Short poem

The rose of all the world is not for me.
I want for my part
Only the little white rose of Scotland
That smells sharp and sweet — and breaks the heart.

Hope

Savage Beauty

Like hell they'll fall for each other.

And I didn't see that now you were here on the page

So much sky

Because we canbecause we can

a new kind, our new people

this is us now
we didn't know we were here
we don't know how it happened

we flew out of their arms.

Brad Pitt and Kevin Bacon are in a boxing ring in the middle of a football field. They are both wearing white boxer shorts, no gloves, and about to perform a dance routine. I am standing next to them, looking at Brad Pitt’ s hair flop down over his face. He smiles at me before the music starts. From everywhere, broken glass bottles hurl at their bodies, and they are splashed with gasoline. We are also in a dark alley lit by fire. The two are still standing, looking over at me, though I can’ t tell who is smiling.

I’ m eight years old and all the rooms
of my father’ s house are larger than life. Two days after my
first divorce, the only landscape I know is simplified, bone-smooth

and

Someone’ s at the door, somebody please get the door
Somebody please get the door.

is

After it lifts the army-green, stuffed
dumpster over its head and the trash
falls to the receptacle, it hulks
backward with a cadenced beep as if
to say, get out the fucking way, please.