Late

if we could remember how they built windows
before rain if

The Laundromat

woman says sorry her shoes are so loud in the dryer. 

reminds girl of a shaking bed.

TO CHARGE FORWARD

We were in the space between the moon and childhood, 
and it was a miracle to belong there, capable of lingering

The Cult of Quiet

I hold the knife // point up // & lean over // & beg gravity // to bring me down // gravity disappoints

The World Perspiring

The world perspires
​Perpendicular to the daffodils

Paper Machines

but I can spin around and around
if I start to lose it.

When Robots Are Born, They're Adults

Lilith arrived not knowing if she was waking up chained to a 30-year-old farmer who was just born, a murderer on a feedback loop, or a Technogod asking to be argued with

I Need You to Make Me My Own Dinosaur, but It Must Have Feathers

A sun has a stomach.

A Brief History of Birth, Episode IX

dragging Virginia Slim through coral lipstick scrubbing
Hail Marys til they ignite your grandmother’s rosary
her nylon stockings torn at the nape of what haunts

DIALOGUE WITH A FLY 1

who could it tell
that I had paid attention

(devotion as a currency again)

118 Westerly Terrace

A tree grows through the glass coach

partially buried in someone’s front yard pachysandra.

OuLiPop N° 1

Aux fauteuils de la Fille Sellette

On alert

One of the best skills to have is cooking, then repairing your own house then your own car.

Untitled

                                There is no time. Our houses
concealed, like songs, mumble to themselves

On the Hatred of the Sun

The darkness of that mirror, which is not quite equal to the darkness and silence inside the opened mouth of someone drowning in the Mediterranean, right now.

When There is No Room Left for Shame, I Will Finally Unwrap the Mirror

The more severe the loss, the brighter the arrangement.

Ars Poetica

you enjoy being judged
as stiff as the larynx

Return

Because I was full of scandent pangs, livid wisteria.
And at every familiar street corner, for that matter, bursts 
          of small flowers rose up me like reflux.

A Crown of Pansies

The audience coos. The bartender 

waits for you to stop talking.

About Birds

​Dashing themselves over the wet blade
Of night in Ohio

vrykolokas

pressure me at
​all costs

viejo

sudden dawn sky
chainlinked with
stars

Bialowieza Forest

                    Don’t ask for anything.

Great-horned aurochs have vanished

from Start Charging

Forces
having jumped
their hoops

It's a Canned Picture and I'm Trapped on a Speedboat

These days you can’t help but think every phone call’s a psycho
            and not pay the bills that come in.

Men Winding Us Up

It is as common to think that redistribution of wealth is the mark of Satan, as it is to think that redistribution of one’s assets will mean we keep the house and all the pension benefits. 

Men as Chorus Girls

A man dancing and singing on the ramparts may be passing military secrets to the besiegers, or confident that the supplies within the castle walls will last a thousand years.

To Willpower

black & lusty seas – you rarely remember your
myriad defeats at the hands of drugs or booze    

January Belly

Wisdom resolved its compact of dread, for example,
in mouthfuls of greenish verbiage, & the warp

Failure of the First

Pools overbrim
Only once,
Cruelly once.

Congenital

the shape our togetherness took
not exactly our decision

not exactly not

Let's Memorialize the Dead Even More

The real version is much better but also sadder.

The Exterminating Angel

​What is he thinking?

Marconi Seashore

Chalk it up to
                      breathing, chalk it up to
the sweat of past mistakes

A system of pointing

an adder’s udder of recollection Nothing New

Two-Part Invention for One Voice

running from or to and from where?

Moths

using a pebble as a stilt, the moon in the high cupboard 
has gotten in my skin like fish oil.

The Love Song of Percy Sledgehammer

I love you right but can never be certain being what I am.

Louis Vuitton Timberlands

But in my defense, there’s no such thing as
a thief among family.

Phantom Mirror

this morning I’m still alive

One-Star Review

Glad, admittedly, if with one rapturous swoop of a MasterCard 
My appetite is ruined, my damned demand massacred, 

Laws of Motion

How long was I hung in that moment of um, the whole world strung
over my head?

