if you rescue
the whooping crane

what about
the akikiki

or southern rockhopper penguin
or yellow-faced bee

gray bat
or red wolf

staghorn coral
or monkey puzzle

Noah’s excuses for taking another
swig of the wine bottle

“For the sake of a single verse
one must see many cities.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

If skin is sexy,
door assemblies
become the ultimate
flirtation and chaperone.

Everything is
in conflict
with itself.

I am one of the unreliables—
a narrator who negates
plot and loves settings
that blur the lines

between sand and water,
wave and particle,
feather and gasp.

Without a plot, the story goes
dormant at the bottom
where beauty
in the muck lies.

It’s the quiet ones
who interrupt the storyteller
with their exquisite corpses

and neverending
Mad Libs
written in red pencil.
When she realizes

she should have been
collecting stories
instead of souvenirs,

she tucks herself
into the fetal position
inside a snow globe
and falls asleep.

The sign says
no photographs.
She takes one anyway.

The resulting image
of a vaulted ceiling
inside a reclaimed reading room
captures a moment

but takes no prisoners.
The heroes have gone exploring
secret meta passageways

and forbidden films
and songs. She discovers
a compartment
filled with old black hat

boxes—the kind
with leather belt straps
and brass buckles.

I know she will not find
any hats inside.
The story goes
all those koi

frozen in place
just below the surface of the pond
will not have died in vain.

She reads the wrong books
in a corridor
everyone has forgotten.

A cardinal rests
on a bare branch
outside a window she cannot see.

She reads people
recover from Nor’easters
in different ways.

When it’s deadly, some don’t.
If a bird, not a human, dies,
it’s still deadly

despite what the official record
says. Baleful conveys
the wrong tone, she reads

in one of those wrong books.
She reads about bridges
under water, and the stench

of decaying fish
fills the nostrils
of her imagination

(as if the imagination
could breathe
without her knowledge.)

She reads the temperature
in Celsius
aloud in a minor key

and warms
to March ambivalence
with a knit cap, no gloves.

She reads too much
into his woeful eyes
and learns the wrong way

to comfort a stranger.
He’s not a stranger
to the woman

who loves him
no matter what.
No matter what, she reads,

erases consequences
like sidewalk hopscotch boards
in the rain, or

the messages she leaves in red
dirt with a rusty jackknife
far from home.

graffiti on a highway
noise barrier
on closer inspection
I discover sketches of treehouses
that thrill then
fill me with dread
wooden planks affixed to a trunk
become my first definition
of cannibalism

a soft rocker that lights up
after dark becomes
a lost bunny ear begging
for its twin
to complete the rhyme
to keep a little boy
named Leo
from tripping over
untied shoe laces

that rusty nail
the blood
the tetanus shot
another fear is born
whose mine my sister’s
the facts blur and bleed
into a new truth
bark is much prettier
than this creation myth

we move onto a game
of rock + paper + scissors
to see which bacteria
will win this week
paper cuts sting as they leave
thin red lines
on our fingertips
as we thumb through a field guide
to advanced birding

an app would be safer
and so much
would not translate

even ferryboats have rope
wrapping around iron
as they break through ice

why would
anyone want
to willingly shoot
a soaring crane
and deprive the sky
of its quiet
dialogue with
the mountains
and the wind

I wouldn’t want

to write with a pen

filled with prehistoric

animal bone. I wouldn’t want

to know how it got there

instead of somewhere

it might serve a purpose.

If I could see the fingerprints

left on my heart, would they

serve a purpose?

I wouldn’t want

to wait for an answer.

I wouldn’t want to crack a joke

about sewers without

mentioning how to push pure

silk thread through a manhole.

I wouldn’t want to wait

anymore. I would interrupt you

one more time to declare

my vow of silence begins now.

I wouldn’t want to smile here—

then I would elsewhere.

