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

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

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

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…

Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

There is so little left of the tomato plants.

I have an axe
with hearts gashed

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

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

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

I myself should never have been born

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

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

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

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

If my life was the size of my arm, I would stretch it out for you.

Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.

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