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Skyscrapers

Night’s glass towers, Rapunzel’d by the sun, still stand at attention when the work’s all done like dragon dogs guarding the Mahayana heavens, or sentries at the outpost, leaning, nodding. Solariums of labor, they’re useless to the moon, pitched punctuation without any words. Harbors of security to paper-clipping functions now rest in darkness as mute…

Everything

Friends should learn to think differently about leaving— everything goes away: the sun, clouds, even stars become nothing after a while                            *   *   * Remember when we found that old mill by the stream? The fallen walls, leaves dropping, ancient mounds of archeology Remember being 13? The angle of the light? And how we…

Atonement

What happened to sweet heat, the sneezeweed, the luna moth and gingham sleeve, sipped Slurpies and reedy kayaks, the sponge-bathed trees? Why are the nights so flustered and furrowed, dusks crimped by crooked V’s of snow geese bored with palmettos? Why does the full moon pinprick the draft, neurotic winds reentering therapy, the light, an…

Snake Handlers

We play this same game at the end of every day, which you love as much as I: I have you in a gentle headlock, I’m hard against you, my mouth, my breath a graze from your ear— but I’m not talking to your ear, I’m pouring pictures direct to your tender brain: I will…

Wreckage

In the Swedish film, an island community. And the island grows smaller, it seems, as the bodies of animals are discovered, broken, littering the tidy, hushed landscape— a pile of eight sheep, slashed throats, eyes starless and sentimental; a dog hanging from a pine bough, swaying cord cutting a thin neck. Blind passion, great costs….