As swans die off the coast of Libya. As the robin brought corn to Brittany. As the Neapolitans are want to include fennel. As gingerbread aids the sailor. As capitalism moves on to find cheaper labor. As the goose is trained to turn the spit. Let’s not resort to the wryneck wheel. Let the woodpecker […]

Defined by the unspoken, what are the circumstances that take this friend away? Traveling with the Khan’s golden table, his rusty cello. Sometimes he’s wearing a red cape, sometimes he’s surrounded by birds. Sometimes sorcery is just salt. Sometimes you just have to bury your dead. To be aware of the other-than-human persons all around. […]

Through the green pond and aspens moves something made up in my mind     I can say my name and paired foxes disport then vanish in the brush     Remarkable objects are everywhere here     Deer vertebrae in a runnel     A microwave in a ravine and the fragments of pop and medicinal bottles     Night sounds move through real to reel beyond compare     And that’s […]

You can take care of it yourself     Eat the shells and toss the peanuts to the floor     Better yet kill them with kindness     Polish names are intrinsically difficult and outlandish     The Chinese’s are short and funny     Where will all the money come from     After all, we aren’t going anywhere     Land the airplane     Fourteen hours     Dying to get out alive     Is that mushroom edible     “It’s like sending […]

Until we leave everything Like a word The small bones crack An extreme fear flows through Your bag in the closet Instructions of a floating bridle A woman with teeth for eyes A fish inside a mirror, bird At the bottom of a well

Descending December     December whose guts got it bad     Bad more or less measurable by degrees     Degrees not necessarily historic     Historic tinges of sadness     Sad statues stud the park     Park means kissing or maybe more     More kleenex stuck to yellow lines in parking lot     Lots of hysterics history washes away     Away in a manger leave the heater running     Running away from how sickly seem all growing […]

The witches and nymphs are weeping in the Primal Forest, and all of the trees are throwing down their leaves. So we would like to believe. But of this we are certain: the channeller is gone. No more sinewy rhymes and meters straining against the boundaries, seeking to take flight. Syntax and lexicon may groan […]

Here in sectioned dirt, rituals of attempted revival. I carry her face, projected on the earth, yielding and new. The quails tattered by the dreamy-eyed tomcat, the paint pony who snapped his own neck, frantic and cleaving. A dirge in duplicate; your love slick and refracted. Her ruined blood in mine, the only holy thing.