The sound of birdsong in darkness
The green dream of the carcass
He would say later he was nothing
but a carcass with ten fingers and two rings
Now however we are listening to Steely Dan
You don’t know who I am exactly
but I am friendly, somehow kin,
maybe from New Orleans, Peggy
you said or Mary Lou Somebody
You don’t pick the song I imagine
Or did I pick it, I make notes about
the ice blue sky and hear in the dark
morning: why choose favorites
when everything is a reflection of you?
You-wouldn’t-know-a-diamond-
if-you-held-it-in-your-hand is my mirror
too (How I used to avoid you.) Why
remember when you already have a body?
Today you say music takes the back of your brain
asking for a ride and says let’s try this
Hey this is worthwhile this is our pitch
This is our pace. I think this is also the time
of your wanderings, when you have been picked up
by strangers and angels and cops who
reel you in which I also hear as r-e-a-l
because you’re listening to something else
not unreal but a pitch we can’t hear
Because gonesearchin was your handle
Who knows what you did with it
The canoes are belly up in the lake
and snow capped and clanking
Because it is late and your endless summer
didn’t turn out as you planned and I can almost say
I don’t need to it to be anything more than this
That there are birds singing and I don’t know why.
Maryse
Night is falling in the mangrove,
and my fear is closing in.
I know I’m useless when I worry,
but my boots are stuck in the mud,
and the well where I once drank is running dry.
We talked once of errance,
of the kind of journey you said would change me.
Am I running out of time?
The Therapy Swamp
I don’t use the word
mire much but maybe
I should. But I also shouldn’t
should all over myself.
diary 2
[ w/ bright green large format dot grid & blue ink ]
i stamp my fingers onto the glass over and over: a circular
series of lines layered upon the same identifying marks
sweating on themselves sweating each other. how often
do you study your own lines: how much time do you take
to do this: do you apply your lines to yourself and with
what frequency: do you take yourself line by line:
have you taken yourself apart
line by line
//
get in line
to undo yourself again:
who else do you undo in the process: what process
lines the places your skin curls back: what makes you
think it could ever be the same: are you staying inside
the lines: trace your finger over maps to make a vehicle
of you while it’s still unclear you’ll be a vessel, whose
distinction goes: that name i was afraid to offer myself
Rocks Are The Next Big Thing
Rocks are the next big thing,
I thought, while running up the hill
past the house with lucious daffodils
half-wilted and gorgeous. I bring my phone
on runs just in case I need to take a picture
or so I can speed dial Trevor if I’m about to die.
Then five hours go by and I’m
squinting at a data report, alone, trying
to understand why my data set disconnected.
I don’t really work with data. I work
with disconnect, though. When I bibliomance
with the Merleau-Ponty Reader thinking,
“help me with this poem,” it says, “How
could it be possible to perform the complicated
task I just mentioned.” Then I look
again and that’s a mis-reading. O belated
lunch! I began this day with a run, certain
my ancestors were with me, certain
that now was the time, is the time
to really develop telepathic powers.
“The mushrooms are in the rocks, too,”
I thought. The run was over, I drank coffee.
Did you get my message?
Romantic comedy
I peel back some skin in search of text
But never mind, it’s only flesh
Signifying flesh
While mulling a ban on lab grown meat
Each word needs only one syllable
and you can fill in the rest “I see where you are going with this”
“I’m going to stop you there”
Exiled at home
Keeping an empty inbox since 19**
Wink wink whisk whisk
What is the sound of an asterisk
One of the founders, emeritus
When in Rome
Like you’ve actually been to Rome
And you know what actual Romans actually do
On the Palatine wall after hours
There are fossils and graffiti
Bones, shells, tusks
Let me know when you’ve sorted
The alphabet on the refrigerator in the dark
If you speak my name aloud
Three times in the mirror
I’m listening
In a booth under the stairs
With an evolutionary predisposition to baby wails
And fingernails on blackboard
I’ve been learning to replace my silence lessons
With a standard distribution
It gets easier till it gets harder
And then when the edifice tumbles
Will it be ruin or accident
Archeologists meet cute
Keys
what does Sela dream about?
