Are the straps load-bearing? Will the dog
evade the leash? How many inches
between cup and bust’s width? Does a tree
make its own shade or does the storm
fill seedbeds with darkness as it passes?
Can I run in it?
My poems have been lame recently so I’ve been finishing some really old ones. Here’s what happened to a poem that used to be called ‘Shorts with Inner Brief’ (a title I’m definitely saving for something else).
You said breaking the egg was like an electric shock.
There were roosters—it had been fertilized.
You said you didn’t look, you just cleaned it up.
I was different then
weight and luster
like cellophane stretched
and crudely
coated neon
everything was happening
I believed
farther away in space
in time in sense
how far along the line?
bending over
left
the accounting
but how?
like a fluid, maybe
pressure and absence
sure
scars
carry water
stacked and
sorted
unstacked
and sorted again
we were dragging
a year behind us
we were prepared
to help
these were the games
our own
signals delicate
and interlacing
—
Thank you Billy.
They say this mountain was born
when thrust sheets broke
against this line.
I set a story in this skylight’s frame.
Winter. Instead of yard,
forest pricked
by deer, twins in blue.
I omitted the wall’s
new oozy purple,
how the mud thrashed
the block’s dead end,
how the creek swallowed
the triangle called “dog yard”
from which the deer were said
to have emerged.
with a line from Kathy Acker
You wouldn’t have a child who couldn’t swim. You were dead-set,
damned sure of this. Until I left home I thought you simply chose
states of being, this one of them—
You shaved your beard completely, finally, in Massachusetts.
You drove off a bridge in a storm and held your pet rabbit up until
help arrived in Massachusetts.
You held the cage up, and when it flooded, the rabbit.
You taught me to touch the cold gem of Massachusetts in my mind
to make sure I still had it, like a coin in my pocket.
My idea of you was so sparse and childish it turned out
to be a good estimation.
Because he’s alone, a sailor’s always telling himself who he is.
In a period of recompensing—
making amends, as for damage or loss,
or trying to do so, never having known
how often or how thoroughly, or whether
even to wash rice—there was an animal
in the apartment with me, worn out
from her vet visit that day.
My attempts to wear a coat of fog
were slouchy. I slunk into a demonself
and liked the fade. So busy in my room
I did not know—I did not sense
the slowing and evaporating.
Emily’s new loom
is a quick-moving, inexhaustible
machine.
I.
My brother calls me Liesl all
through winter /
precipitating / the month our
mother kills a tuna
in the sink / thimbles garlic /
antivivisectionist / remaining
eldest / wrap the fish in foil /
take a vitamin every day this
year / my beautiful father left
to stop the war / my captain /
my prow / my ocean ending /
my open rain rolling yard
down / his shadow touching
the estate / my brother in the
kitchen deep / tempering
dough with ice water / fill me
with ice water / put a tuna
steak frozen on your tongue /
bear it / whistling / you
would never fire that gun
II.
Dear Rolf / stop /
I needle a new sweater / knit
clenching in the purple dark
/ don’t stop / I don’t know
what I ever saw in you
/ Dear Rolf /
salt me / don this /
III.
I teach my brother oysters /
will you remember his name
my father rips a flag down
from the balcony / a big party
/ tall always / taller /
decorated with tassels
pale slips / coming in from
the storm / why can’t you
hear me / little shells of them
flattening / hand in the
water / I listen to singing in Swiss
mountains / black circles
getting slicker / he thinks I will be
married / but he doesn’t know
—
Thanks to The Atlas Review.
Each next event
is a hole in a line:
your hands in a lamp’s
small circle of light
shortening a watchband.
Miss Forceful Wants You 