Awning tattered loose in the wind           and rain; sunbeam marks a clot           of albumenoid sperm, half-drying on the tiles. Prosperity’s banners frame           a concomitant rise in “lifestyle”           diseases, spotlit Mormon Tabernacle card slipped into a first-grader’s lunchbag; the smear of banana; redolent           moustache.                     The war is the crawl           at the foot of the television display, […]

Sister, don’t reduce yourself. Somewhere rooms share a pattern. There are thoughts there, large as air. There are masses of bright flowers. And how is it far if we think it. What is it that we know. The bitter ease of profit, simple terror of the sea. A little flesh, a little breath in preparation […]

The idea of         Who you are         or         woe is I The cultivation of an essence is essentially an encounter equated with “in the beginning” This intimate entrance This trance of intimacy that constantly avails me • Life is drawn         from the land’s mercy Try as it might,         it can’t outgrow it Insects at dawn A […]

The mark of her refusals mars my face. The mark is a mouth to sing with.

What can one man do? He can join a crowd and be dissolved into it until his hand breaks the meniscus and touches the hem of a suit jacket. He can lift Donald Rumsfeld’s face out of its skin and wear it like a pelt. He can watch as the camera turns its back on […]

In the dream there was barbed wire across the steps up to the campus. The soldiers were advancing. The boy was hungry; he had not been fed. I let him drive; he was older, but still not old enough. A sharp right turn. A street sign reading “Restaurant Row.” A huge esplanade of eateries, through […]

Gradually sweet radiant interstate south of Normal, north of Hell’s mouth closed until June, I have seen no earth this red. Why isn’t grace the intensely seen rather than impending? I continue to abort more utterances than the names of animals can endure, our language lacking richness for our abundant boredom. The presence of curtained […]

What is alive breathing not merely sounding music you listen to that sight takes at least a moment to recognise is not there

whose name escaped the sign, the stranded star that scars night’s body. Shining just as bright as skylit eyes, you’re peeling open and I in silence can only point toward your pointing. Darting away who will find my arm embedded in the trees felled to make the bird alight? Who will find the swift tiger […]