POETRY

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

The collective
failure
of ethical standards

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

Observer of the Patient

Her brown eyes,
how a fig
considers itself.

Existential

four-thirty a.m.

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…

Despairathon

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

Making Israeli Salad

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

Drowning in sky

I have observed, the theorist
I am

things they won’t tell you but should:

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

Good Driver

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

Black Ghosts of Ponderosa on a Silhouette of Hill

Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.

Me and Other Bodily Accessories

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

Finding My Fix

I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.

i do not want to wait until it’s too late

the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.

Tea

my father holds
his favorite drink

First

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

books
Ode To the Dove Pt. V (Avrom Sutzkever)

I am still waiting for the lion

Ode To the Dove Pt. VI (Avrom Sutzkever)

Yes I am guilty, I’m guilty. A sin was desirable then.
Bring the dancer back to the stalks.

robertson quay

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?