Poetry

Disorders of Skin

Rain (as it will). And it is dusk. And you with song upon slim voice. There is need: A reminiscence. (Partaken.) Baptized Presbyterian. We remember the names. The names. Their passing. Were days or something close. Closed. Coiled in our attic bed. To wrap ourselves (us even) as it would be. (There was singing. a…

In Which Nothing Warns You When You Are Going Astray

for Lee Chapman The sky first. Hobbled by an absence,                          no vertebrae, the weight of an incessant moon—that extraction to one’s own madly grinning                                  core over and over. And those stars itching away like a feast of lice; even its underpinnings are strung                 only to echo      to echo . . ….

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…

St. Francis at the Fire

Sludge heart. Pot-metal heart. Scree . . . Some leaves fell. Schlock heart. Chil- blain heart. Piss-stain heart. Gelded heart. O heart incontinent. 24-carat electro-plate heart. Cicadas were silent. Bumper-sticker heart. Foul-mouth stink-bomb heart. Black. Black. Black. And I sang all day. Drop-dugged wolf- bitch heart. And held birds in my hands. Thistle heart. Briar…

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…

Certitude

(July evenings occur as a name repeated.) Strange benefit of geography. He studied me at mirrors but recalled only photographs and houses leaning seasonal (a deluded shoreline). Ascertain bird or cicada near. Awaken to a darkened background clouded North by noon. Here is a reverse. We take of gales and a landscape of driving rain….