for my mother, he was the late-night doorbell.
her mother’s bare feet in the kitchen.
the frustrated phone call.
he was a ghost at twenty-eight.
the jungle was, what, a vacation?
and he was a tour guide?
party favors fucked him up,
made him low and even, and
he lived for them.
move on, minnesota, not here,
but california, where you live
and the nights are [...]
what is it about me? i had never
touched a single collection of
poetry before you made me do it,
just by loving it. but what does
that mean now? it’s just a book
on the shelf,
like me, i am packed away for
winter seasons, like a book,
i am stagnant and waiting to
be opened up by you, for
better or for worse, [...]
you cut your hair
in the marriott sink
with borrowed black scissors
during the war protest.
i stood at the window.
i looked at the crowd.
great black locks tumbled,
with angry desperate cries.
snip -
“my dead brother!”
snip -
“our three boys!”
snip -
“all those poor babies!”
and you’re finished.
and you’re walking through the door,
hair, short, like the prohibition.
the shreds of your hair,
now short, like our [...]
lets give it up for the old gods!
the dead ones, the dry ones,
the forgotten and cold ones!
they were loved!
they were taught!
and now they are gone!
oh kukulcan, where are your wings?
oh ma’at, your justice?
i will pray and pay
my tribute.
not out of fealty
do i do this,
but from heart’s solace;
i know what it is like
to be left behind.
memory,
bounty [...]
fresh from the flood waters came policy:
easy bread,
an uneasy gun shot boat trip sun burnt
lawlessness.
we got our film and took advantage of it.
oh, staring match! the ticker ran by and we
laughed a lot.
the city blinked first, and those drowned rat
refugees
took solace in our staring eyes; they wanted help.
i see you like i see a couple [...]
till the day that he died he remembered
the slender back-of-arm that he
imagined bare, under a blue sweater.
selling guns in the city, he met
her in an alley, scarf blowing around
like a spasming appendage, arms
help up and covered by a trench.
her face was calm, bemused, and
he put down the gun and told
his client to go home.
and he [...]
digging around, picking up roses
from the cemetery, with holly,
naming the flowers for union dead
what was that war for? holly says it was
the union’s desperate fight against
continental separation anxiety
we live up north, and it’s cold up north
i have seen holly fight with black ice
drifting like an olympian on the mountain
she flies, that way, on four wheels [...]
you have not so much disappeared,
lately, as receded. you are a
tide pool, and the things that
make you up are left behind,
unreal and unhealthily dry,
poking, at first, their bony
little shapes up from the
still life of your personality,
and then massing, emerging as
whole things, debris after the
drain-out of your absence.
in happier times, i could ask
you anything, and it [...]
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