April, April

who could confess us living, garden-spire, your bright

Vigils: After Rimbaud

Lightning returns to the building's tree.

Velvet Touch

Every morning is another lesson in the violence of a haphazard metaphor.

Employ

called home and brings
its phantom gusto, its blunting limbs 

Continuity

Stage glass has potential not 
because it is made
to break but because

Begin today

what if I weave
dying ash twigs into my 
longleaf

Clockwork

Vestiges of the heat of Roman embers along the Danube.

Ancestry.com

War comes to peel away the gold braid covering 
the princely cousins.

The vomit emoji

The dewiness of the grasses slaps my shoe-tops 
dressed in an undersea forest, girls enjoy their floaty skirts 

Disintegration Loop

Grace knows she’s queen to the last. Hyssop
is spreading only in dreams. A small dog walks
slow over ice.

North Carolina's Famous Wild Horses Emerge from Hurricane Florence Unscathed

Storms in the Gulf & Atlantic flex their fingers 
​against our throats. 

There's Another Lament I Won't Get Into

If I knew another more useful than you
I would definitely rather live with him.

I Can Remember Becoming Deeply Concerned

The goal isn’t to shut down the party and take
All the fun out of the risk spectrum.

Biopsy

You could stand naked in front of a mirror 
all day and still not see yourself 

Bildungsroman

Made macaroni and cheese.
Commuted.
Amassed nothing.

al dente

hypo     backward     typo

appliqué

fluke ineluctable

from LINGUABRASIONS

smorgasbord maw

Like Clockwork (after Andy Warhol)

that attracts mystics, mistakes, and doesn’t skip the skeptic. Tock.

The New Year

Some flashes in the distance⎯
what are they?

from FREAKOPHONE WORLD

as a chromaflock of hazmat-
suits

[In this one the derision is milk staggered with soil and I am in question as intelligentsia bewildered in dust and frayed velour]

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 lasik eye surgery is considered as well as lingerie but ultimately the decision is futile and I am corrupted by a number of needles]

In this one the flautist takes three showers daily. 

[In this one the young men say the translucent mask is an instrument of ecstasy but my pleasure source is arbitrary]

The townspeople must acquire a stenographer’s perfect circle to gyrate spirits in the century’s sock hop.

Untitled (The Largest Room in the Salon)

It’s a lot of small dots,
up close.

WHAT'S A NORMAL WAY TO DIE ON A MOUNTAIN

my body           is  not  visible

Echoes

Remaindered in the sun

A soft afterglow

Lighting up

from Day

pressed by Carmelite nuns

from Day

the limpets have left

Hudson at the Museum

The old days when the stream impressed itself
Upon him: cold, baptismal, absolute.

My Fake Mom

Fibers of his polo-shirt sliding against the black leather of his Camry.

To the Heart on a Sunday

you always say "Come out!" or
"Go inside!" as if peace is to be found

Panic King

ones that drive me deeper inside
the rented house of myself, protected
by years of shiny white paint.

When you became a wing of me

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  

TO: iz (no subject)

answer me or i cross
a nun. answer me

Two Nicks

The twins have taken to quoting Kierkegaard.

Tall Grass Blues

As you can see, I've been learning French, mon amour.

Wildfires

winds carrying your name
coupled with mine
the way you hold light

Adelaide

A glossy car circles
The path watching us.

Marie on Ed Sanders

Neoclassical austerely
Wait. Outside Austerlitz

Attrition and Difference

a leaf playing dead

When I Got Drunk in Hyperspace,

Here is what I wanted to do: hold 
each willing face in my two hands, touch 
each set of lips with my thumbs. 

The Question of Selfishness

You step out of Ken's jeep
Into the San Francisco fog, shoving

Prowl of Hovering

Everything baggage, sightly, swamped with generosities, glassed, everything turned

Can You Be As Urchin

Can you be the sunrise entrance song of ocean floors.

On a Thorn Bed of Neon

I am all tremble and fray and torpid and molecular seams of a dusk breeze.

The Peacock of My Eyelids

Maybe on the walk home I’ll carry my sandals between the middle and index of my plumage.

The Machine for Destroying Nothing

Likes to know which train I'm missing

Schubert's Piano Sonata in B-flat

Schubert who died November of 1828 chirrups.

little pieces, ash over me

luminous hill sides lavender quiet bath of intensity

Waves

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,

“I Like My Women Like I Like My Cars,”

if a tire pops, it'd be like gliding on air—

This Is My Day for Crime

The attendant heaped snow on a platter and recited a poem
about spring and great faith and the plum, but

Pinconning

the varieties of teeth (incisor, eye, and molar)
and the way those teeth outlast us

Gift for Apollo

Loved a girl who became 
a laurel tree and loved 
a woman who betrayed him    
with another.

Or

Layered voices, strophe and antistrophe.

Against the Future

What will you say
to the ones you promised 
forever? You chewed down

Hudson at the Museum

The old days when the stream impressed itself
Upon him: cold, baptismal, absolute.

Between the Trees

a body formed from a handful of twigs then lost
the limbless shapes a severing of stumps

Meutestraumen

The blind moon hangs over the pillars
and the burnt remains
of the cedars,

The Animals

Wouldn’t tell us anything at all—
we milled outside, buzzed
with an ambient fear.

Vision 3

my mother
this morning
pulling back the lashes
of those eyes,

from Leafmold

White mulberry: I spent the better part of a morning watching it grow.

When You’re in Romania and Wish You Were Alone

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

When I see a Train, I Want to Take It in My Arms

You were kicking blankets all over the ground 

South Pasadena: Rage Noir

I always wanted to leave California. 
To exit the hunt he might be making 
of downtown diners and fading public parks, well-lit places

What Critics

There is no trick to the cup,
Arriving recovered to a shy deal 
Though already a different photograph. 

The Kind of Hope

A cloth lifts
A partly landing veteran.
The storm.

I know where but where where?

––And I thought of you,
how there is no future in thought,
how all thought is remembrance disordered