“Would you mind
If I headed up early?”
Says the husband
To his young wife.
“Follow when you like.”
Later that evening
The beautiful face
And exquisite limbs
Will rise from the table
Of the Southern inn
Having been spied
By the antihero
Across the room
Reading an indifferent book.
Oh, quick —
Let a storm kill the light!
But you might as well say it
To a wall.
We can’ t change
A single
Silver setting, or
Even by one day
Reduce
The bright full moon.
You love your friend, so you fly across the country to see her.
Your friend is grieving. When you look at her, you see that something’ s missing.
You look again. She seems all there: reading glasses, sarcasm, leather pumps.
What did you expect? Ruins? Demeter without arms in the British Museum?
Your friend says she believes there’ s more pain than beauty in the world.
When Persephone was taken, Demeter damned the world for half the year.
The other half remained warm and bountiful; the Greeks loved symmetry.
That she was not pretty she knew.
The flowers delivered into her hands post-concert by the young girl, pretty, would be acknowledged only. To display was to invite comparison.
Skilled at withholding, she withheld; it was a kind of giving. As when meditation is a kind of action,
a way of leaning into music the way one leans into winter wind, the way a mule leans into a harness,
the way a lover leans into the point of deepest penetration.
After a ship’ s prow cuts the water, the water rushes back twice as hard.
Netflix the Green Man and any screen
becomes a vineyard. Episodes cluster
and climb, trellis narrative. Between
the corn and lichen, creepers muster
nine lives. They grow, divide, and splice,
steal scenes by running fox grape, bittersweet,
return on any handheld device
as moonseed, woodbine, dodder, buckwheat —
false buckwheat — note, though star- and heart-shaped.
He trucks some mascot for our kids, glad-hands
a sidekick dressed to burrow, root, and take
them through their lessons rattling dad’ s
7-Eleven’ s a misnomer, like “mind-
body” problem. They never close. The hyphen’ s
a dash of form. Sure, this mind-body’ s
a machine, if you want, plowing across town
to the steak house. American Spirit. Give us
the yellow pack. No matches? This dollar
fifty-nine Santa lighter, too. Big Grab bag
of Doritos. No, the “engine” is not
separate — it’ s part of the machine. Sure, paper’ s
good, container for recycling. Rain’ s no problem.
I eat the Doritos, smoke up — one for you?
The chips are part of my machine —
We enrolled at barbizon
Knowing full well
We’ d never look like
What was promised
Cue carol of the bells
Cue a demo on the casio
And the security of two-way
Escalators setting the speed
Those early mornings
In our mall school
The store’ s silver grills
Some mannequins left
Half-clothed
We’ d taunt them
With our imagined summers
In london paris rome
We weren’ t please and thank you
Walking with books on our heads
No we were going to devastate
Greek shipping heirs
One night, not long after the disaster,
as our train was passing Astor,
the car door opened with a shudder
and a girl came flying down the aisle,
hair that looked to be all feathers
and a half-moon smile
making open air of our small car.
The crowd ignored her or they muttered
“Hey, excuse me” as they passed her
when the train had paused at Rector.
The specter crowed “Excuse me,” swiftly
turned, and ran back up the corridor,
then stopped for me.
We dove under the river.
Welcome to your day of sanity! Come in and close the door it will likely lock behind you and you will be home alone waste disposal will take care of your needs : at long last undisturbed phenomena without the heavy metal background of the street will be yours for observation and response : do you have visions? do you think? Your mouth do you open it for more than medication?
My father was an enormous man
Who believed kindness and lack of size
Were nothing more than sissified
Signs of weakness. Narrow-minded,
His eyes were the worst kind
Of jury — deliberate, distant, hard.
No one could outshout him
Or make bigger fists. The few
Who tried got taken for bad,
Beat down, their bodies slammed.
I wanted to be just like him:
Big man, man of the house, king.
was it so I could
never say
across a courtroom
that man, the one
standing there
was it so you could
walk among us again
after
as if you had shed
the body that did
those things
was it because you could
not bear
my pupils so huge
they would have swallowed you
my whites like flayed kneecaps
when you pressed down
to singe them back
into my skull they were softer
than you expected
you had thought them
diamond hard
weapons turned on you
