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.
you know that baby swallows make silver ripples in wild rivers to court reeds?
my friends’ fathers are dropping I mean dying like flies
Mostly he ate what was put on his plate snuck coffee grounds or dirt for a snack Once a zipper Unzipped
I tap at the alphabet while a single deer taps at the dirt beyond the brush on the far side of the tree line.
If my life was the size of my arm, I would stretch it out for you.
Her brown eyes, how a fig considers itself.
Listen to me: I know the winter gloom in mid-summer…
Winter sat like a wolf on the horizon.
Ma wrings a wet world of colors
The collective failure of ethical standards
it’s touch-and-go with me and weddings
this is what I want you to to see: leaves falling because it is too late for them not to
You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.
In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers, my back a misguided quote
I count my homes— those of my scattered youth the sanctuary of our young family the intermittent rest stops of apartments and vacations.
It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows? Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.
The storm passes without snow. The car waits loyally in the back lot.
Yes I am guilty, I’m guilty. A sin was desirable then. Bring the dancer back to the stalks.
Empty vessels make the most sound, I think, as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.