Poetry

:    One might study ornithology & the bird elude him. :    The bird & the study of birds are ordinary things. :    The ordinary’s most beautiful: how earth endures itself      in building’s brittle sunlight, gecko’s scuttle under aloe,      these shadows puddled in mortar & bark & the wind      milled blue through palms….

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

All summer and fall the couple floats hand in hand from work at the shelter workshop. Hand in hand in their secondhand sleeveless oxford shirts. With target tattoos on their deltoids. Even in the winter, the same way, hand in hand, although bundled up in secondhand wool coats. One snowy evening, right after they pass…

Is it a vanishing point or is it      Brooklyn into which the cables run      Brooklyn over which these two      these shadowy walkers come      against the shaded rails against      the future in the arcades in the bridge      the parallels above them in midair                                     § Under a clatter of fire…