Bobby

There's only half a kid to write, tiny stories unsorted
like toys left out in an attic. He taught me to play adventure, to climb
up to my face in mud and trust he'd pull me out, to tunnel
for longnecks with my toes, which numbers and letters
meant the best water gun. I was afraid of snakes. He was afraid
of nothing. I cast a love spell, I pined: would I see him

with our mothers? Would he see me get skinny? Would his lips curve
in the same wary smile when we'd meet each other grown,
without Barbies to break or hermit crabs to capture? Once we lost
each other in a corn maze on the cusp of teen hood, and again
I'm mouthing his name, empty paths all around. Again
I'm sitting with his toys, not ready to put them back in place.

(no subject) (for J)

show details May 12

Curved ribs caging the hot dog belly,
anchoring footweight at the low
tide of our sleep. There are cemetery
dreams, owls singing the start. Do we sleep

together or do we? Is there another Virginia
across the years or is there only one run
across the state? A girl of these fields
warned against idle questions

in the middle of a poem. In another
war we could sleep and sleep, dog
at our feet whimpering at the round
hoots gunning across the dreamy dark.

(Untitled, unfinished #1)

To be clear about the sound. What it is
I am pushing. Was A. anything more

than a lithe construction, a handful
of materials I pushed around to fit

a larger space. (Be clear about the space.)
It was the woods. (It was the woods at night.)

Someone was panting. (My throat in fear.)
Tiny twig houses and granite thrones

and what did I do but make love
and kick them over and bury

the materials once exhausted.
It was a spoiled way to learn fear

in this dark hollow (at night the moon
reflecting off the lake like a hag, a bogey)

so I tried to share it with A. I need to be
clear about cutting out my tongue. Ask.

Puy de Dôme

A., rifts in the plaster cast
fatten all unruly: fulsome heat

spends the morning’s parchment
and yearns for a new palm

to ooze over. Lava, flowing pulse
of the underbelly, charcoals

skin, heart, skeleton, spark,
(sundries of the walking spirit)

to Hell’s hardened workplace.
If there’s another way to dust

the history of man, pass under
the molten morning smog

and give me heatless death—depart
from spinal vents bursting, corralled

sudor from the last living sculpture
puddling blood iron, ore. Such silent pain,

this division into orphan halves, cleaved
under the hot throat of day’s final edict.

Newsprint

A., look at the heights
of this goose flesh,
the clamorous feathers
flared broadly and froze
up as though by ice,
quills erect as scared
soldiers. Let me be your
peacock while the sun
still leeches in the glass.
Gun and fold these
interminable mounds.
Find I’ve not an egg
to boil (not a head
to mount on your wall),
just this slush, this mire,
these screams slumping
across a pale limp page.
Wince your dreaming day
through and molt the old
maxim to sleep on it. Sleep
on the lost plumage and eye
a future in leather and wool,
quivering, ready to pluck.

Trick (Not for Laura)

Massachusetts cut into tiny toothpicks, splinters
stacked to a pire and set to flames.
The taste of Massachusetts. Its toxins. Give me

the pricks of your driftwood. Burn me steady
until I slough. It is a leather skin. It is a parchment you
can char. I asked if this is what you Massachusetts

should be: the thing that blazes, smokes stars, wrestles
with the innocence of its sweat, the wetness
that burns me. What can I do friend. Can I drown

in you. Can I drown from away. Must the burn complete.
There was a sun I thought to shine under. Believe
I am the only one with words. Believe when light casts

off the mirror it is onto the face of Sarah and no one.
Yes this is a burn. Yes the daylight burns me.
Massachusetts my will is to burn us the sky.

King of Id

Massachusetts you can't pollinate in the mouth
like the other states. Roll out your clumsy tongue
and pave over your pocked roads. Let's not be dumb

about these highway holes. New York orphaned me
as the ward of the tower winds and it's a long fall
to the kin under its water. Everything I can't remember

is an ancient crime scene. And now Massachusetts
you want me to start a family. New York is aware
there is concrete below and wood above. New York says choose.

I'm sorry I sold my land in you Massachusetts.
But you're only a slow train ride, some cold water
a place to rest my head.