Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

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

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

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

We stop doing dishes while
a mile unwinds
from the tree outside.

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

I have observed, the theorist
I am

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

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

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

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

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

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.