TPQ OnLine
poetry chapbook by John Samuel Tieman

	Break During a break you thought about how you got laid in Mexico a little over a year ago You sometimes try to remember that Mexican's stare on the job during uneventful days you become restless sleepless with forgotten anticipation It takes your mind off work Only a schedule separates your Mexican and your thoughts of resisting your last damn good lay But that lay remains burns makes you tremble with vague memories

	Summa Dear Theologian, I was just thinking teleologically when I remember my first lover fondly and feel guilty because I'm happy with my wife It's all the gray that made me that way, the cold snap, the autumn, the fog. I remember some windows in York Minster, The Five Sisters, and wonder why, in an age of outrageous stained glass stories, someone created the windows all gray Yesterday a neighbor moved to I don't know where. It made me sad all the same, the move and the gray and the thoughts of old sex and York Minster. Which is why, in the end, I write this in simple black and white, as if an infinity of black type might finally stop me from looking out the window and wondering where we're going

	Lunch with Mother For my part, I focus on her like one of those old films where everything is wavy except the speaker. Your father, my mother says, wanted you aborted. But I'm Catholic so that's how you began, half chance, half prayer. Your grandmother agreed with your father because he was drinking and you know now how that goes. But he wanted you after you were born. He loved you. And he was a good dad until he left when you were ten.

	The Lost Child I A bird lifts off the lake and like a vapor succeeds in reaching a cloud. It's important to know the fields join one another on the horizon. II There's snow in April today. I look for my mother as the wind turns the leaves, as even the sheets of sleet feed the barren earth over my father's grave. III I always love the dark quick dip of the sparrow, how with one skin it becomes another point in the horizon until with another dip it joins a flock all talking at once.

	Simplicity Walking across the office you recall the day you arrived the air clear millions of windows now you know the way it goes the crowd, spare change So there's no end to the indistinct mountains the arts cross-walks nights you sit on the bed and watch a stream of traffic Then once again suddenly not quite depressed you remember how different this is the place names in Spanish the lover who made you stay And you knowing the slope overgrown with tin roofs know miles away a man carving a mask stares straight at you Mexico City, 85

	The Parables of the Truth Wife I It is written -- A woman draws a map that begins with the line of the hawk's dive into the river. Her path follows all the creatures that learn to drink on the wing. She turns north, pauses at the tree line, continues until she is out of north, until she is so far north that there is nothing but south. She returns. She then settles in a Romanesque floor plan. Here. Home. She fasts. After forty days, the lost one emerges: this is the prophet's promise: a hundred fists to her face will not harm the dreamer as she awakens. She will feel her pulse; she will remember the fervor of her arm. It is written that she will gather The Twelve: the poet then the priest, the teacher then the nun, warrior, musician, the doctor, the thief, the prince, child, pauper, hermit. She will speak of the holiness of indecision. Dressed in white, she will stand before the congregations. And it is written that she will give this instruction: "Reject. Evolve. Adore." She will pray and a man will recall how quickly the strangeness of all this would pass were it not for her journey. Thus begins the ministry of the truth wife.
	II It is a hot day and the man is naked. Before him the rough hewn slabs stair/step up the hill, each an obstacle with which he must grapple, upon which he must balance, beyond which he must crawl until he is at the base of the next monolith. Where the man begins again. God is at the top of this hill. He knows. He continues. To his left, a woman beckons. She is in the shade beneath the one tree. He leaves his chosen burden. The woman and the man make love. He despairs. He says, "Now I've missed my last chance to meet God." The woman disappears, leaving only these words: "The beauty of the sky is that it never leaves the earth."