POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
Several someones

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

oh Manifesto

The collective
failure
of ethical standards

My Multiverses

It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows?
Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.

Despairathon

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

All In

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

Observer of the Patient

Her brown eyes,
how a fig
considers itself.

REVENGE SCENE

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.

heavy rain
The Plot

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

close up of sun
Mercury in Retrograde

You said it was okay to blame
what goes wrong on the planet

“Artifact,” as Translated from Gluberhöff’s Lexicon

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

Like dirt

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

3:17 AM as Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks

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

Back Suplex

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

On the Night Row-Houses Across the Street Catch Fire

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

The State School 1984 His Given Name Was Wilbur  We Called Him Magpie

Mostly he ate what was put on his plate
snuck coffee grounds or dirt for a snack
Once a zipper Unzipped

robertson quay

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

There is an alternative universe

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

Unerased | Steep Steps

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

A Way of Seeing

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

appetites

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