I could sleep now in this raft of a bed, or later, or eat an unreasonable dinner, or make something sensible, or wait, getting lost in a book, or a thought, or these small rooms, quieter in your abscence. Another city night, some man sings loudly into the velvety dusk, and it’s not clear whether the high rises are cast in cool blue hues due to this sky or to their glass or if such […]
A magnitude of difference between true totality and ninety-eight percent. Even so, and for only ninety-three, we rushed out after rounds and off the floors and gathered on the roof in scrubs and scrub caps or business casual sharing cheap glasses and cardboard viewers and temporarily forgetting the code just moments earlier— occluded vessels, and an open chest. I didn’t hear them call it, had stared from the corridor at the vacant face, unsure, but […]
Not imperceptibly the days get shorter– slight variance, shade of dawn ochre, another day comes crashing in. I went to the counter-rally pretending to be a photographer, but when the ball blasts went off I just ran without thinking or taking any shots of the bodies hurtling toward me in a haze of chemical dispersal, covered ground without comprehension or feeling, only seconds later realizing what I had and had not done. The days accelerate– […]
That full moon like a brass button studding the night, implying perforation, adeherence, closure. In some places it was occluded, tarnished– but we couldn’t see it from where we sat, adrift in a deep night that fell like a curtain. For every word a third unspoken. That full, full moon and the Earth’s shadow encroaching. The very papable weight of nothing.
Waking with a burning throat it’s the sun that changes not the haze a distinction worth making? Who knows. The sky bright opaque some big eye’s sclera and it doesnt blink
unvoiced words cast as shadows or wilting in the face of the predictable response or echoes of echoes and all this weary smoke settling over the city towers and spires the blood speck sun thirst is nameable but this is not . the cloud distinctly a face suspended over the far valley blowing out a bellicose wind and from the summit we watched smoke churning up like smoke there’s nothing else so plain-spoken yet indirect […]
a thirst and that way weariness rests just outside the eyes- another rainless day sun on green glass oh the height of it all a seagull seems to fly low here the trees seem out of place set pieces this room is mostly window and open space but some things you just can’t fake this song progresses through common chords characterize everything as a wait it sure doesn’t feel like arrival nobody’s fault but mine […]
almost calm this not yet night a house it settles but a city it calls and calls like some stray cat enamored by want and measuring out the confines of its alleys
tannin of disappointment how it clings like a soft bitter leaf stains an evening seeps into a day full sun solstice even here longest day and longest shadows cast a stone and ripples cast a doubt and the breeze might not even be real
a day of too many quiet rooms no balm for it words on a page too linear the page too square all coming back to right angles, edges, each a precipice– if potential was always positive a heart would not sink
OPTIONAL POETRY 