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.

He finds sanctuary
teetering on the bow
of an upended boat

wedged into a waterfall
frozen mid-flow. She finds notes
he left on that red metal

stool she loves. Memories
of a site that celebrates water
scrawled in pencil:

storm dirty gray filtered
fizzy still fresh salt brackish
murky clear ground brown black

She pauses at blue. The prospect
of the river
and its expansive bed

hurts her eyes—
how everything can vanish

in one weather-laden moment.
Another morning comes to,
his whereabouts sublime.

She gets behind
a frozen waterfall
to admire the curtain of blue ice
from a safe distance in a cave.

I get an inflatable Babe
the Blue Ox wearing a leather helmet
with flannel-shirted Paul Bunyan
wielding an axe and a football.

His tongue may be sticking out—
who can tell.

She gets a corner booth
in the shade.
I get the unforgiving winter
morning sun in my eyes.

She gets everything
before the city turns snow banks
the color of a canvas tote
after too many trips to the market.

I get to be a drop of dirty water
with so many stories left to tell.

A muscle spasm in my right calf
makes me think

about football.
I don’t know the rules.

We made up rules for swimming
and skating. Her parents made the rest.

After that one misstep, she took night walks
on city sidewalks with me vicariously.

So many sexy photos inside a pencil factory,
I don’t know how to love the pen anymore.

One more street haunter fetches a pencil
from a corner shop

at the long edge of civil twilight.
Virginia’s moth dies all over again.

Say you are a drop of water.
No, a flake—a snow flake

left on the window ledge
before it melts to become that drop

mentioned in the beginning.
If you spill into the lake,

we will see you from a perch
in the cottonwoods.

In the beginning,
the taxidermist made us laugh.

In the beginning,
the building was constructed

from dreams and whole trees,
not milled pieces of timber

or pocket stones
no one bothered to engrave.

In the beginning,
you are the tear I shed for that moth.

The day I start following an electric eel
from Chattanooga on Twitter

is the beginning
of another bout of homesickness.

In another beginning,
we play Double Dutch with an iron rope.

Cross the bridge
on a pogo stick.

Don’t count on keeping back 200 feet
from a fire truck on a mission,

or walking less than 200 feet
from the tavern to the temple.

Bless the Manhattan grid,
but in the Bronx the hills won.

pink hippo milk drips
from the ceiling
and she overhears
then settles in

to eavesdrop on two women
at a table
on the mezzanine
above her

they compare notes
on the best Dyson
and flours not flowers
and she gets bored

wishes they would
bring up stories
about smuggling messages
written in lemon juice

buried in cigars
and mashed potatoes
to fellow revolutionaries
imprisoned on a treasure island

it’s all poetic decay
or smirking angel emoji
that operate in bad faith
from rickety funicular cars

not a true blue TARDIS
in sight

sexy transport
in the right light
a #1 train on elevated tracks
in the Bronx at dawn

the way low winter sunlight
reflects off metal
while railfanning
without a care in the world

she wants you to remind her
without persistence
make the banners that fly
over the beach temporary

so she can still see
the sky’s natural mural prophesying a return
of the street haunter

this year the undertakers will begin
to live different lives
before the ground thaws

tripping through graffiti-coated tunnels
while a radio station broadcasts
gamelan music

is a flashback
returning to the underground
sober and no longer terrified

by the silence
is a flash forward

when you forget to flex and rhyme
before leaving the house
cracked words will rattle on over ice

prepositions will stack up
on a broken conveyor belt

it’s never too cold to snow
despite what you’ve heard
everything gets amplified in this weather

jets scrape across the sky
a snowblower revs its engine
radiators hiss at the creaking wood floor

another debate rages in your head
do you run do you stand still and pray
the animal won’t see you

you could use
a thicker coat of fur
your mining days are over

a box is not an insertion
till the trees smile again

trees don’t smile
they send warning signals
to their neighbors

nutrients pass through
a network of fungi
buried beneath

laughter camouflages the cough
in another body of water
another body no longer at rest

swipe through the Instagram feed again
sea smoke and frost on the rocks
off the coast of your island

a Royal Winnipeg Ballet School dancer
reaches the edge of the frame
with her left toes

a house holds up a mountain in Norway
is that grass on the roof
or a foothill to hope growing slowly

even in this cold
with days stretching pica by pica
in low light

She says I have fire hands.
My chained heart
line on the left hand
indicates I will write
another poem soon.

I may be writing
one now.

I will never marry,
but I will marry
disparate objects
together with a few
simple brush strokes.

Without a Girdle of Venus,
I will never manipulate
my way into someone’s hearth,
or heart,
or home page.

She doesn’t comment
on the soul.

I will travel to places
I’ve never seen
and return
to the ones I love
in a neverending loop.

She says I will never be famous
but will meet one more
famous person
who disrupts my life
for a little while.

I will not talk
about the weather
for an entire week
some winter to come—
not this one.

She pats both my hands
and smiles. I leave bitcoins
on the table
and walk a mile
before realizing

she did not tell me
if I would be rich,
or live long,
or invent a new word,
or discover a new route

into the center
of anonymity.

These gloves
will keep them warm
in the meantime.

We sit under the same glass
umbrella beneath the dripping stairs
and wish for stars
over a calm ocean—

no wind to tell on our motion
toward each other.

We sit above the same filthy
platform over the third
rail and wish
to be spared

another breakdown.
We ruin everything

in all directions
till the rumble wakes us to stand
and consider what Claude would say
about the crowd’s breath now.