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

We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

I count my homes—
those of my scattered youth
the sanctuary of our young family
the intermittent rest stops
of apartments and vacations.

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

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

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

It recommended
soft porn, as gentle prodding and petting parent
to parent might calm and soothe the kid.

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

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…

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

I am still waiting for the lion

Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.

Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

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