Norway

Now I am the heavy mist over green fjords slicking

All at Sea

atoms of sand sliding for a pleasurable second

Chilling at a Pool in Goa

What does it take to let reality persist, to stay in the present? 

Bedlam by way of a serious girl

Wrote a letter with a craving for power.

[My Moon]

My hair has shifted in shape
Ineluctable like my habits

A lot of body

And I, queenlike, reign over myself

And any who will yield themselves to me

Elliptical

Dreamer, you know you are a dreamer
along spiraling jetties of silence

Lobster Hand

Twinky residue and
Parchment dry 
Heave

Untitled

stubble flagging gently
beneath pruned nostril

1010 Wins

tomorrow i’ll spit
chaw on the terrace

Atlantis-Truther

I’m watching the formation of a new world
Through low-quality blast goggles

Truth in Sex

and said to keep the noise
down. The fluorescent light
above us hummed.

Internationale

you must know this now
there is no one to know this for you

Them and Me

Both our criticisms are equally hurtful,
But theirs are temporary,
​And mine are eternal.

Uncle Dragon Remains.

These are slobvious prophecies.

let me sleep with knees

All too soon, too soon,
they’ll sail.

You Know Me

from the roadworks, like blossom
of a horse chestnut, like hands

Rubbernecking

But why should it be entirely bad?

from Gelyana

crown the beads of sweat the dirt    unguarded
as his mother makes her motions with her amulets

Sweet Betsy From Pike

The whole thing                                                               
smelled like an exhalation                                                                                         
of the deepest world.

Silent Music Video

A bird molting in dislocated shudders.

from Dropout Poem

a ubiquitous condition only
pointed to by that occasional
      shape in

the blur,

There Are Certain Facts

below the tub’s meniscus
now outside, now inside.

Ilulissat

One can’t trim the sails
​of an inflatable boat.

END OF WINTER

broken open and the birds slowly 
expanding. I'm here: trash, fountain,

ACQUISITION

the back of his concrete
skull on the turquoise   liquid

SO MY DEVOUT FITS COME & GO AWAY

“I don’t mean to be critical, but
is something rotting in here?”
It was.

I'm leaning in

tendons were arrow shields 
babies teethed on foot bones
blood was both paint
& pudding & skulls were altars

Ode to Lithium #6: Barometer

I don’t know exactly what happened to me.
Who put me here with a mud full of mouth

Seven Conversations with the Minotaur

Did you bring
a sword
this time

Extracurricular

No, I broke the stove for fun, waited for my fingers
to smolder and water steel on my tongue.

Studies from Childhood

What’s the secret word.
            What’s the secret word.

Hived

lost it in
the spin

in the spine
the body

not waving but drowning

the throat relaxes.        water flows to the lungs.

whereabouts unknown

of one burning branch in some wild brush
     flapping its carmine leaves.

Nadeem

Hours on the balcony
are progress, compass
pointed to no fixed place,
always correct.

One Hour

I see the top of the hill just in reach but I can’t make it.

Zoosk Online Dating for Her

Thighs parted within 50 miles. Hair swept up within 25 miles.

The Argument

In a Kafkan poetics, the father lacks a temporal sense of the world.

A Primer

a counter-privation

What emojis choose for this

dateline cruise of Arctic

Sun and Moon

His happiness is my relief, his sadness
my undoing.

Shock

Celtic honeymoons are of stone.  No one gets in or out.

Resurrection Ship

our crystalline symmetry / embodied

Door as Point of Contention

What fears may take our shape.

Evolutionary Exit Strategy

strictly gendered coloration
courts
strictly gendered coloration

an excerpt from land of eroded womb

what is that you want to inhabit this gravity.

