Month: April 2026

Spin swerve       Gone summer        Dragging bikes  uphill       Downhill     so fast

Legs unable     To keep revolution   Spread out      Rims spinning       The accident

Don’t talk about     Soil becomes      blood         Was that the first time

Death      wasn’t vocabulary    Dumbfounded in dim light       Extended days

You held     My hand       Tears and snot     On your shoulder      Remember how

We hated adults    You and me against         What was it     We were against   

Growing up         Looking stupid     No Faker    Underneath     the Douglas fir   

Skirt of moss      Distant sounds   of swimmers      in the pond    Wasn’t it a lake 

Cold birth        Summer weather     sweating in autumn sweater       leather satchels 

Divided dreams   decoded diary entries    lily stains    Something what   This way comes    

Used to be all forest      Flannel shirts and duck boots       Fancy cafes     Recommended photo spot   

What happen    To our days       off-filter fun        Erased landmarks       You changed

Roused out of my swoon
hollow & absent
how could I fight?

I had been carrying
something that looks like a knot
in the wood

It was not a knot
in the wood   It was a thought
but wasn’t no good

Fresh lettuce & oxygenated air
have skinned me terribly    A sunset leans 
exactly in the opposite direction

If I were a moviemaker
I’d set about hunting for 
a bouquet of daisies in the waiting room

*Bibliomanced from random phrases of Julio Cortázar’s A Certain Lucas + one pronoun change (her to my).

Join the microfiber cleaning club? Spic and/or Span a Venn Diagram? Playing the long game of compulsory sports just
to avoid dust-busting the futon is okay if we’re all poets, ‘cause the hard work of poeting is its own taut glowing
turtle mapping zone of fealty to discouragement.

Continuing to misspell “vigilance” = putting down the porn? If so, from now on I’ll need to rent my B&D equipment
from that 99 cent place in Hatley (home of Polish Narnia’s talking military coyotes). After a road trip like that, what
wouldn’t I give for some fast cheap reiki on Zoom?

Five things I would give: 1.) that cucumber-cheddar-Triscuits-mustard snack you invented; 2.) the wet garlicky
flatbread in the “discontinued” aisle by the birdseed; 3.) Henry Ford’s curtain hack; 4.) “Cap’n Crunch’s” “cock”;
5.) perfume that smells like weeping.

Are we still stalking the womb of you know whom? Or celebrating the parallel spectacles of fascism in Nazi Germany
and present-day America? Either way, I think I’ve stopped experiencing the contradictions of the swamp master
of the microfiber cleaning club, which I haven’t joined yet because of that weird loud Polish talking coyote

rustling in the underbrush. 

our pink and chocolate field

mushroom of a boyfriend 

saw the bear crossing 

plainfield    bluebells too 

long underwater to un 

scraggle    my lobes still

practically floating

I have stopped experiencing

the contract of days 

the cosmos this season 

chest finely threaded 

the wasp having

already   I’ll keep fingering

the ferns still 

in their paper  wobble 

my legs enough

to activate wilderness

why is this particular 

headwater so much

more iridescent? whatever

we mounted was in dreams–

where is the swamp master

of this unincorporated 

village? right where I left

them, sluice

in hand–

To be forgotten     But he said,          I haven’t forgotten      A stretch of wood

The low-lying ferns         Various greens       absorbed light         Sun through rhododendrons 

That day     Sun on slate         Slow trickle    of wanna-be     waterfall      Four feet moving 

Through    leaf waste       Do you        remember         Fading car       sounds      Wood depth 

Rustling        in the underbrush        Someone         else’s foot pattern       approaching    

A menacing voice         A disproportioned beard            Distortion inside itself   

A lesson         about cells         Show me     yours        I’ll show you      mine

Whispering     side-eye is an ignored        side-eye         How about a wink     More akin     to aura

How about       this hole         it’s home       How about        this branch       it’s a hold  

Just ask      the leaf       No reply       Replay the ask       The sky answers       With silence 

I haven’t forgotten       Two knees       A slight touch    How it began        The story

Who’s story       Is this       The beginning           Touching knees     Is a deceit closer

The midway       Hesitant   narrative            Something flutter     A voice floating    in and out 

Harmony ears      Nature kids     doing natural things       This part      The story  keeps to itself

Feeling shy      Lusting secrets        I haven’t forgotten    Heaven’s nonsense    Patient light 

Flat back        The sky undoes       itself in blue      Outside    any good song       the melody

 is lonely          Outside any good boy        A guitar riffs into heaven       An April day

I haven’t forgotten         Friendly keyboard trinkle          Forgot    the windchimes 

You and your clarinet         An April afternoon       Cars       Fading away 

Something moving         in the underbrush         Untouching knees        Secrets lusting 

For more secrets         Shushed-up trees          You don’t have to remember   I haven’t forgotten

Diagonal lines are going somewhere—
teeter like they’re about to
                                    fall

The curvature of the field
is incomplete    an opening   or exit

Page after page of black
white gray      and then

a flash of yellow      As I slip
into sleep I recognize its pattern

dipping in and out of air     —goldfinch

We drove into the sun
A few trees flowered

You put some music on
& I hummed a little

Innumerable bridges later
We spoke at the same time

saying the same thing
then both said nevermind

talking to myself
We stopped at the record store

but the thing you wanted
had just sold out

No hurry at all
to drive into the sun

as a few trees flower

Sure it’d hurt    Eventually he’d be making dinner    For someone else    Some people are unlucky

They stay alone    Their entire life    Not him he’d fumble or drift into someone’s else’s life 

He was predictable     Is that      What made him less desirable?      She held his hand

She’d leave him A note       Slip out       In the morning         Before sun appeared

Last visible stars        dull and hard          It was enough       Light jacket     Half zipped 

Visions of subways    Busy city intersections        An idea of dinner      A quiet café  

Seat for one        Another life    She would         Have another life  

Green-hued blue
Red-hued blue
Primary blue
Blue rain in 
a blue mood under
a rankled blue moon

What I wouldn’t give
to give it over
to somebody else    the long
tail game of wait & see
aches with misspent vigilance
& never pays out

I’ve got nothing
up my frilly poet sleeve
No ochre tokens to cash
No dogeared cards in naphthol red
Just a printed map
with a few things circled

Where you wanna go

Where you been

Where you know who you are