Welcome!
The numbers are numbers, not dates.
09 — bedroom window 262° W
Dead pine scalds from the indigo plane.
I learn my angles, my arcs, the tricks and the
order. Fields of yellow, yellow, the screaming
loudness of morning which tips
hushed stone. Fissures the secretive
hills. Teaches an essence so
present in my body I must learn it all
new, all over again, elemental chemical and
nothing, nowhere, smoke ghost and kid sun.
Memory tied and swinging, melting dry.
08 — THIS WEEK/NEXT WEEK
The herons dip low.
Water pieces and
scatters up, away, my body a thing
I can see. Effort and strain, a great wheel
and many pattering steps. Around me,
tiles fit and slot loud. I beg to sleep.
The path pinched and gathered, and
flung from me. Windows wide open,
I welcome the soft roar, a few flies,
a black wasp. I bring this
life to my mouth.
The flesh burns.
07 — root through
A flight of soapsuds catches
and quiets. The heat a thing
familiar, an orientation, a toward.
Soapsuds, dust, voices flubbing under
water, eddy first around me then
root through. Sleep flickers for me
like a sister of the bright heat.
Sometimes, for weeks, all we say
when we speak is one thing.
It's okay. I love you. I know.
06 — Banner For Love
Under floodlights, a granite dust
works and twists. Later, the global
communion of men crawling for
bed while the sun rises. A banner
for love drops
off the overpass, radio low,
current, frequency, long rope back
to the ship in chop seas.
World order a series of lights
and a pit of bones.
The road is long and the work
asks your life and a banner
for love drops
off
the overpass,
radio low,
05 — some
a fire, some dice, some
food, some
I can see so clearly
I can break my heart break
the still water
04 — "Oh, Motions of Tenderness!"
After Mary Oliver
One body on the side face, encrypted to blue. The aspens weep. The lichen gathers and straightens to vertebrate height, wrong city. Oceans of shunted brothers, needles and cymbals, ever rolling. I own these words as you do. I flinch at blood, try not to. I cannot name the aesthetic perfection of raw fear, of true evil as a locked truth of the born circuit, engine, system, so I phone a master. I cannot name my grief, so I buy nice bread. Basil. I sleep at length. I come to the great blue and the weeping aspens to give it to god. Under god I am not good at all. Thank god. I am born circuit, engine, system
given mercy
given eyes
and hands to love with.
03 — The now of you / a rapture.
Drop cloth running, twisting with
evidence of life. The now of you
a rapture. Given perfect choice,
we feel for home. I know almost
nothing and I know your voice.
I write toward it like a child
scratches for water in patch
garden. Exodus in plastic.
Pepper seeds and petal-mash
magma. Acorn wheels and the
ancient way we
register with the scavengers.
02 — Three Silences
I
You wake disturbed. You won't say
why. Doors open
to doors, the banks silvering
part-eaten. The late sun
blinks.
II
At seventy-five miles per hour,
you impact global wind.
Your body is mostly electricity.
These are words of
the intellect, like numbers
over a thousand.
III
The first thing we are is mud,
the reorganization of a woman.
I tell my mother I don't blame her.
I don't. Blame her.
Some iron and some
fuel shrink
the hills.
01 — multiples
the world warps and planes
flips kicking splits
a stranger in each
shadow box of four
bargaining with the
glass the
lushness of a new
heat pushing
closer four
of the sun
too bright