my first coherent thought of the day
how to comfort a toddler
nightmaring her way through
complexity / fork versus spoon
marbled interior hell of a closed elevator
strangers who demand a wave
keeeeeeees she trills
with breathless satisfaction
stealing from my coat pocket
mamas have keys and even
the dog has keys / albeit plastic
keys open doors I told her once
just a little marvel
how all the science in the world
explained / brought this to me
Double Feature
a cult of light little life’s rebellions in voice- over verge of personal politics I told you so many words stand vast empires many words stand for vast emptiness & viewer in shared momentum believes monument grainy film slurs scratchy love of others love for others although motif of flash that suddenness of light motif flash- back reveals its messed up inside weather a cut of light falls upon this human thing natural tendency to craze pinball pings such vigor then gutters but I’m here for the whole show 80s nostalgia perms palette of soft pastels puking skulls of glitter crushed souls cue weird synths an extra-large popcorn’s worth of menace soundtracked with sip of mystery an over- stuffed actor made up for grand exit dying to live on in memory one verse follows another other characters fervently covered in dull cinematic head sacks that fail into a deeper black because song says entertain us because idiocy has become entertainment abandoned arena flooding in fake light an alabaster alley of imagination aglow within idiot dribble spectacle lane open simple drive to basket nobody back a three clings rim outside unlucky rabbit skitters into street colliding with oncoming car splintered shadow shard gash into life cycle multiple narratives drone thru cineplex Friday night burn tree mouths unwhisper can’t resist perverse sky calling alone alienated nude branch spending songs waiting an odd hatchet falls forecasting we forgot how to live in it cricket with manic leg rub call it narrative because it means more & final voice- over inhales breath crown of wilted daisies this staged staging of summer light exhales
YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT FLIRTING IS
What made you feel old
I outgrew podcasts
which also youngs me
Weakness for smart people
From podcasters who I mistook for experts I purchased
perfume that lowers blood pressure
coffee gravel that tastes like skateboarding
subscription to a butt
bucket for leftovers that turns them into
I have been on the chase
In the adaptogen control bloom
With the voices of real science
I thought I outsmarted attention economy
by being a good listener
In the giants’ sanctuary the warm wooden beams hug me
I promised to be a soldier or a disciple or a forgiver
The sky is an erased edge
Rain is a ground thing
If you open your prayer hands you get a book
The Purpose of a System is What it Does {2}
mantle-made home lickwrit with / why
we don’t know / the lines – we know long
to hold – lines a list of time, list
both edge & desire, fucking
want with all its shards, sift, silt, still
below/ converting abyss
magmatic thirst, iron drawn
shell & scales to shove these toxins
else, hot opulence / not nothing
sacred, of course – dark fissures built
whether tree love happens every
spring depends / before they bloom
agree*, before now – mineral, mast
years, choices – in every bearing
miles between / salt our mutual
curl of lip / to tell whose hungry
hunts, whose smooth grazes, who would furl
for – pelagic papery wist
delineate by light the thing
named haunt call again, again call.
*words lifted from “the hidden life of trees” by Peter Wohlleben
April 2
cut across the strong
cleave and fork the weak
capture up the gusto
depending on scenario
position the make-or-break
flawless like Morticia
April 2
I forgot how to bleed CRACK air filled my fat pocket fell continued falling yelled at the ambulance man HEY THAT’S A SAPLING they tramped out of the yard my forest smacked me in the face every 3 inches brain spilled 4H animals acorns squish knees DON’T FRET head wounds bleed a lot A LOT look! my hoof grew together HAHA shut up SHUT UP! I can’t breathe inside the imperium serviette on my head while they glued the lessons and nonsense back in.
An Open Place
Thundersnow. Lightning. Lightening. The snow makes everything quiet, muffles the noise. What comes first the thunder or the heat. The thunder or the flash. The flash or electricity drop. Pole struck. Mayday. Enter: three bearded ladies. Enter: the lights all out for miles and miles. Snow up to varicose veins. One says: What’s that sound? What snow is this? When will I see you again? Two says: Ballyhoo. But, what I mean is: there will come another day. Three says: By the days end. What day? What snow? One says: Where? Two says: The marshlands of forest fire, the ash of the trees. Three says: To run into Mayks. First says: Leave me to my cat, I want to go home. He hates the thunder! He hates the snow! He hates the fire even more! Two says: Leave me to my guinea pig. They snort and skuff all night. Inches turn to feet. Together, they lock arms, and watch as the trees fall by flame. No amount of snow’s reprieve. They sigh a collective say. Together: It all comes to get you in the end. They hover above the wet ground, toes turning toward themselves, legs spirals, a wet humid fog, choked out smoke-air.
