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

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

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

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

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

I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster

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

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

I have an axe
with hearts gashed

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

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

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

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.

I am still waiting for the lion

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

we drove on through
the blue seal of morning as the turbines
turned and winked out their hearts