for NatalieEver since I met you I’ve been fighting the urge to apologize.My fingers are, sometimes, stupid, and I’m often overzealous, words bursting like flares in uncertain skies, notes frenzying the felt innards of pianos. The sandalwood scent, the sidelong glance of a foot lamp, the careful work of your kidneys as they sort what’s …
after Alfred HitchcockSomething about the lure of the moon, the black-and-white gloom of futon and Turner Classic Movies, the sub-suming chug of the train pulls me to you, you campy Raskolnikov, you backlit chatterbox, criss-crossed legs and double scotch perched on Promethean overreach. You muse, dearBruno, on the perfect murder, the ol’ switcheroo, the you …
The black hole whirlpool van Gogh paintedover Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Its violent winds,its quiet heart.O my soul, out the asylum window wheels in wheels roll by themselves, you carnivorous birds.Sky a pinwheel at a child’s memorial. O my soul, I am close. This nightI may be required of you.
If you forget everything, remember the angle of the sun collapsingthrough beach grass we tangled up with the fates of panicked, coursingbodies that weren’t our bodies,little black forms we pretended could bea metaphor to hold in our hands: everything is so smallwhen you are trying to save the world is something you might have saidabout …
a versionAs if heaven gave eartha silent shimmering kissit can only dream of—through fields air gently movedthe moving grain and woods rustled alive unanxious in starclear night. And something like a soul(my soul?) spread tense wingsand flew through silent lands it flewas if flying home and homewere someplace stillit had never beenit had never been …
In the hotel room near Airport Way Green flowers in the bedspread Whisper to me about lossAnd the souls who have slept here.Green flowers in the bedspread, I am suddenly one with youAnd the souls who have slept here Waiting for breakfast.I am suddenly one with you:I know how it is in hell forever Waiting …
“Thirty thousand honey bees have died in three hours, falling victim to just thirty giant hornets.” —BBC Earth, “Buddha, Bees and the Giant hornet Queen” They arrive upon wings of scorched glass, carrying the scent of burrowed earth & corpses. Summer airshattering beneath their weight, the August sun casting fire from its midday throne—sister,how the …
So I fixate on the shapes we make on the glass: two stenciled cutouts against a fast-flashing scenery—light streaks lashing a lake, another lake cindering througha doily of dogwoods. In Beacon, the train slows down, the view settles into a quiet life: fishing boats cribbedin the harbor, a wind-whacked American flag repeating itself on every …
I wish you could trap sound in a jar / you can’t.*It’s not my number one wish/ it’s up there.*A noise dies / an echo stinks the corpse.*The air clears / notif the meat was a voice.*A voice clings to the bone / usually the wrong bone.*It’s not the words I’m afraid I’ll forget / …
after Faith Ringgold’s exhibit, “Black is beautiful,” at the Picasso Museum, Paris, 2023like a ribbonless plait: the rain outside descends in strands: percussive opera for the sheltered: petrichor of hominy and green: grief everywhere, all at once : and then the sun : reminds me I’m not new:they are my dowry : the gone ones …