Does an emptiness attract more space or manufacture it one or the other such a nice day after all, cold, clear elevator affability and sunlight drawing in everything except those cherished words not anymore through unthinking neglect or something more willful one or the other and would it even matter it may snow tomorrow a line is drawn never benign no, this much but not a breath more a love gone asymptotic
Twelve grapes at midnight washed down with champagne one for love and one for hatred one for kindness and one for relentlessness one for luck and one for persistence one for hope and one for remembrances one for going and one for staying and in all its sweetness and for all its bitterness another two for love
An eve, but it isn’t an arrival if it doesn’t stay. Sun on the bridge, the lake like a mirror, here suffused with gray. The night still falls early but the day gets longer. Too cold still to dig in the garden, the onions can wait, wrapped in their paper, safely frozen, dreamless, mute. Il nous en faut faire autant turelurelu, patapatapan— French carols on the stereo, blind dog sleeping in the corner. Down the embankment small […]
How the intolerable becomes tolerable, against all attestations otherwise the bite, forgotten that old dispensation what a strange capacity a heart deadens itself, dryly, inexorable as a nature show prey, predator, or merely winter coming on, nothing is surprising now, not even this
Full moon, too high to see through the window pane it does not seem like the human world light pushes us out and occupies the space there is displacement skyscrapers growing more precise by night a thousand perfect golden squares and all of them empty
ICU days line draws and scrawled fishbones sweet jesus overheard we stop at each door each door a threshold sunlight today but frosted glass a curtain drawn for privacy opacity for if it comes to pass this is a shore if anything a great big blank the lung’s secret space and the blood singing wrong
Again, short days. What else is there to say? Besides all the things a night can be: Clarity of skyline, articulate distance. I love the red of WONDER BREAD, of CITY LIGHT, old neon signs, all heart. It’s no good here in the thick of it, LED bright and still the ankle twists to the gutter. A huddle passes, soft people, shapes only, the very power of suggestion. And then the street empties out, except […]
And here we are, snow come and melted, the same cool gray as ever. This damp feels like the smell of home after a time away, familiar become new, for just a moment, novel, known. And here we are, the year dwindling, eternal northern nights. Breath like a cloud. It isn’t sadness yet, but something more rare. We had a true blizzard once, trees felled by ice. Numbering the days: what was, what will. Turning […]
Election night, and sick as a dog. Something I ate. Easy to tell when a thing has gone rancid, but hard to tell when it hides what it is. Take the medicine, stay hydrated, wake up to see what’s become of the world, if it has returned to what was great, for some, who could afford it, and looked just right. And then those dumb appetizers, shit on a platter, too seasoned with hate, too […]
You’d never know, even if it sat right next to you– plenty of things have seasons, even ice insisting I’m ice, I’m ice, I’m ice. Tener frío, tener calor, sometimes translation is an easy enough thing but most of the time it is not.
OPTIONAL POETRY 