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

you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

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

this is what I want you to to see:
leaves falling because it is too late for them not to

Try not to see your own predicament in every fucking thing.

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

Part of being a good sad person
is always painting the shadows
in the right direction and knowing
what sorrow to art with.

I buy too much, for someone of my stature.
could pawn a skinny metaphor to purchase a plump skin.
its reputed in our lineage— to daydream a life that shreds our pockets.

I have an axe
with hearts gashed

I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome

my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house

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