For the band of panicked street cats lapping spoiled soup I’d discarded at the base of what I only knew to call a Mexican rose, and for you, of course, dawdling on the lawn, bent over a Walmart telescope, in search ofstars that are remotest—Andromeda’s cities, the vaporous shimmering that was the first star of Ophiuchus, which even by then was gone,…
Civility—died on June 24, 2009, atthe age of 68. Murdered by a strokewhose paintings were recentlyfeatured in a museum, two whitesquare canvases, black scissors inthe middle of each, open, pointingat each other. After my father’sstroke, my mother no longerspoke in full sentences. Fragmentsof codfish, the language of savages,each syllable a mechanical dartfrom her mouth. Maybe this iswhat happens when languagefails, a last breath inward but nobreath outward. A state of holdingone’s breath forever but not dying.When her lungs began theirfailing, she …
I have been living despite myselfmy territory hemmed by mud and threatof mud If there is a land without its ownsubliminal violences this night offers nodefense of what has died in it Some thingsare only nourished in a stutter of kudzuand the inconsistencies of silver the moonshucks off Casual machines honey the darkwith the monotony of their health…
I’m enthralled by a cartoon’s coercion. Behind me, seen in the television’s reflection—exaggerated colors, animations—children whisperingbeside the slumbered old menthat gravel-in-teeth language: fuck, shit. I still yearn for youth, to imagine algorithms of birds,waddling outside on the lawn, the boys chasingfeathers, and the girls braiding a mother’s dahliain a beast’s night-black wings. Ah!—there’s the dawn-touch…
Bit by bit I’ll go on surviving. Love like the sheets tumbled soft. Miles of snow outside Lisbon. Before turning the camera to the window, Soon, I’ll let you go. They say that love continues. That the ghosts or angels will usher us home. February again, & the table begs for fruit. And what do…
By which I mean I look like that flower that fireworks in mid-sentencein the sky, over the end of a sweaty ball game. The crowd makes its wayto their cars while popcorn-spill & multicolored chocolate candies meltinto concrete steps. Maybe I mean you make me want to livebeachfront—so I can taste the salt & cliff-twist…
Georgia, forgive me. For years I’ve carried this grief like a hoop of bone, framing everything I see: fragments of water, fragments of earth. No visible wound, no body to bury, no song for safe passage to whatever the next world brings. I must be the only person here not asking, Where are the flowers? Fuck the flowers, those…
Humpbacks in journey rendered, in Eastern Australian watersan Indian Ocean air. How pleading tones jump across continents intorivers of sound scientists call non- human revolution, perplexes. Perhaps a singer lost course and migrated east from Antarctic feeding grounds.Did whitecaps trick or force; before he forged a life worth its music? Hisvoice haunts night-oceans in silver; intones his own dialect…
In my Fresno, there are no prerequisites,just a frontage road inside the fence floppedto the west. The cover charge for a poetic identityis delegitimized alongside white aesthetics—between the rows welting the earth’s still dustlike corduroy. On one side, almond trees, pistachios.Fieldworker housing spray-painted with ads.The fervent recall of history from poets in the traditionhover in…
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