July 1

Its not that I wanted to steal the baby,
rather its head filled my field of vision
so completely that to reach out and not touch it--
I needed to be careful. The soft spot
is all over. Its eyes are normal-sized,
though that might be a trick of perspective.
Where are its parents? Where is its husband?
Could I save it? Its wandering awfully
close to the little fountains, round the slick
marble rims misted with water
splashing onto itself and up, thinking,
pulsating like an open-headed dog.
I decided to take my chances.

Read more...

Crossing Rules

Shambling fleshy siege equipment,

loaded, heady: waddling forward

until it turns to cross the street

and a new, uncertain sway asserts

itself, unsurely, jowls and all,

leaning fresh weight into pockets

of space and pavement black and greased.

Read more...

A Rethinking

Resting in the tabernacle,
the curtain sewn back up,
unseen drinks being swilled
in dubious relics,
a stemmed cup for each:

Let no thought of warring
or strife affect you, you

who crowd me daily,
and linger here on a night
where we walk umbrellaed
and over-shadowed through
these tunnels of streetlights

before your turned profile alights
and (with a gorgeously awkward
yank) enters into a restaurant.
You tip-toe around scattered rolls
and baked meats, a singer unharmed

by this now nightly routine.
You sing the passer-bys, you
sing me and fix my head
so as to make cartoonish
my yet unbroken stride.

Like you, all the figures stray
and pause, looking with sure features
at me and the pasts they know
I conjure and slip like an offering
into notebooks and pillows.

Read more...

A Pond

The reeds are tangled suns
yellow and stiff, smoldering
set stones in the shore's band
that wraps so tightly the wind's tresses,
which ripple and barrel sometimes
into those grassy orbs
that spread and allow whistling passage,
swaying for a moment into a ready archway
above a figure on the thin bank.

Below street-level, his back
to a bench turned away
as he drinks from the bowl of gusts
and breaths deep, his legs
grown in firm and rooted
between two flaming bushes.

Read more...

Sitting in the Mulching Radius

Seated on roots and chips of wood
turned over and handled previously;
a pause
for rapture, for the blanket
of steely undulations of fog
filling softly the space between
fanned branches and eyelashes,

piling up and dusting
written upon white walls
not fully erased, markings smudging
and unbudging in busy confusion
and disparate fragments
that work on my fingers
drizzling timber and dirt.

Read more...

Galoshes

A puddle splayed across the path
a school of cigarettes
cowering in a flooded sidestep
printed in the mud spackled
over grass and snow, congealing
at this point the valley clutches
trunks that taper up
into delicate-fanned tree shapes
static and arterial
in the grey-blue bosom of a sky
close and teary-bright.

Read more...

Drive and First Conversation

Main street lined with beaming
dandelions of metal + glass.
Lights green-rusted and blistering
we pop them one at a time
into our mouths
roughly as we pass them.

You reach out and pluck
a brittle crystal bulb
from which the light oozes
over our fingers and eyes,
glowing and sated.

Read more...