who could confess us living, garden-spire, your bright
Lightning returns to the building's tree.
Every morning is another lesson in the violence of a haphazard metaphor.
called home and brings
its phantom gusto, its blunting limbs
Stage glass has potential not
because it is made
to break but because
what if I weave
dying ash twigs into my
longleaf
Vestiges of the heat of Roman embers along the Danube.
War comes to peel away the gold braid covering
the princely cousins.
The dewiness of the grasses slaps my shoe-tops
dressed in an undersea forest, girls enjoy their floaty skirts
Grace knows she’s queen to the last. Hyssop
is spreading only in dreams. A small dog walks
slow over ice.
Storms in the Gulf & Atlantic flex their fingers
against our throats.
If I knew another more useful than you
I would definitely rather live with him.
The goal isn’t to shut down the party and take
All the fun out of the risk spectrum.
You could stand naked in front of a mirror
all day and still not see yourself
Made macaroni and cheese.
Commuted.
Amassed nothing.
hypo backward typo
fluke ineluctable
smorgasbord maw
that attracts mystics, mistakes, and doesn’t skip the skeptic. Tock.
Some flashes in the distance⎯
what are they?
as a chromaflock of hazmat-
suits
Longing in this case being impertinent to the garment, I took out my breast and said in truth I was hoping for coral to crush into sugar.
In this one the flautist takes three showers daily.
The townspeople must acquire a stenographer’s perfect circle to gyrate spirits in the century’s sock hop.
It’s a lot of small dots,
up close.
my body is not visible
Remaindered in the sun
A soft afterglow
Lighting up
pressed by Carmelite nuns
the limpets have left
The old days when the stream impressed itself
Upon him: cold, baptismal, absolute.
Fibers of his polo-shirt sliding against the black leather of his Camry.
you always say "Come out!" or
"Go inside!" as if peace is to be found
ones that drive me deeper inside
the rented house of myself, protected
by years of shiny white paint.
I tell our friends the story of how we met, once there was an orange and when they ask
for follow up I say nectarine but never anything as vivd as a cheeto, to love you
answer me or i cross
a nun. answer me
The twins have taken to quoting Kierkegaard.
As you can see, I've been learning French, mon amour.
winds carrying your name
coupled with mine
the way you hold light
A glossy car circles
The path watching us.
Neoclassical austerely
Wait. Outside Austerlitz
a leaf playing dead
Here is what I wanted to do: hold
each willing face in my two hands, touch
each set of lips with my thumbs.
You step out of Ken's jeep
Into the San Francisco fog, shoving
Everything baggage, sightly, swamped with generosities, glassed, everything turned
Can you be the sunrise entrance song of ocean floors.
I am all tremble and fray and torpid and molecular seams of a dusk breeze.
Maybe on the walk home I’ll carry my sandals between the middle and index of my plumage.
Likes to know which train I'm missing
Schubert who died November of 1828 chirrups.
luminous hill sides lavender quiet bath of intensity
but for once I don't think to look
in the mirror and ask if I'm the kind
of boy destined to be shot down,
if a tire pops, it'd be like gliding on air—
The attendant heaped snow on a platter and recited a poem
about spring and great faith and the plum, but
the varieties of teeth (incisor, eye, and molar)
and the way those teeth outlast us
Loved a girl who became
a laurel tree and loved
a woman who betrayed him
with another.
Layered voices, strophe and antistrophe.
What will you say
to the ones you promised
forever? You chewed down
The old days when the stream impressed itself
Upon him: cold, baptismal, absolute.
a body formed from a handful of twigs then lost
the limbless shapes a severing of stumps
The blind moon hangs over the pillars
and the burnt remains
of the cedars,
Wouldn’t tell us anything at all—
we milled outside, buzzed
with an ambient fear.
my mother
this morning
pulling back the lashes
of those eyes,
White mulberry: I spent the better part of a morning watching it grow.
Instead, you’re trapped as he smokes and tosses butts outside the airport,
no help deciphering the taxi racket, he lounges against a wall as if it’s some bar
You were kicking blankets all over the ground
I always wanted to leave California.
To exit the hunt he might be making
of downtown diners and fading public parks, well-lit places
There is no trick to the cup,
Arriving recovered to a shy deal
Though already a different photograph.
A cloth lifts
A partly landing veteran.
The storm.
––And I thought of you,
how there is no future in thought,
how all thought is remembrance disordered