“I, I wish you could swim
like the dolphins,
like dolphins can swim.”
—David Bowie, “Heroes”

We’re the ones
who forget to get married.
We’re the ones
who think the dead

man’s float
is a dance

to be performed
to ward off
the god
Poseidon’s advances.

We’re the ones
who may have wished
certain men dead
to return as dung beetles

in another life.
We’re the ones

who will eat dirt,
if necessary,
to honor the scars
on our brows and lips.

We’re the ones
who used to jump
off brownstone cliffs
into those Portland quarries

on a dare—presented to us
over and over again.

So clear and cold and deep,
the water would shock us
into becoming the brave ones
just for one day.

Euphony

In the house of 50%
awake, open the cellar door

(the interior one
that will never double as a slide)

to wafts of cinnamon
and boiling fudge.

Take care not to slip
on the steep flight

of stairs with a pair of scissors
in your left hand.

When you reach the bottom,
the cold cement will trigger

an epiphany followed by a moment
of serendipity that compels you

to deliver a soliloquy
on the next nychthemeron

filled with lithe spiders
on the ceiling

and languorous bass players
plucking feathers off

a dark corner’s desperation.
A wood thrush’s flutings

in the distance may tinker
with the phosphorescence

in the glo-sticks
you use to navigate

recurring nightmares
when the moon is too new.

Listen for it.

Roughness

If barefoot is the word
of the day, she will soak

her left one
in a hotel ice bucket

filled with warm
squash-colored paint

for exactly 1,440 minutes
before taking the risk

to leap across the concrete floor.
Flying will become

a celebration of gravity.
Footprints will explode

into fierce flames
only the rain can erase.

A gutteral scream will erupt
from the deepest cavity

of caged memories.
A how to podcast explains it all

in under 90 seconds—how 10 more
fish escape notice.

I am Martha
Graham dancing
on a California tree
branch in a devil wind
like a dirty poet
who used to be
made of paper,
died, then returned
to life filled
with blood.

I am not one to od on x
anymore. Before I thought
I was dying only twice.
That one time doesn’t count.
It just doesn’t.

If I can be Martha again,
I will never forget
how to move without
outside influence
upon the sprung wood again.

a knotted load-bearing beam
a cable without
a bridge to dangle over
a cloud cut out of a chainlink fence
a collision scrolls into view

Hokusai’s wave washes over
Munch’s scream beneath
Van Gogh’s starry night

later red spots
will prevent
daydream detritus
from crashing into walls
that will never become doors

an unwelcome draft wakes her
to late morning’s
blind courage

a redemption fable
gets told with a labyrinth
of shipping pallets
so precarious the ending
anxiously eats its own tail

swimming in deep
green juice
everywhere there
are those
step streets

Kingbridge the Bronx
no one says the Bronx
without the THE

stone wool stories
get tucked into the slag
the ancient house weeps in relief
dreams of Spanish moss wilt
in mid-winter’s dry northern air

the draft wins
she moves to a table
on the other side

where subterranean thoughts
follow her left hand’s
shadow too tentatively
across the pale page
some are not worth repeating

despite what the ghost
of Andrés Segovia says
with those nylon strings

some do not deserve
odes or beautiful shades
of gold surrounding their edges

others spin their own

When face-to-face
exchanges crumble
like flakes falling
from a croissant

and she doesn’t want
to be seen,

a corner booth
in a dark tavern
awaits her hot,
nonmigratory breath.

No one would know.
She could order one
(or ten)
and never tell a soul.

A line in a song
becomes the album title.
Or, the other way around.
Why not

begin with secret shots
and go
from there
into the sub-zero night?

A question mark will not move
this time of year.

A mug of strong coffee
and the memory of forgetting
whole days
pile up on the table

to be used
here or wherever
winter expands
without limits.

A mourning cloak’s petticoat
will flutter again.

When a kaleidoscope overtakes her
mind in February again,
she will focus on
the exquisite eyespots.