praying into the dryer vent
grant me warm hands
daffodil deliverance
the pain of your first boxing match
one sunbruised blossom snaked above
the treeline seeking shelter from
them city sounds
just creek water
& rice wine
creaky pines are windy busy
heralding my
mountaineering madeleine
—-
I am leavened by your hot skin
ribs & bones & starving at
your salt lick
Ashoka,
we have feasted at your lap
reach your bark in famine
to remind myself
—-
where Mahavira renounced the whole world
in the forest language
& my tea leaf lips touched the ear of an interpreter
she bent to hear me sing
that Hurrian hymn
of dead glaciers &
the higher order of love
to be felt & feel
—-
Ashoka,
you are laughing down at me
as I fret over another blanket
stitching myself to your roots
we will grow together soon
Victor & Marcelo ride the school bus
woven into seatbelts
in mutual hatred
Victor bullies Marcelo constantly
& Marcelo cries as he waits for the bus
to arrive
—
pull on those imaginary boxing gloves
daddy didn’t give you fists for nothing, kid
first the grape juice
then the ginger
tease
you kissin’ my soldier shoulders
warm compress
surrendering to winches
freeze
I am quilting your wrists
my apprehended temptress
—-
snare those arms
to hold you up
hold still
unfocused lenses
croak robin’s egg blue
& my body believes
in every word
you wore to grooves
an oaken shield
now splintered liturgies
they are deafening
they tell of your perfume
Water leaks under the jamb, sickly slow deflated lungs left to melt here. This chair is too big for me as I divide figures by the lump in my throat. Eight hundred seconds pass & count faded cash on my dead watch. Warm beer eyes me darkly. She is sultry & whines to be tasted. To be finished off so we can both go to bed. The chair is one nervous squeak from rolling away forever. You were my age when you sat on this cold throne for the first time & I am wondering if the king will roost again. Waiting for bad news; I listened to your amplified cough as we spoke. Three feet away I held the phone so loud was your wet volume. They rolled you into the room next to hers. I kept that coincidence in my pocket, in my coat. I swallowed the truth. Déjà vu.
Maybe this is how the god of modern men felt when he drowned a wretched earth, kept that secret thundercloud from each child he could not bear to burn. He knew everyone would die & knew that knowing makes it worse.
This chair groans & what does not add up fills the building to her leaky roof. This chair is too big for me.
It was built for you.
my empress of held breath
she cross her arms
she cross her chest
the modern world has moving parts
& I am one of them
-
my goddess magnolia
she sprout in March
she crown a king
though effortless her blooming is
I kneel before it
-
my pharaoh of poetry
she flood the Nile
she river reeds
this epoch has mud enough
I brick her pyramid
-
my princess of poison thorns
she cross her chest
she cross her arms
the modern world is moving us
closer still, my queen
got them patrol shivers
in the creosote smoke
letterboxes leverage luck
against our cattle coordinates
-
we bed down in starfields
under the juniper limbs
greedily drunk with her shade
by the prickly pear oasis
-
sorrel & sweetgum startle easy
our beaten wagons circled
between the bellows
& creekbed stones
-
cross the petroglyphs a rider crowed
he wore a firmament of feathers
he would fly no more forever
through the ten gallon sky
-
you make me unseemly, love
ledged up, your prairie bones
in the canyons a moonbeam built
weary of my stillness illness
wounded knees on sailor legs
we are a lonesome ride from Eastern ports
now our home is on the road
you are all soft eyes, Audrey Kathleen
I’m a combed down Eldred Peck
& Cole Porter is narrating
our Roman holiday
at the Spanish Steps
I could have sworn it was Minneapolis
intermission at the Guthrie Theater
or nineteen fifty three
when you cut your hair short
& I lost my hand to a hole in the wall
it swallowed liars with stone teeth
-
a mouthful of surprise
when fingers emerged from my cuff
I had been trying to make you laugh
& your face gave me the distinct impression
nobody had ever done that before
you looked absolutely radiant
you looked desperately relieved
today I am part of the problem
because solutions are difficult
it is cheaper to complain
pull the broken pieces off
& continue continuing
quivering lip sex
your equator revolves
around rough hands
calloused from pruning
the soaked orchard
they urge apples
from alkaline loam
-
I am awake for twenty four hours
because I want to be tended
because I want to be
put to bed
jewelry sachet
white tyvek bag, seven feet, zippered
blue sterile field
three khaki identification tags:
attach to belongings
zipper
& left toe
one blown pupil
its fellow pinpoint
wipes for washing off ninety miles per hour
into an embankment
traffic had bent inward upon itself
a greedy snake with no tail to speak of
so we didn’t speak
-
you dozed casually in my passenger seat
do you know without you it is empty?
quite so, darling
-
never have I felt so compelled
to describe wild brilliance
& limitless beauty to a tree
-
but the forest knows she is green
so I let you sleep & grow leaves
joy is a boundless thing
pale lime orbits
a carrier urges fledgling battalions
to the business of bombardment
beaten coloratura strains
at the Saugatuck bottleneck
in B flat minor
-
where wolves & dreadnaughts
crowded the river to
New Antioch
having smelled blood
a mahout melted to his mount
beneath the whip
of twin Sumatran suns
-
I am an honor guard for a boneyard
worrying the flock in my mouth
somebody on the radio asked for
a doctor to the red phone
so they could call them in the field
spare us the nightmare they found
two little ones & their murderer
in a Chrysler Town & Country
for fuck’s sake
