1.
I want to press apples on
the floorboards of your attic,
tow you away in blossom.
my song of floodlights.
tinsel-silent rain.
a lamp’s wick.
I want to sit two brussels sprouts
at your kitchen table.
and crawl to you with
salamander eyes—
the waltz of poached egg
and garage.
I want to wait at the
luggage carousel,
watching your unclaimed
bag go around.
pour from me
as though I were a carnival,
winding my string of
colored bulbs in the quarter-light.
2.
if we unclench our throats
all heads and song will fall away.
quisling brudy strophes,
the late fall wind.
quiet bub. we plodded the sweep,
the corpse of a potato bug
blown in October from our cafe table.
we ate the dirt it became,
my friends we ate the dirt.
3.
the winnowed husks
of statues in unlit gardens.
or unspoken tunnels, in an inlet.
your teeth were the minnows
that swam from your head.
and sound is fire without vanity.
the wind in its collar and
milk-crate flight.
a werewolf’s gamble across
the hoods of cars,
at the hour when you sleep,
with eyes like cups of white tea.
4.
the half yawn of
streetlamp before morning.
a faint glow, song
unleaving.
to illume is to pond all
in shadow.
the sun is bread half
floating in sinkwater.
we fall to the ground
cinders and tomato,
we move from a fragrance
to a gesture.
a leak in the bedroom
fills a pan with old cinema,
our teeth dropping like flies.
5.
now the sound of white
plaster to moist earth,
of autumn leaves to
staircase, and the unfed moths.
unfolding a tarp or a fishing net.
the drub of silence.
turning the flame back of
a kerosene lamp.
beneath the table cloth,
the movie house lights go down.
a blossom to those that mourn,
with a tongue lashing so rude.
each a brutal rain,
a blade of grass,
a quiver, a fallen seed.
6.
when dictated,
an exclamation point is quiet and devouring.
I rain. I rain. whorish.
these days do little but
and these days we do little.
these are the days we do little indeed.
eaves drip.
exclamation.
eaves drip.
though we no longer sleep there,
our bedroom window still sings.
7.
the stars are always
loitering in the country.
never buying. never tipping
the waitress who lives in
a silver liner in a campground.
it’s like loading the jukebox,
turning down the lights, and leaving.
8.
tonight I will keep you alive
by falling asleep in a chair
with the lamp still on.
9.
left grazing the thin
porcelain grass.
white, white, and
apple-flush.
a soft fumble of trees,
runs on forever.
warm and pitted.
avocado-feasting.
the last tooth of sun slid
behind the old couch.
with goat daydreams—
gumming white the whole field.
cud-scattered then bailed.
these puddle tongues.
the bumbling snow,
pond-lilies.
when we wake,
milk-thistled in
mud-flight.
closed like bowling alleys
at dawn.
10.
we remain old
wet like thoughts
snowprints in another season
unafraid of night-squall.
in a colonnade
a dead shower,
clutching at what’s left
of an afternoon
just a handful of sun
and the scantest
conversation.
against the stair,
while the rain fell from
the eaves
between naked and song.
the testimony of lamps
in our violet spring
in our private nights
only softly now as by the river
the tall grass
which stirs our hearts
like garden stakes.
if the night’s cover
were to peel back,
the stars might scamper
like centipedes, or explode
as static electricity
across the evening’s
bedspread.
11.
in the muted porch lights
of way-station motels,
mosquitoes fumble like
bonespears.
a dog leaps on a chain in
a neighboring yard.
closed umbrellas drowse in
a corner.
would I follow you to the
ends of the earth?—
no, not to the edge of the
kitchen table.
12.
these are the nights of
porch-swings
and open refrigerator
doors.
moon-soaked nights when
fruit-bowls bore us endlessly.
and the loose change in
our pockets frightens bats—
into throats or attics
like lovers.
the evening undressed in a
quiet snow.
by morning it was
street-dogs fleeing.
the empty breath of
watchtowers
the spent lavenders of our
almost-heads,
an alcoholic falls in the
front lawn, among violins.
13.
once I had it all,
under the vaulted silence
of cakeglass.
sleep-parched between lamps
we few fallen timber.
wrapped in felt and
carpeted stair.
our bumble-hemmed labors of
let-happen-what-happens.
the small tadpole of stars.
our dreamless in boats,
in the white privacy of
shattered dust.
the days’ wallow of window peel.
the illness called away many,
departed now the swayed foam,
now the shoreless seas and
perched flame.
mosquito-lobbed toward the
soft, wave-poached,
where rope swing departs
branch,
journeyless and chained to
this wintered porch of sky.
14.
we ate the dull light and
now it is winter.
some mornings wake in a field,
gift-wrapped in the
silence of chandeliers.
venomsoft in a light snow.
the tender cloud line and
lake, a debt of stars.
we are lonely, like a
yogurt, or leaves pasted in the fresh rain.
the last headlights burnt
to a matchstick,
in the still-dark,
still-ripening glass of morning.
in the dry season, we
stretched a tarp against the sky.
one day there will be
nothing left—just brochures of rain.
15.
honey-flung. yoke of
streetlamp.
we made love, until
ladle-emptied.
fell asleep, pressed
flowers in a closed book.
16.
the light inside half-
dreams then swallows
the world outside.
you spoke a leaf stem and
filled a vase.
left a sentence unfinished
then walked to another room.
all morning we filled the long bookshelves of our souls.
whole deserts of fruit
fell from the milk-fat sky.
and in the open sun, we fell unlit.
stretched delicately on lawn chairs.
waiting in thoughtlessness, as though it were a field—
a single thought placed in a stranger’s hand.
the evening’s crumpled sun shone on itself
like balled paper in a waste basket.
is it an argument,
the way a flamingo holds
its leg half-perouitted,
while the sky smolders
against the sea?
17.
there is room for a fence
between ours and the neighboring yard.
there is room for oceans
between us.
at the theater I sit aisles apart,
waiting to fall open like
the tailgate of a truck,
to skitter like an onion
peel across the floor
of an otherwise vacant kitchen.
