If I had known all boats eventually yield / to the current, I would have readied myself / long ago

You return, at last. / At the edge no longer./ At the margin’s curve no longer. / Circular no longer. / In the embers of unfading foam. / The sputum of inscrutable lava.

Elsewhere, some later year, I’ll try to be good. Today I don’t care.

Before I am beautiful I'm in the hairdresser’s chair, / perched atop two phone books, holding my ear. My reflection / in the bathroom mirror is a landscape painting.

I love expectation // beauty subsumed

excuse me this chambray tie / this cummerbund, these plain chops, / these dull lips. I’ve no guilt for gild's sake.

blame grows small in the moth’s circling / day to day the slightest tooth loosens / a landscape changes until returning by habit

I am at my threshold. / The dirt of our daughter. / The mole of her squirming body.

my mother leaning in listening / her usual face her yesterday’s face / out cold on the couch

After that, it’s pretty simple biology; / pelvis, hips, and shoulders. Everything / just falls apart.

Among the gnarled trees on the slope, / along the way to an old spar mine, / somebody has dropped a telescope.

Once you asked someone to hide the bottle, / and once you didn’t. Once it rained / on your rain.

they are still / sinking they are damned to fall / forever through its deepening

We improvise a language that disturbs them the least, like palms of hands that touch them weightlessly, even when they’re having a fit.

The lawn breeds black spikes in the oppressive geometric / shadow of the helicopter. This is how they grew the nails / for the crucifixion.

To say I love you put a bird on a wire / so I told her enough times to get an abacus / going in the sky.

One bite / No chewing / Eager as a Shop-Vac

We’re outside / but that doesn’t mean we’ll not dissolve / if raised to the light.

You, pacing her / tower’s garden, trample / the heads of poppies.

Don’t admire my beauty, don’t seduce me / The burnt wings of a moth can’t brighten