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How can you add dates 
to a calendar

we share? A boxed future 

in numbers and far away 
places. Pushing a 
swing somewhere with treetops

aching and heavy with the 
wind.  Do you 
see us? Hands clasped and

clutched in the tight space

between our touching

thighs, resting on forgiving ground 

littered with dead things, damp
and leaking rot.  
A call that you did not

hear before. 

I cannot see 
in front of 
my own eyelash. 

Soaked

It is like old wallpaper being 
scraped from a plaster wall; 
at 

that age, it’s not meant 
to be yet it is.

Question 

every word, wink, and breath. 
It makes me think every

kiss, 

every caress, every undress was 
an inside joke. A gift, 
a 

meal, clean laundry—it’s all 
part of a final act 
that 

I never auditioned for. Question 
every picture we ever took 
or 

had taken of us, such 
a low, rough and swollen 
space. 

Hard to see the sides 
of it, the top or 
the 

bottom. 

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I somehow don't have a word or

words to say what I just could not

say at any point even when I whispered:

"I love you" 

and 

"goodnight."

And I called your name up and down

and up the stairs again because I felt lucky, 
I felt like you might just hear me through your 
exhale of cigarette smoke. I wondered, often, 
if your breath would smell sweeter had you 
been a little kinder or had smoked

a little less.  But I learned that kindness is 

neither inhaled or exhaled: it was in the lightness of

your hand on my shoulder and the circles

it made on my troubled belly.

blue and black

Your aunt made

a ceramic bowl

and painted it

blue and black.

It’s edges were rough

and uneven but it

still held whatever we

put in it no

matter the smallness of

the thing. I look inside

now and see two rings.

Two rings. They sit and

collide on smooth cold edges,

frictionless metal, soft and ungilded.

No longer guilted

on thinned

fingers. 

A Kind Of Bible

I read each word

that you wrote with

your hand on the

lined  paper.

Purchased for you

for a birthday or

Christmas or on a

day

when we were supposed

to be.

Each curve of each

word heavy,

bends an arc around

a kind of truth

that will not yield

and will not corner

sharp and make itself

blend

(invisibly)     with     out     leaving 

a stain.

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That tree had a

five o’clock shadow

of moss on its face

as the lilting light’s

atomic edge shaved

down its rough neck into

the hours of burgeoning

night. I wonder

if the singing cicadas

through their din and

clatter realized how

close they were? Always

straitening their stance,

straddling a wet leaf

and a soaked twig.

The night cares

not for what we see during

the day’s light and cares

nothing for the translucence

of venous wings that crunch

and dry in death.

early morning sunrise

I wonder if when the

raccoon opened its eyes

in this twilight of the hot day,

it knew of its imminent death

by metal and rubber in the cool

of the dawn.  It woke, like it

does every dusk, scavenging

for food. (Such a hateful word,

scavenger.) Did it realize that

the car, bearing down at a “reckless”

29 miles per hour, delivering

the early morning newspaper,

would bring a kind of solitude

and quiet to its hunger, that it

would sate its belly with blood and

its throat with bile and yesterday’s

supper. It lay upturned on the dashed

yellow lines, it’s spine, a perpendicular

twist in its own defecate. Twilight coming

on again and again, done and undone.

Its last breath shuttered

by a closed mouth.

Tornado Sirens

My mom was late that

night. Ham, corn,

potatoes au gratin; milk,

bread, applesauce; good

china, silver flatware.

(An empty place setting.)

Even at twelve I had

an awful sense that

something bad was

happening; I didn’t have

the language for it. I

heard my dad through

his lips,            pulled

straight: “Who were you

with?” That heavy question.

Like the green, still sky

before a tornado. I didn’t

know where to take shelter.

Concrete Ramps

The fissure that

jutted up between

each cement slab

made a slight ramp for

this chubby boy to hoist

his bicycle up just a few

inches. The angle of the corner

blocked his few of the fat man rounding

it just enough that when he strained and pulled

his burgeoning biceps the front wheel, shining in

all of its glorious shining chrome that whirred and

reflected the tops of trees and the car tires it whizzed by,

landed squarely in the fat man’s crotch. The tire wedged between

his belly and what was hidden by years of overeating, held in space

and time if only for enough time for the chubby boy to peer into a possible into

future.

Maybes

“Okay.” I’m sorry

about last night. I should

have just gone

to the performance.

Had I known about it

beforehand, I would

have planned accordingly.  

I love you, and while

I’m not sorry

for not bringing

your shoes, I am about

missing your performance.

I’ll do better

with that. “I love you

too.”