Good Trees
When I think of home I think of you and me on the marble beneath the Acropolis— my hand inside your cutoff gloves. We are fifteen and the world is us. Let’s run away and the impossible loosens its grip. A warm winter’s day and we kiss under the Acropolis. We run not […]
A Bullet
—golden shovel using part of the lyrics to Boy Harsher’s “Spell.” I have words in me but they’re hidden. You are a bubbling fountain of words, words are like blades of grass to you. In the meantime the snow had drifted against my lips. My light is brittle and cracks upon contact. I am […]
All My Wants
The tree still stands but where are its fruits? The house, like a mouth, muffled now by dust. That soft, brown blanket sieging something once revered. I return home anticipating all that noise screaming That something thrives here only to watch my heart fall Heavy at such cold quiet greeting me at the door. There […]
This Is How
This is how we must remember him now. Bound by the confines of the one cramped room, swatting at the flies that rise from the gathered rubbish, empty sandwich boxes, cartons of milk sour as the thoughts that bring him always back to this one stale space, meandering through the same passage as the flies […]
Backyard prayer
cicada heartbeat buzzing in my chest breathing hot air into hot air sweat beading on my shoulders like fireworks at night how do you get back a mulberry bush hanging over a lake feeding the snapping turtle with soft mouthfuls your mother flipping pancakes each Saturday morning —warm paws reaching towards your belly— to me […]
I’ve always been good at true love
if i remember correctly you tasted like black cherries dark blood in your teeth spitting pits in the soft grass of summer blowing on a fire making ashes fly, embers burn if i remember correctly we lay facing the sky watching the evening bats fly closer and closer more frantic than the rhythmic birds […]
Postscript to an Unsent Letter
Anyway, all that aside (aside, like those massive mounds of old snow plowed into piles on street corners, at dead ends)— it is February. Hinting of change. Today the sun shed its gray, ragged-edged petticoats, light dances raw in the street again, windows flash back. From tired fruitless branches impertinent finches inquire about the possibility […]
The Astronaut’s Mysterious Renunciation of the Rock-solid
After floating so long in the limitless— up and down replaced by out there— he returns to earth, settles deep in the heart of Texas. Surrenders his protective polymer suit. Released from precise routine amid clean-clicking solid-state components, he lands there untethered, and turns to running a down-to-earth business: his fleet of trucks deliver […]
You’ll Get There
and the anchovies will unleash their hooves and the platypus will die trying but you’ll be there and beat the odds like Mahler at 7:32 AM or bottles of beer that are green with listening and waiting stomachs like molasses and gratitude like horny thoroughbreds gallant coffins empty those streets unfurl, feel saintly dirty and […]
Burning Juniper
Circa whenever and awhile. The year zero in the month of never, you and I on a five-year plan, up to our chins in slow motions and quicksand, good witches burning juniper, warding off evil, summoning sprites to act our bidding, deliverance almost a moment from here, our hopes and wishes a shimmering mirage in […]