“Memory is our divine aspect.” —Paul Foreman
for T. Nordstrom
I only knew your dwelling, the
swell
of rusted car doors rising out
of the earth.
If there ever was a womb I
could rest,
I found it in the center of
the living room.
A scouler
willow clutches blithe tears.
And for one night we grazed
the landscape of your poems:
the six-day war, the sacred
feminine.
And after we smoked divine
grass
your poems hung
on the tree’s branches
raised
to the skylight along with the
aromas
of whiskey, baby spinach, chilé con carne
and flour tortillas. Gold fish
from your pond
flipped and dashed at the arrival
of so much blue overhead.
Your beard to your toes hugs
your lithe flesh, its tail
swinging
you at the trunk. You, howler monkey
snatching your chance at the golden fig
tree.
We are starving for these
places.
Every thing circling on the
willow
like an infant’s mobile,
within reach.
Brian Dickson
has lived mostly in the southwest working various jobs and now find himself living in