Poetry

Hippocampus

A bell is gonged, the body of a girl curled up inside it, a town grown wild, dogs sniffing skyward— gong, gong. They listen all night for the girl to fall, her stomach to growl, or is it a foot in a mindless gallop, snorts of delight as the gods take up the virgin-offer, or…

A Sky-Written State

Once a whiff, once a flint, the shifty skystuff blinds me on five sides. I take icefuls of noise and gas rounding out an inside. I prepare the upper reaches by kissing distance back into my skull like a transparent worm. Smoke keeps returning a little freckled, so I use it too. Throw it up…

Determinate Inflorescence: Ephemera

I am not making myself up for public consumption. I enjoy consumption when it means an end to things. Please deduce.                                    Each flower comes from the axil of a small leaf which, however, is often so small that it might escape notice and which sometimes (as in the Mustard Family) disappears altogether. (Waving adieu,…

Two Parts Water

While Three stacks sand on the tide wall. The welcome wagon dropped them here, between tours of the mudflats, between old men lining up shots of birds on one leg. Two says, It’s always been almost exactly like this, hasn’t it?, and Three misses what a dozen of us couldn’t fail to catch. The path…

The Unemployed Landscaper

Even the night         suffers where it came from. And not         until the shadows of mimosas gather over the creek, like large         moth wings, un- spoken, will stars         recover. You see, we both want the same thing. Like a dibble         piercing the earth, turning over         the moist sod, it is…