dusty and washed out this early up before dawn bakes into day no traffic yet old songs on the radio slack-keyed, free-wheeling nostalgic slow songs high-flying gulls snow on far-off mountains both chipped from the sky nothing like an empty road wide open highway the mirage of free will— the elusive horizon never quite arriving never quite needing to
First the sow and then the cub flat-faced, gouache-furred up above the service road climbing the bike trail through thick black alder— then the cub but not the sow, still not the sow, just wind in the tall grass, presentiments and doubts . A day later, at the border, waiting in line, looking at photos, car after car, lurching forward, again the menace of the unseen, an arbitrary line, truck routes, corn fields drawn at […]
the age of this place! and still it said the basalt flows of the Garibaldi range are relatively young— one could say something, then, maybe, about lenses, about powers of scale, how a thing comes into focus, so another falls away, something about the buoyancy of names, floating above a place, vagaries of translation, of words soft as wet ash, how this alphabet cannot spell them, how silt turns this lake otherworldly and opaque, how […]
Sending cards to cdmx it may be spring when they finally arrive if they make it at all this is not an act of faith— when was it we were last there? the sun rising over the tarmac ripe as papaya that long airport hall full of money changers mostly empty at that hour how did we get to Erica’s? how did we get anywhere? the physics of memory is the same as in dreams […]
High summer the currents long romances etching the bay a breeze from an open window the mosquito netting sways how tangible, how solid a day can be anchored in memory slipping into archetype a seagull descends from the tallest pine a long long descent crisp and white as the ferry’s wake across deep water the bay stretching on as far as the horizon blue soporific the day expands demands expansion the tide goes on and […]
After the rain watching the chickens deliberate in the grass a small gecko working its way up the palm cane a flash of guava at its throat this sultry, verdant place— we all sleep easily but lightly the soporific ocean the balmy taro fields water pooling like mercury around the alien stalks a dreamscape a floating afterlife earth made sky the heaviness of air suddenly palpable— strange to step out of a life so abruptly […]
All night the snow sliding off the roof the tattoo of freezing rain yielding to sun at dawn the deer came quietly up in the yard moving slowly in the deep snow and not too warily the landscape softned the foothills blanketed everything settling and coming down to rest
On the other side of the pass it doesn’t flatten out exactly but without the trees the horizon appears everywhere lines of demarcation and a sense of expansiveness doing laps in our skinny skis we heard coyotes yap in the distance and the sun it set just a little bit later
With each night the question grows more pronounced curving around like a road a sharper turn than expected headlights only reaching so far forward motion the only certain thing
Nightime and raining in Akihabara screens shout at nobody in particular and songs play on in endless short loops, Yodobashi, yodobashi, even here up seven floors in a narrow corridor stacked with bins of diodes, capacitors, secret parts foreign as the writing on the wall– signs here have no meaning for us– we enter if the door is open, and stare, entranced, as small things start to move, or dance, or wait for us to […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 