Sonnet 1

Meditations after Reunion
I could build a house with her. She could write
while I cook. The furniture could be
vintage, but never cheap, hip, or trite.
If within smelling distance of the sea,
we could forsake candles and closed windows;
watch the pages of our books warp; watch
the flocks of seasonal birds suck and blow;
measure our daughter with pencil notches
on the bathroom door. I could bury her
in the garden we started together,
and anticipate throughout the winter
tickling vines and soft sepal feathers
mixed with my earthy fingers. They’ll find me
there eventually, what’s left of me.

three new poems

In the Library or Alaska

My raft is soggy, but sturdy.
Built of books, notebooks, personal nooks.
Salt deposits are climbing the mast:
solitary, idealistic, thus noble,
thus sad.
From the sky and civilization,
they surely shake their naked faces
and click concerned tongues,
trusting their perception (naturally,
idiotically) of my vagrant star
in a firmament of unconcerned,
bristling sea.
Then, upon landing,
sticky backs on plastic rafts,
teal and sterile, muse smugly,
“What’s the fuss?”
While I am licked by the
Deep and Green
by Socrate’s Source,
by Supertramp’s dream.
Endless tongues lift the skiff,
then plunge me into trenches black
as the rabbit running before
Light’s greyhound. That area
of nothing and forever,
straining until the Limit when,
like the pluck of a string (naturally,
profoundly) their chase reverses and
we all love one another
tighter and tighter.

I know my direction:
Tristian de Cunha.
Where soul leaves body
like a flame from a wick.
But that first exotic hint
tickling my nose and lips
is all the company I’ll need. Thus,
complete.

Half-Marathon

After a while, your feet swing
like heavy heavy pendulums,
as if your torso is fixed,
your eyes bewildered at a
pyramid of unfocused flesh:
your own alien.
Numb like penitent knees
draped in stiff burlap black;
she is fluid and beautiful,
but each second screams louder
like augmented acupuncture.
The Hand falls
so heavy, her spine cracks:
noir total. Swallowed.

My mother knew that Hand,
knelt in that Mouth,
and I imagine her erect,
stubborn under It’s strained jaw
or palm as her legs break

that red ribbon.

Makeup Cabinet

Canaries drown in vacuums at the yellow house.
Inside the yellow walls, no hands envy her blouse.
No Lemonade stands.

Yellow glass like honeymoons sit in yellow panes.
A lion in a bottle yawns at yellow flames,
limp yellow whip in hand.

October lawn in June and sunburnt garden gnomes,
like stone to yellow tears spilt from garden hose.
Frozen Sahara sands.

Indifferent, tired roosters slouch on weather vanes.
Yellow half-moon marbles blink inside the shade.
Preserved and canned.

Dimestore romance novels cook in window sills.
Dreams don’t die. They are killed.