

I have greater reasons for
not committing.

Untitled

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:17:00 +0000

The remainder of a day's
long division is that some
of us are Disappointed.

I am not unhappy; I am
in the wrong place.

Meter Theatre

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 05:04:00 +0000

The gas pump performs
ritual sacrifice; I play the
resigned chaperone of
synthetic intercourse as
nozzle meets tank.

It's as American as
anything else.

Revival

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:52:00 +0000

The New Romantic

That trailer in the upper
peninsula, your factory
job and my unwritten
novel. Your mustache
and my bad cooking.
The mailbox is always
empty. The bathroom
door does not latch.
I can hear you piss
from the kitchen; it
sounds like summer.

The Bowls

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 04:42:00 +0000

The too high cupboards were largely empty, save
my grandmother's mixing bowls in reach
on the lowest shelf.

One small. Blue.
One medium. Red.
One large. Green.

Behind metal doors, hiding lonesome space,
bowls holding secrets and holding still -
regal foot guards of the rainbow.

I have lived with too little color.

Arms

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 06:38:00 +0000

Comes a day we forget
what the hell our arms
are for.

Minneapolis, One.

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 06:37:00 +0000

Bleak lunch, the grass punch,
the grace she lacks.

Words you spit, this world is
too big, bored in a minute.

Exiled in reading, Indian evening,
alone in her eating.

And, the premature kiss, old
news, new list.

Old Season Widows

haiku.gesundheit@gmail.com (Maria J. Howes) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:45:00 +0000

From the finite beads of flattery, I
string invisible rings of engagement
to wrap branches of summered hands.

Constricted are prose callouses, purpling
the blood that swells in my fingertips.
But the heavy fruit does not fall.

Ripened leaves disregard breathy
threats of marching frosts. Gulls
and ladders anticipate late snow.

Stitched by old season widows with
tooth-snapped thread. Bald fossils of
quick labor dangle like dead tails.

Dioramic frontispiece of ink pitchy draft,
I am some eroded prow with shirtless sails.