Again the dockyards, again, so much space in this sky, this air, it’s getting intolerable: Nothing weighs on me like nothing . By the museum on the south shore an art installation, a small house filled with a snarl of branches, meaning, I guess, that the facade we build is still an extension of our true nature, or something about the impermenance of shelter, but then again I’m usually too literal in my interpretations . But […]
Maybe it’s a lack of solid ground, afloat in a sea of glass and iron, but my tongue is growing sharper. Scaffolding and sterile girder, these do not unfurl, have no grace of life, just conceal so many empty rooms, like lidded eyes. The sky has a presentiment of coming weather, grows dull even as a crack of blue appears, but it’s just another space for lease, too toothless and meek to last for even […]
Entre chien et loup, now, when you visited it was summer, but you’d recognize this grimy rain from living up au Nord– ça fait un bail, I know, a voice from years ago sending thin words out over the Atlantic into a late night but putain, mec, reply
Tonight, a half-assed storm. The drunk man in the lobby slurs I don’t need this. Enough, rain, enough— my glass is turned over. I’ve run out of words to describe the night.
The top of the gingko has lost its leaves, with a windstorm in the forecast. In a sunbreak today I walked around the lake seeking solace in the dockyards, but found only cruel sleek boats, so capable of leaving that they were no comfort. These nights are gluttons, and there’s little left to take— I could count each yellow leaf, fine as a petal, yet strong enough to have held the sun, once. Anything could tame it, now, […]
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush because its weight is tangible— as far as omens go an albatross is worse when it is metaphorical . Sometimes words are as good for thirst as bucket of saltwater— give me something small to hold on to, some sea -smoothed stone, a startling barnacle
Rain like lace. I hate this weather for its consistency. My heart is temperamental as a leaf, it turns and turns and drops at anything. Scientists think that red pigments lower the freezing point of leaves, keep them viable for longer with the heat of anger. Or, having fallen, that anthocyanins leach out to poison the roots of any competition— such ugliness begat by beauty. And at the base of every leaf, an abscission layer, for […]
I’m more inured to the risks of flight than the perils of digging in, Exhibit A: the construction pit being filled with light rain, they’ll have to pump it clear again. I dreamed we were buying tickets to anywhere, found this great place on the coast– It’s really winter here, now, the sky the color of pavement, even the birds are bailing out– What a gift, what a gift to have wings, but also to lack the capacity for digging holes
The standoffish cat is asleep now, doubly distant. Behind the hanging blinds is an unlit lot. The only things that move are branches, and the second hand of the wall clock that isn’t turned back yet. No balmy night, no quiet stars, just the hum of the refrigerator and a glass of water— the wind isn’t enough to stir me, no, so here I am still, alone and in love
Standing still and green, the grass is more water than land. The sky is gray, dawn long past, but again, it’s hard to quantify. I think I may have a stone at my core, just one of those that studs the lawn, that fallen leaves adhere to, dense and cool, and hence the sense of weight, and how I wake on these days, Oregon mornings, to wistful rain, and a sense of longing–
OPTIONAL POETRY 