Light Trespass

a noisy street
lamp invades her
private property
she has none
who owns the sand
she lets slip
between her toes
must own
the shells
he collects
in a shoe box
where she used to store
those letters

her memory
is too much
with her
another power
given to the rip current
his, shards
of sea glass gems
in amber ruby cobalt
blue aurora borealis
rose swooning
above the horizon

an offing
that can’t be reached
where the road runs
under then beside itself
to spill over the pier

she’s done it before
who says they can’t touch
those lines as they vanish
doesn’t know
what it means
to be a wave

I Am Always Giving Away

my power
even when the recipient
doesn’t remember
to take it
confusion about how
to operate those levers
a hidden mechanism
someone whispers
tavern wench
from another darkened room
my power
will drop ten stories
to break open on a sidewalk
like an egg
unfertilized and precious
my precious power

Feed

Big Star for breakfast
Uncle Tupelo for lunch
A.A. Bondy happy hour
fingernails and ‘Mats

a lousy dinner
so many songs
to love under
the covers overnight

I am no December boy
not your butch
never loved
a September gurl

I am a December boy
from another century

“I take out my heart . . .
fire it from a cannon”

a free for all
on a roadblocked main drag
cyclists and pedestrians
take over civil twilight

“no race is run
in this direction”

high water warnings
on the horizon
I know the river’s swelling
better than my own palms.

Liquid Ars Poetica

No word in this language
I inhale/exhale
can release the last 36 hours
to their rightful wild.

There’s James Brown.
Is he still alive?
A stranger asks.

Rogue stanzas need to interrupt love
poems when they begin to stick
too well to the soft side
of a fall into the river.

They snake around themselves
sometimes slithering
through tunnels, down slides
to exclaim

DUENDE, SAUDADE,
and other
single
word poems.

To laugh inside a church
while attending a funeral
is the most
beautiful answer

to float through
in a repainted blue canoe.

Attack

Everyone stop talking.
I can’t hear
the grief hissing
in my head. It begins

in the heart,
spreads to the lungs
into the throat,
releases behind the eyes.

Not always exposed
through tear ducts.

I can’t hear
your laugh
leftover from the last time
we saw each other.

Decades ago. Drinks
and dancing
inside Euclid Tavern. Yes,
you were dancing.

I was always dancing
back then. We were
on again off again
in high school.

Old friends by the time
we got to that night.

You were destined
for love, marriage, children,
cooking, sailing, cycling—
a life lived large.

For me, the night
to end all nights,
dance to end all dances,
kiss to end all kisses,

you get the idea,
had just happened
in the Flats
the day before.

It would take years of too many
drinks followed by no more
drinks to discover a life
to be salvaged in a northern town.

Everyone stops talking. It has ended
with your heart.

I Have Some Decisions to Make

translates to

farewell to undressing
in the evergreen wood
through a prairie wetland
under a natural bridge
beside a drained creek

farewell to hiding
inside an abandoned
boathouse waiting
for familiar voices
to fade away

farewell to believing
your shame
is love

farewell
my love

Where City Meets Woods Meets Lagoon

To go to my happy place
means trespassing across sea glass
beds I will never possess.
Land possesses me. Land that leans

over water—fresh and salt. Land that shifts
from hot to cold and repeat. Land
that reveals itself through fractured narratives
and images to prove and dispute

who got here first. I didn’t get anywhere first.
No more own my happy place than a hermit
crab pays rent to reside in a hand-blown glass
shell or one that glows in the dark.

Their housing crisis is ours.
The crustaceans got here first.

Hey Virginia

Get this:
Chloe still likes Olivia
Chloe loves Olivia.

Chloe proposed to Olivia
right there
in the laboratory.

Chloe and Olivia
are getting married.

Everyone’s invited.
Come back, come back,
Virginia, just for this one day.

Like Tom Waits

I can taste
the bourbon
when you sing.

The beads of sweat
forming on my chin
contain salt, yes, but

a sweet
lyric too.
I whisper

savory nothings
to the framed
picture of you

I hang
in my mind.

You are the lost
song I know

by heart. I should/will not
erase the burn.

Taint

She dances on
the pelvic floor
of her younger self.

It’s not disrespect.
Or it is. It hurts
to remember so much.

The body knows.
It’s not always enough.
She hasn’t relaxed

in a hammock
in 20 years. An expandable
weave. Wouldn’t know

how to begin.
Hers is
a gravity celebrating

Martha Graham
denunciation of
sentimental leaps.