POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
Lavandula

Listen to me: I know
the winter gloom in
mid-summer…

Hollywood Hills
the remarkable thing

I am still waiting for the lion

Mom, in Her Dementia, Steals Oranges

and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place

close up of sun
Mercury in Retrograde

You said it was okay to blame
what goes wrong on the planet

beach
On Undressing a Color / On Undressing a Girl

I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.

Lobster

I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster

A Beautiful Thing

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

Landscape with Ash

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.

Me and Other Bodily Accessories

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

Aging Punks

Every so often, they add a tattoo
in honor of some long-forgotten love.

heavy rain
The Plot

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

Fallout Shelter

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

The Man

the man is stayed bent over the canvas
of my sofa. the man is me the man is him
self and I bring down the whip…

Dear Deer in the Compost Pile

I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.

robertson quay

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

My Multiverses

It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows?
Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.

Letter To a Young Poet

Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”

Vase

The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.

On the Night Row-Houses Across the Street Catch Fire

You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

Going Broke

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.