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Under Bank

April 18, 2018
Log, river bank’s studded and striped. Eel river. Slipstream of river flowing Northward round a bend. Friends and Their temporary berth alongside Trout, rainbow, cottony gills, red Rot of blood and brilliance flushing Afoot as double dragons fly one Above another and land on our head. Tandem linkage. Listen patiently Try and inhabit outside houses...

Elegy for the Last Man to Walk the Moon

December 12, 2017
I no longer have the luxury of being ordinary. —Gene Cernan I too am restless.  I say this and I do not know you.  My moon was never your moon, as yours was never yours long but lost among the rigs and waters of the gulf, the wax and oiled shine of the harbor a...

Southern Song

December 12, 2017
A river of stars turns in the sky. On earth, curtains are let down. My pillow, my mat are cold and marked with tears. Loosening my silk robe, I rise to ask the night of its passing. The green stitching of the lotus pods is frayed and the leafy golds faded. The weather is the...

My Son, the Night Light, the Dark

December 12, 2017
La tortuga carries all the stars on her back— they burst from humps of shell and shine the blue room with stories, the bear on his eternal hunt, Cassiopeia drowsy and expectant with tragedy. Buttons change the hue—green, gold, the purple of a bruise. He asks me to lie with him until the stars disappear....

Brute Force

December 12, 2017
I tried everything once. It was the brute force method. For my trouble, I was kicked out of the Republic with the other liars. I was too powerful; I intimidated Plato. In Indiana, I walked for 40 days—I stayed polite, I dirged with appropriate pomp. On the highway, I couldn’t get warm. I burned sage...

Flight

December 12, 2017
she’s untangled the black from her eyes, found hands, blue and wooden, worn once of her body. she picks the dead skin from her face, and it flakes, leaving indigo pock marks, where blood should be. I seem to be returning to the box I was born in, she thinks. thin, black stalks in the...

Mon O' War

November 30, 2017
—November 1, 1947 Before a field locks its horizon in place. A martial claw of cardinals freckles the sky half-red. Before a sea change can bolt the chambers of your sixteen -handed heart. The ghost of long grasses is hauling behind it a blanket of perennial trophy. The meadow ghost is so deep it turns...

Bare Metal Install

November 30, 2017
Someone, somewhere, sits alone in a house Who would, most probably, rather not be alone And considers the difference between alone and lonely While brushing her hair, pouring another cup Thinking about a lover of indeterminate nature The Sphinx, which survives one more day, wears away But doesn’t mind the thought of extinction Sand is...

Forecast

November 30, 2017
I remember, before the snow started, thinking I wish it would start. The sky darkened shadow on shadow. The cats, as usual, slept through the morning. Then snow so heavy that even my father, who was a kind of Noah—all resolve and solitude, cabinetry and salt—couldn’t have steadied me. I remember— and this was back...

Gaswork

November 30, 2017
The experts blame St. Vitus; the spookpress, space aliens. But in the decade between Haymakertown and Mattoon, you took meals and showers like all the other folk. You also kept the gas rig clean. With a wet washcloth, you worked the nozzle to a sheen—entirely inappropriate for creeping across the night. If you meant to...

Travel Plaza

November 30, 2017
The day not redolent of anything in particular but more generally it folds into itself a little bag inside The day promises only to give us this more What I am doing right now I will do in perpetuity a nation I cannot leave with no such thing as a passport the wrongness of my...

Risk Management Memo: A Star Is Born

November 30, 2017
I was speaking but it was mostly symbols. Toenails the color of activated charcoal. Walls spattered with cola or similar. You had decided to stop imagining a chalk outline of my body on yours. You were seeing the specialist. Even chewing gum was verboten. I had to fashion a velvet smock for every glass item...