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

Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble

I myself should never have been born

I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster

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

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat

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

Now that the Israeli has left, it falls
on me to make the salad.

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

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

Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.

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

I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.

you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties

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

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

He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.