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

My grandmother asked, “Does it feel like being widowed?”

I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster

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.

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

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

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

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

my father holds
his favorite drink

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

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

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

I have observed, the theorist
I am

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

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

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

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.

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