your open legs a tree where I leave messages like a failed monk with new prayers waiting it out in the small clearing to stay in wilderness without trembling to lean into a covenant of branches no one can redeem the part of lying awake near your offered wrist yet I might split you with…
The light that fails to stop him from staring Into the fire, the way her head is lowered Between her arms until the shoulder blades Emerge up into half-wings. The light That refuses to qualify as an act Of kindness, her mouth that does not speak. Also the meadow with the one faithful Tree standing…
“Dead Confederate Solder” —Gardner, Catalog #554 Around him is battlefield litter, dew-swollen lumps of a spilled powder. What is it? And the strips of cloth. Left behind the lines of men that advanced or fell farther on or hid somehow on this trampled field of Maryland grass. By chance, at the extreme upper edge of…
Off work and going upslope for a look I left the plans—to see the view Their money bought—weighted with a rock, And trampled a path of parted weeds Past pampas, nettles, Poison oak bristling in the breeze, A weathered two-by-four nailed high up in a cedar's fork, A haggard pair of panties waving stiffly from…
I had this dream that a river Ran beneath my bedroom window And a pretty woman With dark hair and dark skin Was swimming in the dark water below. But somehow, strangely, I wasn't In the river myself. I couldn't enter my own dream. I can't think of a damn thing to do. Paranoia really…
Half the town fits in the rearview mirror. One day the mirror falls from the windshield and the town shatters like a bad dream. You know how it is. One day you move to California. There is this club in Santa Monica—a renovated basement where you dance to songs about money. Your accomplice says there's…
The truck in the passing lane flings a stone squarely between my eyes in driving rain: November surprise. Arms of the windshield wiper flail like railroad crossing signs all the way to Seattle. I am leaving behind the scattered ash and the widow's double bed. Alone behind the wheel, I am comforted by old convent…
Six months later Sandra was found Murdered in a ditch. Lying With the blood Leaves. Scattered dirt Of Oregon. Four of us fucking A cheap motel on The limes of Van Buren. Then we Switched. Sandra slips On the wet tile Floor. These flakes Melt…
for Chris Benfey Before sleep last night I lay there in a reverie over L.A., and dreamt of it all night and put off getting up for fear it would go away. All my fears of flying dissipated at the thought of cruising in the air to Los Angeles. I was happy there. I said…
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