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

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.