Given permission to say I said
and it looked bad. I opened the hamper
and things were not simply mildewed but laced with disturbingly
intricate molds. My sister died in one of my deep
dreams and that was my fault too although
everyone said cancer in that way they do--all
hushed then surprised and then which kind how long what
treatment who is that pallbearer, cute! She
was so light you know at the end.

It was a long trip to the swimming pool yesterday
so we skipped it because of the heat. The children
were convinced it would've been okay once we'd gotten
there, but having children is to optimize endlessly I mean
to the point of schmaltz. I don't want to
be inside a cave. I'll admit it's cooler. The water
you can see with flashlights is clear as windex if
it weren't blue and doesn't smell like any
kind of clean I've made.

cardboardroom

My office is not set to rights or oval
where I sit to shit, or drink. It isn’t
in a house even-- & not a white

one, but I never sent none to war neither. It
weren’t in my head to be anyone, or evil.
I ever said otherwise, I’s doubtless homesick

for a stretch. Never pined for big or chosen
like a president does, already box-fit
in those suits. I’ve my own plot to shovel

big enough so it’s cozy, &me-- good&civil, &dead.

sole entrant

The town where I was grown
cultivated the inert, and tourists.
Away, a word used in prayer.

Sick of hills thicketed with spires,
the poor, I was full-throttle toward gone.
Fastest out was the prize I tore ass

to win, to leave the stifled rest
to choke in my wake, an alarming roar
no one must’ve heard under the rain

the cheerless day I first parted my own air.

the cellini venus

a forgery is
something worthy of making
love to

small is in this case
exquisite in other
cases small

the system of
protection springing
from the object

is what is exhibited
the worth of a love
story inheres

to how much lying
is done by whom for
what intent

she was my favorite
he is everyone's
guilty replacement

love poem

This is a love poem for the person
for whom lying every
night beside me
means somehow we're beyond flutter
Another person's poems
when he's in the bathroom I used to
bring back something inside me

Devastated is a word the other
person, the poet, would laugh at
to cure me but here is my o
here is my love who thinks love
should get quickly past
the knees. That to leave flutter
takes less than ten years

there is the

there, naked, a word
out inside eyes
pushing an idea

as if an idea could
do what vicodin
can, or caffeine--here

there is this

naked feel too
: being naked under
a ceiling

fan post-coitus or
because you were tired
too tired to dress

there is a naked

feel driving without
glasses in the just post-dusk
the world observed

is altered and hurting
the lights we live by don't
belong along that wood

dotters here

No Tell Motel

exaltation

O skin. Inside you my bags
and rivers find language. If ever
I wished rid of your grammar—
if ever I wished flay (strung
over white laundry in sinew
and that opulent crimson-going-black
beneath jeweled buzz, only gray tail
furred still, a stole at wrong end amidst
such incoherent caterwaul there was no
determining end) I was wrong
to wish it. Although you stutter
you spit more than before and fit
me ill—I listen like a fish through purple
under-eye sleeplessness and know
if soul then soul is not pools, is
the scratch and brush the near-static of
your seven-day renewal. You alter
but refuse to clear scar. Even
as you double over, retract within me
vocals of aureole, of freckle, mole
and the worm-slash up my ankle-back
-calf where I gave unnatural
loud birth to a slippery achilles, newly
twinned, eel-shredded, I accept you
unbook are my best record and home.

empty

this

cut up, plus

Jesus wept--women naturally deceive, weep, and spin. This is a weeping song, a song for weeping. Bend your branches down along the ground and cover... Me, I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river is a strong brown god. Prone. Here Lies One Whose Name was Writ in Water. Wit in water. Wade in the water. Wide, woe in the water. Rivers are roads which move, woes which move. Deep calls to deep. Willow, weep for me. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. Owned. Known. But when it comes to slaughter, you will do your work on water, daughter. Water is life’s matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water. Nor any drop to drink. Women naturally deceive, weep, and spin that the small rain down can rain. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs: women naturally deceive, weep, and spin. I am haunted by waters. The spiders beneath.

ropetrick

She climbs it as if
pioneer, her hands split-
ting—-doing the most work.

Her self is like a wire. Is
body only. She empties her mind

for the presence of the
mystical, and so she might
enter the sky on a string
without angering gods.

These days’ gods roar
like airplanes. These days
gods are pettier, broadcasting
disasters like seed, across
television, greedy consumers of fear
alongside the realized deaths.

Her father beats rats
and snakes with a shovel,
farming. The snakes have too
many rats, he says, to eat—-
there are too many snakes.

Her father is loving
father to his shovel.

But her trade she learned
with snakes.

By five she could worm them
out of buckets, baskets, her
mother’s silk satchel with
a soft hum, a thumb
beat against dust. She
could not ride them into the air.

They were not dragons. They
were not the future, or a husband.

Older, she has dropped hope after
hope into holes in the ground
where animals live without rent.

Her time she gives it
all to the trick.

One day she will steal their sky
grain deftly—-these gods
will not know her. She is
diligent at her father’s table

eating without noise.