where’s the money shot

sunny with a real feel of 5
degrees Fahrenheit

another cruel moment in April
gets trapped under ice

no algae
nothing’s blooming

good or bad
here where the climate trickster

of our own making
never sleeps

Frankenstein’s monster drinks
from the fetid future

has not yet learned
how to lie

he won’t open his eyes underwater
he won’t tell us what he hears

in all that muffled blue
his silence is damaged

if he would declare his damage
it would spill then bleed

into the fibers
of a wrongly-folded map

someone has abandoned
on the frozen ground

remember those

pockets of jamais vu
dot the landscape

with crimson-tinted notes
in the minor key

no one asks to be
the hero image

that spans an iridescent bridge
to nowhere

Rain Before Heat Waves

Steam doesn’t rise
the way she dreamed
when she could

remember to watch
for it. Infrasound below
a register she recognizes

could still
cause a syndrome

or vibration
or jarring

thought to be
released into wind
bursting overnight.

Rain on the First Day of December

A cold apartment
is a cold apartment
regardless. If

the boiler
that generates heat
within is broken,

the answer
is not to smash

potted plants
onto the sidewalk. It’s not
the stoop’s fault.

Up Here

A sculpture outside
another restaurant
that didn’t make it

celebrates a robust
dance in bronze. Limbs
will support a partner’s need

to cry beneath clouds.
Will they break

now or tonight
when reminiscing has begun?
Whose weather will make

the better spin? Some cities
may tie.

Severe

Light becomes passive
aggressive with an upturned
umbrella ceiling. Reflected
off nothing more, nothing
less, I might scream, or
quietly hum
in the rain.

Thunder in Kettles

And then finally the rain
comes to crash night into its lover
lighting to pronounce a distant crack
of ecstasy. I won’t go

to the window. I know. Tomorrow
morning the world
will smell of lilacs and the memory
of wet concrete

and bark. And into it
I will walk around a corner
ready to give desire
another chance.

Flat Dissolution

One hundred tornadoes. A fifth
of American Honey poured
on a stranger’s Raisin Bran. A heartland

spreads and evaporates
without any salt
in the water. It could happen

here—could happen
anywhere. It has.
That urban myth

protecting the urban
center—debunked. One hundred
tornadoes. A fifth of anything

clear. Street game
disasters.

Who Is She

To judge the games
others watch, their fictions,
what’s cold
to another person’s skin. She watches

seasons break
down, intersect, run
along parallel tracks
like subway lines

because she sometimes counts
more than four. And who’s going
to tell her to tally
the world another way?