Poetry

Auto-Autumn

Aged prophets, cradled in Crivelli’s gold, on a heat-waved page replicating quattrocento frescos, seem shy above the trees’ periscopes as if the sky were an unfamiliar cathedral, and, should they appear there now, standing between receding clouds, how gilded their halo, what color their gowns and what scripted tablet would they hold to admonish the…

Sweetheart

Beautiful cars Slant away in the dusk You can drive through Honeymoon orchards Where time is one foot above the ground With kiss Or pause for night’s cold career To be alone The crickets Do not think with me of your daughter There She bathes and I sulk In the dirty water left behind Since…

Tree Branch Blues

It happened when I started . singing hope to sleep The sycamore wants inside . scrapes siding and screens afraid of the wind . Thirst wins over wariness at the waterhole all bow . I have seen rainfall in brightest sunlight . but not snowfall under stars . Something listening . at the bottom of…

underwater

my ears go underwater as i speak, just one, & then another wood floors surround w/ boxes & sound, systems of voices & trajectories the mouth of the river & the left coast, montreal to twelve months of vancouver imagine, i said, doing everything it is you do, except in the shower even thunderstorms erupt…

Down This Wall of Heat

The house gathers dust and rushes. (Unreadable.) And the girl’s body arches. See the unbecoming angle. I lie down now. Open-mouthed-bird. And trust they’re all singing. These our only taboos: Her folded notion of water and clear voice. Her hand unwrapped. Climb in closer. Without line these your limbs, gills, wrist a small cut on…

Contact Sheet

Her studious efforts to construct and maintain partitions as between varieties of touch, which appeared as the blur between affection and sexuality, were rigorous in proportion to the real absence of boundaries designated by these terms. While the contrast was not sharp, it was still painful. Like trying to pry physiology apart from feeling: once…

To Zeno

You with your equation, an arrow plugs your heart, half in half out makes nowhere at all. You won’t admit it but what’s left is time: a patient sponge to stop your arrow from bleeding. It isn’t more years I want, just some older days. If a day had four hours more I think I…

Rue Monge Narrated

Up or down it, disguise and discretion go both ways. Indifferent to tone, peeling paint adds cachet: patina proudly worn as uniform. Varnish sweats like skin in the stair. Concierge behind lace curtains waits for deliverance. Who cares if care has stained her age? Even spring is autumnal: pallor of sun and leaf on café…