i.

John tells me geosmin rise after rain

i’m sketching charcoal into tetrahedrons& ask why

one type of surgical stitch is called a mattress stitch         this type is

incredibly secure &

good for fragile skin or larger lacerations

[6C₁₀H₁₅O₇ + heat]

he says plutonium is not the most unstable element(More …)

I laud my feet against
the summer grass, & around me

crickets are juiced by the leg,
pushing the world to a spring. it is quiet along
the river. near me, a boy sets(More …)

this is beautiful: the sky, waking in triples. my father,
over breakfast talking about the computer his team

will build. he talks with the corners of his jaw taking
life of their own, creasing & wiping off chardonnay

lips in unison. on the tv a man with a baseball bat
beats another to a scar. behind him the sky(More …)

I live in a house on a block in a town
where your name takes shape on my neighbors’ front lawns
 
from heat wave to windstorm. They stake Cathy in the grass
until you win, again, the right to represent us.
 
You are a good example, Cathy.
Reasonable with your opponents.
 
So firm and respectful, rage-free
and logical as a man,(More …)

I admit I am not loyal.
That my womb moves and votes for the other guy.

That is my right, and my womb’s right, as I know
you’ll understand, personal responsibility

being so eminent among your concerns,
so important to us all, how we take care of ourselves

and then others, the burlap of our community
woven of such acts of self-preservation

before generosity. Cathy,(More …)

(for Susan Hiller)

my mother, who could not sing, told me.

As a young woman, she helped garner

the last grains of Tyrone Irish. (More …)

“Daylight disbanded the phantom crew.” —Edith Wharton

The sentimental is a rumor,

inexorable memory

of cottonwood seed

left in its husk, of

a grief spent down to dust. (More …)

Not the day for the false alarm,

the robin-breasted moment,

the double entendre in the mirror. (More …)

I

At night we rolled up the lawn around the house

plucking out all the vowels, saying

each one aloud as we’d been taught

to do as children. (More …)

I used to find my dog’s hair in bird’s nests,

soft layer woven inside the twigs.

I release hair from my hairbrush out my bedroom window. (More …)

The pads of the fingers on my left hand

are raw and numb at the same time.

I press my fingernails into their flesh. (More …)

I want to believe in a world beneath this one.

The bird that flies across the lawn

is a messenger, that if I follow her

in my mind, I will come to a door (More …)

The café customer mutters a body part and a man’s name

Plastic lids startle

the floor’s scuffed wood

A man comes in

A man goes out

A window captures

the one looking in (More …)

(for Michael Wilson (1985–) and Jacob Windsor (1975–1992)

Michael, heaven’s minion, pillar of light,

my child of iron will, golden enthusiasm,

and more iron will, it isn’t fair (More …)

I wake to find my name

gone as another lost night I want

to salvage: & only to have

its dark teeth sinking

into my skin—: you enter me

through an opening in the sky of

the body like a face (More …)

At the foot of

this mountain you

are the boy alone

again: there is

a word rusted

to the back of

your throat: a deer (More …)

I call out to you like a / You whose flesh is cleared out / from our ghosted

shadows to the tightened lips of / the horizon. There you are / at the cathedral (More …)

There are things that break and there are the things I have entered against and there are the things that no one promised. (More …)

     —kept losing self control,

  but how could one lose the self

  after reading so much literary theory? (More …)

Some friends had broken up-;

i didn’t think they should,

  but still…    (The bees had also

flown away to the chrome woods— (More …)

I miss Slade most, but more I miss

thinking Little was as good as any,

that a body could mean what he says. (More …)

  Brother B took off the Itamar mask

as we crossed over, epic duress lately

contracted let go, small mercy, less than

we’d been led to expect we now

clamored for, noise, no not knowing

what sound was… Noise no doubt, (More …)

Curvy, collapsed barns

decay on Rural Route 1.

Rotting mattress and car doors

roost in empty horse stalls. (More …)

Unlike hair, the pin feather

is alive. Not an assembly line

of dead cell on dead cell, cut

or curled for beauty, (More …)