April Solo 1*
* duet forthcoming alternate days
IN THE MEDDER
In the medder in the
furrow in the redder
bedded dogleg burrow.
From the church mouser’s perch
under leather night sky
where the deader lure the
dying come out and search
the pure o of a moon
untethered, unfettered.
Dates with Flowers
We walk the old neighborhood.
I make dates with future flowers.
With the irises I planted out front
because they’d been your father’s
favorite. With the red poppies
bulging and bursting
outside the rustic fence
that buckles the daisy field.
The plums in the tree
the neighbor said I could pick.
More than enough. No good,
no evil. The bed of tulips at night,
now framed on my friend’s wall
in New Mexico. I’ll be back,
I say to my garden
from the long days
when we circled the blocks,
watching the slow, slow show.
I’ll always swear that spring
was the lushest I’ve ever seen
cars in their garages
peacocks in the villages
dolphins in the canal
an apocryphal human woman
sweeping her streets
stringing a garland
in both directions
Blueberry
the nanny has never
eaten a single fresh fruit
I can’t even believe that, L says
twirling her long hair as we sit
in chrome-heavy traffic
I look at myself
in the mirror less often
why did I bother with that
the current refrain of my life
blu-blu-blu-blu means
more blueberries now
Sela’s blurry pout teaches me
or should I say, relearns me
the language of the insatiable
THE PRANK IS I’M STILL ALIVE
At my mouse table
I don’t like the way I feel after I talk to her
the prodding into spaces where I fall down
People without stopping
There’s no rule I have to call my mother
I remember her washing my hair in the kitchen sink
There’s a reason an era when running away like Claudia Kincaid made sense
Three of us said at lunch we thought about it or had done it
If we disappeared our parents would express concern
and reading that book aloud to a classroom made sense
I break a little
from being little
I am often alone
The years keep getting better
all the things I see so clearly now
political heat
similar things not happening
In the blockade or the fantasy of the blockade
If you are too perfect you will never start anything
diary 1
[ w/ hot pink large format dot grid ]
taking risks after nonsense. last day in, first day in. sunslant, copper sun block, sticky circles. broke ten days
to be here. broke four months to be there. the bar is loud and i love that. sun in my eyes, sun on my page.
i’ve been thinking about it a lot more since paul died. i talk to paul about it a lot since he died. i wonder
about it a lot since paul died. paul died and then probably i had a drink. paul died, but not of drinking.
paul and i never talked about drinking in life.
paul’s blood in my cup.
somewhere, i’m pouring.
//
have kept pouring me out.
have remained a secret fan of naming.
having never talked about drinking in death.
will die, but not of drinking. will probably breathe out a fountain arc. oh paul, is there drinking in the
afterlife? how to speak to the dead having never believed in heaven. how to behold the dead after they
have died having never known them in life. moon eyes, moon sentences. nothing’s ever quiet when your
ears ring. broke ten days. broke four months. broke etcetera. the moon never really goes down, that’s nonsense.
Spring
The pelicans are back. I wanted you to see it,
their wings scrutable and gliding in a way so
foreign to me, like machines cheerily producing.
I can’t bear who I’ve become. I am like the gular,
an ugly word for throat. Did you know they have ridges
atop their bills, knobs that look like the names of girls
I knew, those Daryl’s and Susan’s who would also glide,
how home is everywhere for the prettily rich? DDT
briefly extinguished brown pelicans, who stoop powerfully
now on Louisiana’s lethal bridges. Trajectory has been
on my mind, the knowing atoms ahead, already there
to shape us into a chemical choice. The lines of their forms
at sunset, both awe and not-. Memory is the hand
touching without consent, which I cave to and present
as a gift, my sundering. My misery, too, can glide
indelicately, and when it lands, all it can do is land. Is this
why I fail at love poems, for all I’ve never seen. No.
Love waddles by a garden window like an injured possum,
its gait so familiar, the mammal’s anti-grace. That it knows
its headed to die in the hedge, that it knows where to go.
Dragoonfruit
Assume a pose
And hold it
Until
Adding red to the sorbet
Or it won’t taste right
Dragooned, I thought
Once the ship sails out of port what are you going to do?
The spacefaring voice continues
“Be polite and live best”
What did I forget since last season?
Spraying poison on poison ivy vines
As careful as an act of love
Careful, careless, carefree
I smelt in the smelter
And then
Exeunt
Assume another postulate
Well, when you put it like that,
How about,
…?
???.
