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

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

Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.

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.

If America is Babylon / and you are an exile / newly arrived among pagans / Catholic, ‘Ngolan, Black, woman / you already know how to pray

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

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

I have an axe
with hearts gashed

The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.

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

I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt

Part of being a good sad person
is always painting the shadows
in the right direction and knowing
what sorrow to art with.

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

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

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

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