Don't Wait for the Translation

a big Fuck You to prudence

Super Tuesday

I and the country leave February limping

You Grow Accustomed

Here on this continent / you consider the proverbial

Always Finish What You Start

because he wanted to make films, whereas
films for me were one part of all of creative life

I was trying to imbibe

Feh

hold a dull color and therefore a light

Green Thought

slowed your existence

Man Matching Description

             Some injuries are serious
and some not serious enough

At the Checkout of Val's Pet Supply

the essential purple, less primary
than the same old sky we walked beneath,

From Palisades

information     not difficult to explain     but logistically necessary and thus made vague

[new] Ways to Honour the Dead

on my way home I list the carcasses I find:

Cane Harvest / La Romana, 1918

cutlasses strike the charred cane in concert

Wet Hands in the Sun

the splayed roots of an oak, the toothed ridges

of its leaves. The I is hardly there.

Epigenesis

When the language doesn’t work 
you sew the vowels in your throat.

A Pleasure To

The rain has ceased, but we linger because anyone, half out the door, often requires a little gift for a person of tertiary importance.

In the Book I'm Proofing

“a planet consisting entirely of white and dark daisies”

Labor

I have a watch that reminds me to breathe.

Charm

My roof keeps cozy feelings in 
while winter haz hir final fling.

Amoeba of the Internet Age

I had a dream she was crying and wanted to be let in.

Toledo

I am ward of Plainness I take

Passing

Cunning ever is the selves
We take for helping.

No Familiar Symbol

No familiar symbol had come to us
Out of the past to protect our interests

Poem for Jonah

My all-time favorite perk
Was the toy cubicle.

The Thief

Sometimes you feed me
nonsense at random
about who stole the cat.
We don’t even have a cat.

Sound Stage

Every size indicted under the sky, its size
As gauze as a helmeting pulse

Eating Disorder

Señorita Rigid
Disoriented Rag
regard to inside:

On alert

One of the best skills to have is cooking, then repairing your own house then your own car.

Of Property & Precipitation

        & though now all I can much ogle is
    snow, that skull was once a kind of proxy
     soul, so that when my pals & I all alike

Werewolves of the communication age

The famous porcupines are rolling up the dean has other plans.

Menarche

I have always wanted to know what could at least I
didn’t know what yes yet I know that I have killed the dog

Poem for you

The falling back like breath that knows it will swell again

Triptic

If a night jar
If a flint spoke
If some threads converge

The Big Splay

such great distances
or flywheels thrumming
unto oblivion or

Tower

By evening you’ll flicker between soppy, obsequious and scrappy
an unsound candle unsure of itself and its voice’s light span

Toe Head

you first arrived red crackling in fireplace

What I Owe Others

at the end of his life, my father’s dementia
made loops of if there is any score I can settle, say it now.  

Husk of the Feast

pressing its greenness / against a slow curve / of light
indigo deep / is the glassy pool

Muted, Mutate

the lake and her mood swings, the water 
snake’s tendency of effortless division. 

Triptych: Flight

Through to the sweet of otherness,
Dolphin strong enough to negotiate

Conflating surface pansy/ An enforced

that bitch fervor/ Inequality in all its fury

Tea of Impractical Thirsts

Tea of
Big red robes and
Steeded brow.

from Cliffs of the Indian Southwest

O, southern constellation of sonic fibers,
publishing white the post-lighting
spray of lines, coil-state snowdrift,

Newsfeed

body part
Romans believed
could secrete
the divine

seibutsugaku

doubtless doubling back in it
to stand up again—

of the five senses, desire is the sixth

even those that leave it, a weapon of ax

to put the forest at permission, i touch

froth self a gem

whole screen is gray our parts are alike in this response they say

Bye gash

Dear paragon program disappointing to no end.

Be Green

Persimmon orange chairs bleached by the St. Louis sun and hard on the bones in my back.

Tonight, A Woman

Was that spotted horse particularly westward?

The Legend Goes, Went, Is Gone

I applaud for
trees. They do a
great job.

from Day

sing with the ladybugs here, by the creek

Out of the Frame

What's the use now that the shadows 
are too wide.

Visiting Hours

The wind blows. The rain enters. Things get lost.

The Orb Weaver

Underneath all, an unseen, illusory ring of fire encircles
light-fearing Morlocks and Pacific Rim alike

Learning Lust

he’d take aim at his hanging trousers and shirts, letting

How to Scrabble

Points accumulate with each word

The New Gold

Amoebas sometimes project false
feet, sometimes clone themselves.

