Each time I break
this silence to join
a conversation, I have to start
at the beginning
again to learn
what I’ve missed since the last
time I was human.
Current
That was when they had the invisible
fence. That was when you said
I had a warm heart. All of you
got it wrong.
These Old Repressed Gargoyles
No position to be in, vertebrate
lips stick together standing
up. Does the female possess
the male, or does he just swim
upside down? That damned secretion is used
for balance. Incapable of flight—
two hundred eggs still
to be transferred. If only
propulsion ended here.
(found poem from Science Is Fiction: The Films of Jean Painlevé, edited by Andy Masaki Bellows and Marina McDougall with Brigitte Berg)
Tracking Cinquain
To be
multimodal
in two years is to be
a ride down can’t get there from here
derailed.
True Urban North
Another bundle up surprise
to dodge the moaning
bulk of one sanitation
truck in fall snow sputter
and mount is too soon, is to
become extinct not soon enough.
Could Be Ambidextrous
All the beautiful
moments have been taken.
What’s left
in my releasing
hands is this—
truthful seep into the less
elastic skin of memory.
Today’s Delivery
Song crosses a bridge
wood-cut, film is
cabin built and framed
inside a postage stamp
she would be afraid to use
unless she were to write
you a letter for
wallpapering another dead
letter office. We all live
there at some point
on the span we cross,
oblivious and blinded by the crashing
irony of an ocean
called peace.
Sworn In On Out
She never takes room—a spillover
lover from his last book
of bed times
and sleeping porches
in a town so much
warmer than here. Where
he would say fuck out
loud, she would be a collapsed
chorus of giggles:
Who is this
who makes me fall
down so easily into
spasms without withdrawal,
not even from a drop
of espresso
that woman splattered
on her way out the door? But
he sings it instead, and that
just makes her stand steady for more.
Make It, Lie In It
Frost on the empty
bottle in a dying
flower
bed, I don’t know what to make
of this month’s crisp cache.
A locked black metal trunk affixed
to a downtown
bus shelter’s glass
backing holds those same
secrets—no public access, and I’m not
ready to go so private without
you, crawling along, ready
to wrap my swollen feet
in your final scroll.
Conference Runaway
A gloat and a gleam
you can’t see through
an old phone mouth
piece. Our imagination collective
could be oval shaped
and who would know. Come
sit beside me in this
potted plant meltdown
we’ve created without
the use of virtual
eyes or ears. Our strut
could be next up.
