dear little girl

don't you know what you're made of? yes: lucre, spite, every thin night.

dear red queen as a child

off to bed... off to bed... off with you now... off to your bed

dear sisyphus

that looks heavy. It's not heavy, it's my boulder.

Dear Brownings

Love does not make itself available to the abacus.

Dear Keek

How have you learned lumbering, that wooden way?
Your trunk is showing.

Dear Anon.

Though clearly muddled, I am glad you are
filled with humor and wish in fact your bile
more bilious. I might then feel something—
an acidity beyond dismissal. I do
work out my pretense with little leg lifts
as befits a woman incapable of rendering edible
the ineffable. You strike me as a consumer.

7.11.2011

What is the arc, the angle of my bent light?

Do I send it out or wait for my receipt from the brown van?

Will he notice when I forget how to sign my name?

This amnesia is a product of the small boxes inside rather than of the larger ones he has in the back.

He never tells me his name anymore. It used to be Bruce, or Walter.

I can have my entire life delivered.

These boxes contain, for an example, my husband: prescriptions, a shirt he can’t bother to try on, books no longer in the bookstore, a torso.

If I send him to his colleagues, will they recognize him?

Despite myself, I would not do that.

I have the decency bred from production of children, the internalizing of all those public ideas which remained blessedly outside until I was already overfull. And then.

Now they skirt me on the way to ice cream, the park, the pub.

I call after them “warm coat,” “vegetables,” “kindness.”

What is it to be illuminated? Is it to find oneself scrawled on by monks with a penchant for fart jokes? Is it to contain knowledge no one seeks out?

I unscrew myself from the socket, wear a bathrobe all day long, try to remember my old imprint.

a third beginning

Baseball was over. All arenas housing. Not long after, bombs fell. Ash rained. Someone woke up under snow and a thousand years had passed. A thaw, maybe aliens. Here was a diamond. Here were books or videos: history of a game. The sticks fascinated-- the distance-traveled, the arc of rebounding spheres. The dugout required a certain relationship to patience, civilization. They practiced. The world was summer evening, each pitch a true love: nothing outside interfered with the game's perfection. A thousand years. Someone woke up, this time inside the game. Not long after, tears fell. Diamonds roiled beneath ash--it was a history of shame: blunt objects, dysfunction, the art of unfounded fears. Foundational ones. A thousand more years and someone dug out—beyond arena, into nature. It took practice, but nothing interfered. The world was a green evening. If only summer would last all day. Continue under the lights.

dancepiece: spamashup

Dear Friend, I --for

his direction as regards this
mission-- have to thank God.

God it is who wants me.
I am Director of Operations.

I am here--
byseeking your advice.

Your services will be paid, you will be a partner, if
you and your words are acceptable. I know you maybe

wondering how I got your contact. I am
not risky for futures. I know it is advisable

to invest in foreign land and secretly wait.
My condition, having become so critical,

for security purposes, due to interception,
shall not accept or acknowledge calls. Out

to a Christian sister who assisted me
I reached, in order to utilize wealth.

Should you be of interest further, I would
prefer you to reach me soon and finally.

After that I shall provide you
with more contact. The way I am

going, even the consulate doesn't know
the regard. I intend to contact you.

It has been revealed that you can make
judicious resources for purposes currently.

I am sending you mail from my bed.
My husband in the hospital earned

a large undisclosed sum but died.
I am due soon. Also, my infertility

resulted from a medical God.
I believe in reasons for you

to contact my lawyer, for my lack
of heirs, everything; he will inform

on you. Please you must reach
to him. For greater fulfillment

of my last wish,
please deliver the rest

to You who are
Blessed. My most

warm sincerity, Helen.

dancepiece: expo

and then the woman silences you and in the tiny
window gives you a better chance at moving

dancepiece: membrane

Not interested in selling
what he does is permanent
and you are a/skin/g

for words--not actual art

dancepiece: phrase

would that each poem were
an antidote to a world...

grown hopeful with poison

dancepiece: monk

she wishes she
cd pray without cease: and goes

to create a liturgy

dancepiece: candy

for Easter
I'll give you candy, commitment

for your sins
I'll candy too, and crucifixion

for all that's
candied, I'll twirl on hill, golgothic

I'll eat, in proof:
all manner of confection, ash

on Easter I spin
unorthodoxy no less moving

for the color of its lipstick
or egg

dancepiece: justice

the hipster un-hipped
un-zipped from but carrying

baggage or revolver.
was the world over? I don't

know him anymore to ask.

for that girl

with the way about her I have only this to say:
I commend you. I commit you to me, I issue

you to my memory and charge, and I recommend you
highly, so highly I am Everest or a chasm -- a trench

inverted out of the Atlantic just to say how
I with fixation need speak of you. It is possible

I have my verbs wrong since I am not you, who
etymologically speaking, know. I just cannot say

enough about the way you have of making me
want to sing praise to hallelujah you, also ponder

on the things you do and have been loved for--to love you
right alongside everyone who has it so down, so right about

your deserving body of work, the whole
body of it, fallopian to fallacy, follicle to folio.

for those guys

whom I don't want anymore to worry about.
I won't worry about you and you will be able
to tell that by the way I am not worrying.

You will be able to look into my eyes if
that were something you could do, and see
that they are not focused on your jeans

fitting or being too skinny or the state of
higher education in your apartment. I am
not the kind of woman who is kind of

like a mother but also like a girlfriend only
funnier. I am not that funny and you can
tell this by me admitting it so flatly I must

be hoping. I have curves and these mean
something where they used to be and one
of the other unfunny things about me is

I'm old, almost fifty by which I mean okay
thirty-eight. I never told you you ought to
care because that would clash with you know

--The Giving Tree--and what I've learned
from other guys like you I've stopped giving
even a shit about, or reading their poems.

dancepiece: inertia

bodies tumbleweeded
one, a few, the sound
of drift

one direction this wind
fuels, each crossing
of body

lessens a body, each
use has limbs more
strewn

numbers continue past
possible, minutes then
dozens

of minutes, these are non-
identical em-bodys :
illusives

after each crossing each
dancer must shoot self
against

wind behind other
curtains upstream
to keep

the idea of endless
drift respiring by forces
unseen

purpose-- to seem to
have none thusly cool
sweats

dancepiece: lovepoem

dancer1 lies facedown
there is no other

dancepiece: amplification

two figures lean in as
in whispering

but no whispering, feet shifting
toeheeltoeheal-- the non-secret

moves across stage
in centipede, in

the organic machinism of
a foreign brain dis-

persed throughout its segments
in thickish blood or a patriotism

which admits its fearful nature
then rolls further inward

inaugurating a self-admiration in
spiraling, awe-filled earnest