Tuesday, May 7, 2013

At the fire station


Curious George wields the apocalyptic trumpet with his ringing bell,
clang-a-clang singing up from the pages and whirling wind around
in all of the hemispheres. Demarcation--done, doubly down with what
separates us from each other, the page, the thought of ending too easily
like a book. We cry as we turn the pages, our hands shaking, we beg
aloud all of the gods to leave the bell unrung, curiosity canceled, my life.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Anxious Poem


My heart is a wilderness soon to be rent asunder,
top to bottom, and with what can I sew it together?

I don’t recognize anything here, not even my hands
with my little blue star tattoo—it’s winking maybe

not at, but through me, past all of the animal noises
of stars, reaching the firmament with its winkiness.

I run my hands over myself, I try to feel where
the rest of me should be in relation to my heart.

God, I’m so confused. I am open upon the table
and there are bits of me in pans around the room.

I breathe but am not there, beating but unaware.
Don’t let them undo what I’ve tried so hard to keep.

Don’t let them steal my heart while I’m not there,
don’t let me wake up, finding myself put into order.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

The Wolves, III


Last winter, the one came in a top hat,
snarling with all the tact of a mortician.
I have not forgotten his paw, black, spotted with stars

and hairy—he bade me kiss it, and I could feel the clotted
dirt on my lips, the polish of his black nails. Wolves,
I murmur. They wanted to be left alone. Then

they just wanted. And that was all it took. The sheen
of their thousands on the horizon, their bodies forming
a curve of silver light. The emissaries in monocles,

talking about the latest Badger installation in Vale 5.
I listened endlessly, tape-recorder in hand, tempoing
their whimps and snaps and growls into a language.

Please, I whimpered, last time they came. Please, let me
stay. They made me pluck out my eyes for them to eat.
I was the first to travel their new territory, riding

along their spines in the darkest dark, guided by the feel
of their matted backs, the undulating fur beneath me.
All around, their transmissions howled like reentry.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Insulting poem to myself when I’m sick


You got a sick nose there chap all snot
and swamp donkey in the face and frot
with yourself into the long-ended night

whatcha gonna do when you’re better
you gonna charge daylight full on fraught
with nothing but the body and its fault

you can’t become air and waft my way
you reek of bacteria and there’s the face
to worry about still, heehaw and the like

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Too long were you gone


Too long were you gone from the shore
of your land you can’t take yourself back
the pines too thick and dark/night closes

into you how long have you been gone
deep in the world’s waters how long
will you remain/you clung to your doubts

rafting in how they know you and you them
it would be so peaceful to drift forever away
from what you are/you might drown

you realize there was a point when you wanted this

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Untitled

Not just like but love spilling coriander like
into luscious mouths however you see them

you would choke on it even though it smells

so lovely and lovelier still to liken it so to spice

but likelier to try over and over again to feel
something preferably something to taste as well


as feel like being inside the other or him in you
biting the skin which gives into you like nothing

else had before you love him and you cannot

keep it from ending eventually like even suns

who can never love like you love must end why
can’t you accept it and just love like uncaring