The mysterious beauty of Panhandle Attic is as much about what it holds back as what it gives. Questions abound, as we inhabit the poet’s inner-world, wrapping from natural beauty to withdrawal. The gentle intensity of this marriage of nature versus emotion, is deftly wound around lush wordplay that pares down to the cleanest acuity. We are left slightly breathless with the intoxicating language, whilst still filled with questions. It’s like an amuse-bouche, evocative in ways we can’t quite touch enough and still we reach. 

PANHANDLE ATTIC

I thought it charming, when I rented it,
the attic unit of an old house, its own set

of stairs, own door. Sills and windows
rotted, but past them, gift for their thinness,

I hear the wingbeats of birds that love
the junipers set at my corners, waxwings,

robins, and mellow-edged doves, and through
the waves of the oldest panes stretches

of desert willow limbs and agave flesh
move in more than the constant wind, drift

with the transit of my eyes, and every major
window I’ve got follows the sun, inclined

east to south to west. From up here
I watch the neighborhood, hear

its goings-on through the crumbling
walls, watch dogwalkers, strollers, grackles

glazed like mystic messengers, mark down
sun- and moonrises each, each, and am best

if I consider myself mainly as animal
among animals, earth at the earth,

very small mind above, or more mind
but not mine. If I’m, to borrow a parable,

a handful of salt, I aim to pitch me into
the post-rain playa wide and blue, brushing

sky wide and blue, as up as down: softened, a part
of that body, and nothing to the tongue.