Iago Prytherch

Descending to haunted churches                  
To stalk meaning from the emptiness.

Getting Late

Lid must wait
for a jar

Homage: Thomas Bernhard

(Cannot be digested)
these we eat.

Anton's Teeth

don't tell me you're under contract 
​what have they hired, your spirit or your hands?

Saved

it was back to work
to be scalded in the hot ether of foundry hell

palimpsest (la)

the conductor's morning greeting

Department store windows

With no face value doubts I got in and left

 Not knowing if It may be better than what no one should call home

In Fog

the guard asks “Spending
time with the wrong people?”

After a Long Winter

itself  / the room
inside your room

Goldfish, 25¢

it plugged the drain hole. Orange as a cheese puff;

Stay hungry

It’s a toss
Up to me
And to
​Them

Exhibit

and bones and fledglings. The parent and prey

Visiting Future In-Laws

That's when I said I felt like Pope Innocent X
on his throne, baring his fangs, barking

Cento

Do not speak;

You burden the trees.

Thoughts On Reading My Mentor's Death Poem

I know we went to Vancouver
but only because I have the photographs

Primer/Coat

a smoking, a good-looking funeral home
is nest too comfortable for reader’s

"LIFE" "EVENT"

in sites of devotion
the domains of obsolescence

in lessons of calm
the prosperity sickness, the world forest

after Jean Donnelly, K Lorraine Graham, & Rod Smith Book Launch Party

of print – what shoves
between the words

to believe the sirens
and the rocks

In Currents

the viejos say the currents have never had a diet

American folklore

My dad helped nail plywood on all the windows afterward
            I bet those panels wished they were still trees

demographics unit

if both president & vice died
who becomes president? the espeaker 
of the casa

The Bistrica River

The Bistrica River has by now reached
America, reached the Bronx.

Message in a Bottle to Another Cosmos

Perhaps in another life
​I could’ve known you better than yourself 

We Don't Talk Much

but what’s Taíno look like         these days? 

diaspora of ancient-now(s)

you remember/ me as bold & wild with a cavity of laughter

Untitled

the part of the collective
​unconsciousness you can access

Trusting the Voice

at times a scream at times breathlessness

After the Beginning, the End

The right selfie outlasts
the self.

Clear Signal, Outerspace

Yes, we'd been sent here to die, but the flesh
of fish had never been sweeter

Look At What I'm Looking At

It’s a violent thing      to be alive

Electrostatic Ocean, Friday Night

in the back seat / of your blue
beetle submerged

Wish Me Luck

Could be luck’s the
River Jordan of fiction

When We Eat the Marrow

The room is brighter / than me, conspicuously so

Polity

Improbable fingers bear skyward

moonmilk

if i allow for all means of ruin

tracing lake superior

that night my navel became an easel,
became its own front yard

Field Recording

vocoders and color guards
and fiberglass tubas

Millenial Slut

Isn’t she so much more beautiful when she’s crying

Dreams of Being Human

The Mischiefs
Head Scratchers
Tall Dudes
Blood Tide

We'll Probably Talk Before You Get This

A membrane continues / with various openings.

Rue'd

until memory’s opposite

Untrust (Me)

I thought about an unlamented red

An Owner's Manual

out-love time, press
one ear against the door of a stranded
elevator.

Specimens of Dynamics

Two proofs that brutes cannot abstract
A source of bullets

Representative

O mutable
program, borders atremble

Take Me to the Wondries

Us a couple of untucked cowbots

How to Award Fit Punishments

The marsh. The basic puttering. The eyewitnesses
percolated in the minds to reveal the existence

Midge

The midge, the bleed around the edge.

Grips

Under the archway

they can see she’s gone

Consumed

so my bones are liquid in sleep

Cravings

(the way bones
often do)

The Stockhausen Handshake

entrapment or caution?

puberty(1)

everyone is naked do i know
what my body is planning

from Arabesques I-XX

Nobody can agree what

to do with the creature because

nobody can agree what to call it.