buzzing my lips into
i put plastic grocery bags over my ripped shoes,
bending myself, hitched up on the eroding edge of the front stoop,
breathing more than i should, feeling the pain of bending and tugging
near the empty loops of my sagging pants, but i feel joy today,
for muddy spring is here. hallelujah, so be it.
the last days of rain trickle to a stop as i smile.
the huge patches where the grubs thrive puddle.
the air smells like lake minnows, circling in a half-bucket.
i slop quietly past the bald kousa dogwood,
buzzing my lips into skip james’ fingerpicking opening
on “hard time killing floor blues.” i have to remind myself,
as i peek around the front gutter, hanging on from winter’s beating,
to keep the song in my head & not out in the air, for this is a moment of silence.
i tiptoe soft into the sog, past the withered tangle of rose & rotting shingle,
past the rabbit warren under the wild, overgrown yew.
the hunger whoops of mid-winter coyote raids singing all the time
“these hard times / can’t last so long / um, hm-hm / um hm.”
i shuffle closer to the house & put my knee down into the wet
behind the chicago fig, mudwater rising into my pant leg “off of this cold hard killin’ flo’.”
& there they are. hallelujah, so be it. red-breasted & tall: killers them all.
they hop & bow in the patchy backfield, for it is feast day.
the spring feast of the robins is here. no grackles welcome. crows dare not caw on this morning.
it is strictly songs of spring & rebirth. the sweet songs of killers. but i slowly lie down
in the mud under the fig because i am here not for rebirth but for worms,
for fate, to feel their killing floor ooze into my shirt & wet my chest,
as i bury my lips & sing into the mud: “lord, i’ll never get down / this low no mo.’”
their boneless bodies, their eyeless ends dangling all of our fates—
the fate of the worm—from the sharp beaks of birth. &, so, i slide off the grocery bags,
digging my ripped shoes into the muck, feeling my wet & muddy fate soak
into my toes on this spring day: “hm-hm, hm, oh, lord.” hallelujah. so be it.
Mini-interview with daniel joseph
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
dj: my writing was liberated when i finally read enough to digress across the line in Nathaniel Mackey’s Bedouin Hornbook about “coming to the realization that what I was playing already existed.” yeah, that line/realization changed everything.
HFR: What are you reading?
dj: Tongo Eisen-Martin’s Heaven Is All Goodbyes, Vievee Francis’ Forest Primeval, & Jack Whitten’s Notes from the Woodshed
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “buzzing my lips into”?
dj: i looked out the window on a muddy morning this spring & saw that robins had taken over my yard & for some reason couldn’t help but hear skip james in what was happening to those worms.
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
dj: a collection of pieces about arriving in places with slightly different axiological conversations than this place & a collection of pieces about moments in history that have happened in some place not unlike this place & poems (usually about birds or the blues or both)
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
dj: i think I hear the birds now singing the blues.
daniel jospeh writes in a river valley. his most recent work can be found or is forthcoming in Trampoline, Frigg, Biscuit Hill, Passages North, X-R-A-Y, and HAD.
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Heavy Feather Review 