The small dog got
her hackles up
before the owl
lit on the roof
a small soft sound
like a slide of dirt
outside in the open
stretch of night
its compatriot
hoo-ed and we
argued over stars
this is arcturus
or is it mars?
I was wrong;
dry air, water in my eyes,
the largesse of sky
cradled in these
dry grass hills–
the town, the hour,
everything stilled,
even the tumult
of an anxious heart
beneath a split moon
hung over the Okanogan
We all gathered around the prints:
Somewhere in the Vollard suite
a girl leads a minotaur
through the night
after a maze of loops
and airy ateliers
the effect is stark–
the stars are gouged out
the faces lit
by some internal source.
It notes he is blind.
The aquatint
is Rembrant-black
the curator said,
an opaque way to state
more than, I think–
a night that dark
is felt, not seen.
A late-night musing on microbiology,
weariness, to be careful
with strengths that can be
turned against us.
I feel not unlike a rusty spring,
wound up, stretched out, prone
to snap. And although not
a source of tetanus,
I do take note
of how something innocous
can easily innoculate us,
can cause a body to break itself.
A drowsy thought, how the name
sounds like a plucked string, Kyoto–
I’ve never been, but have read some Basho–
his sad bird calling, air that cracks.
Another one of these!
Too tired to rest, this less
a dream of a place and more
a dream of dreaming,
of foreign concepts– laquered maples,
bamboo groves, and sleeping
A closed door with a cart outside,
coffee service with paper cups,
three small apples in a plastic bowl
with plastic wrap across the top—
a bereavement tray,
nothing more to be done.
This is the work.
Sometimes I get a small,
ripe grief lodged in the back
of my throat, taut
as a grape skin.
And what for?
I only know that you were.
I can’t say any more.
This is some sort of state change,
not sure exactly— am I
a vacuum, or do I feel
entropy? Sloughing away
on a molecular level.
Or do I feel spacious,
expansive,
empty?
There’s no panacea
for converting to vapor–
when the night cools off
I’ll just collect on the walls.
I got on the wrong bridge
and had to leave town.
True story, and more
to read there than
these dreams–
deep water, still
water, such a dumb
expanse today, a blue
stilled tongue, but
for what cause? There’s
the unease, as cars
spill like beads
across these spans–
to regret is to be
on the wrong side
of something.
Even sleeping now
I am chasing it–
What? I don’t know.
Only that I’ve missed it.
Sun giving way
to gray heat, stagnant,
a bird singing out
the same insistent song.
I said my same greetings
and goodbyes as everday,
in my usual way, but only
just now noticing the sameness–
how else to say it? The air
is too thin today for a thing
to be beautiful.
Another glass night
no purchase
no bas relief
of dreams
impermeable
or fragmented
which is worse
the presence
of an edge
or its absolute abscence
an ocean without
its shore
I’m getting versed in the unspeakable:
the architecture of a lung, tributaries
of veins, and pain, all kinds: white-hot,
bone-ache. Removed from all contexts
a bruise can be beautiful: pastel,
galactic, nascent. The way skin
grows up against a suture, shifting
dunes. If all goes well, we replace
ourselves. This is the brachial,
this the subclavian—
remember,
a life is motion, and nothing less.
OPTIONAL POETRY 