Poetry

That he left it behind when he left. That it has three teeth. That it might be the horny snout-end of a defunct dragon. That I remember him, early on, putting it in and turning it when it           broke off. That he looked at me and said, Uh-oh. She doesn’t want us to get…

In this thin air, your voice carries for a quarter mile, grating like a train, and I relearn the ancient lesson—epic sadness travels. Your braying turns everything tragic. The face I shave: crossroads of dolor. The bed I make: labor in lostness. The scrambled eggs at the end of my fork: another bite of a…

They are, my love, a cross between Einstein’s and wheat fields. Twin mustaches. Strands of sugar right before the cotton candy is spun. Astroturf welcome mats. The cellophane grass of Easter baskets. Caterpillar chia pets. Brambles and squiggles. Seaweed strewn on shore. Spiky cloud tufts that lift up when I show you my slip or…

morning dropped a gentler rain after wine and gin encasing the unseen    unmentionable    as clouds deftly encase wasps-in-a-shroud    and stay aloft    without a string unmentionable    even after headstrong long-gone spins of wind (go go little gallop of smoke    lithe cantering steam come come wild unthreadings    anything not to envision his fingers pressed against…

For a long time, walking it,           we sang Woody Guthrie songs, This land is your land, this land is my land,           and got along with whoever came our way, although, to be honest,           few came back and those who did had downcast eyes,           a sort of sad sack hangdog look to…

What goat goes roistering through the bracken of my doubt? What lantern lures me from the cave I could have withered in? The road is long and knotted, dear, from the credulous dire country of boyhood to your honest kiss. We pass the tool and die shop’s grind and click. You make a song of…

for Esbjörn Svensson (1964-2008) This ocean: simmer of handed-down fishscales & salt spreading from here to whatever’s after like soup spilled on a transcontinental plate. Here, starfish pucker up with Xs where their eyes should be. Here, in the sweet effervescence of nearsightedness, the ocean simplifies in its own gravity. Half-done shells are split then…

If your dream comes to life and the houses on our street lift themselves up and walk off on their leggy stilts and find different roosts before you come home from school, I will meet you at the spot in case of fire under the dying pine—whose roots are not legs. But promise me: if…

Out on the shine off the street there is the reflection of the coming bustle of dawn, of plastic and bolted steel, neon and industry caught in the asphalt. And as the grass sweats—the groan of machinery echoing off masonry—the dust rises, sewing itself in the fat of trees, shining the faces of men in…