Eventually we begin
to repeat ourselves—the same three
chords, color
pattern, farewell
line in a breakup
text, taste
of ginger
on the tongue. Everything
becomes someone’s
déjà vu, even the truest
saudade expressed
on the side
of a broken
boat in a field.
Step on
my shadow, but don’t
float away
before I recall
your first private
murmurs at dusk.
Inverted, elongated,
fringed, unfringed, banged, shingled,
side-parted at the nape
of the neck, scandalous,
modern, cloched, graduated,
shaggy, buzzed,
A-line, revolutionary,
mere fashion statement, angry
flower, or wayward guitarist
sleeping on your porch.
A picture falls
off the wall
in my dream. Nothing
breaks. No explanation
necessary in my dream. The room
changes shape. Misaligned
pelvis or sacrum
or love
of lighthouses
could cause this
pain felt when awake. In my
dream, numb and suspended
and just
out of reach.
The knitter in a café
whispers to herself—is it
do drop
or don’t
drop
a stitch? An allergy
to wool is not the same
as a fear
of sheep
staples. Those long blunt
needles could be
walking sticks
for gods or
batons for
conducting accidental
pauses in an unclaimed song.
Without permission,
her pilot light
blue eyes lock
onto a boldly painted
arrow on a sign.
It points left
to a back room
she knows well but
not from this angle. It’s not
a secret to be
uncurled. Another sign
in another place
on another street points
left too. Blocking
the only revolving
door in sight, it says in chalk:
“Use Revolving Door.”
This is how messages
come undone without being
erased. It takes 12 years
to put Adam back together
from shattered marble
fragments. Blue
weakens to yellow.
An 85-year-old
woman gets raped
in her apartment. The weakest
flame is a murmur
that signals some
of us home.
Is that a surgical mask
on his face or
a desk lamp obstructing
my view? A cube
in the middle
of the room
could take up
all the space
in my head. Contaminated
thoughts could become
the beginning
of someone
else’s master
work—or a brief
ode to the long gone
70s without stanzas.
Fiddlers translate
the sound of water
rushing over creek
bed stones into string
music. Editors meddle
sometimes for the better,
sometimes worse. I am
no musician no
architect no dancer no
doctor no comic javelin
thrower no no
gardener code
specialist no secret
agent no no just
a meddler sometimes
the one
meddled with. Mettle left
over another hymn to write.
A noisy smell
only she detects
keeps her awake
past her favorite dream
exits. A sweet hammer
pounds on a pungent
nail head. A commotion
echoes in the alley
of her mind. No sirens
just a window opened
against the rules
on an almost
November night.
Too early for music (live
or streamed or recorded or
dead). Neon lit
guitars above the roadhouse bar.
Coffee poured not Mexican
martinis. They’re everywhere here—
guitars. I still remember
the lesson you gave me. I got G
but not C. But nobody cared. We laughed
our heads off
as the bus rolled down
a Connecticut turnpike. Still too early
this morning in Austin
to replay it aloud.
Untamed or unnamed, the tilt is in
her head—and a lock shuts
down forever to stop
the spread of invasive
species up
river. Forever is
a long time to fight the ambitions
of fish. She’ll find the way
to unburden her own.
