Anima
So much harmony of limb I knew by being but could not parse it Then when the finch was pecked down to its clear-as-wax-bones imprint sang the idiom these little glowing letters …
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Hyperosmia
Three steps beyond the doorsill, I’m horselike, my nostrils flick; bearlike, snout to sky. To sun-mellowed cement, I carry the scent of morning toast unburnt, coffee uncreamed. I put my nose to slug slime, to aphid lace and fresh spider silk. Test my super- (or sub-) human olfactory skills. The …
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So Many Dead
Bottles with the cap on, drifting on a sea where nothing sinks and nothing opens. Oceans, poisoned by a drink of water. Press-on fingernails dance in curls along the shore. Plastic swirls in eddies of Pacific vast, muzzled phantoms in a pulp, bobbing clear and blue and winking in the …
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sleeping bags
in a silent house, wakefulness is our cloak of invisibility so we listen to the gossamer touch of our feet on the linoleum floor echo like a shared secret and we step out into the lavender haze of 2 AM. i once wanted to tell the future but every prophecy …
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Orhionmwon
there we were, within reach of the river’s grasp, discarding our clothes on the bank adjacent to our clay pots. PUT_CH_HERour well water had receded into the earth, compelling us to P_C_Hstretch across the woods for waters, & on discovery of Orhionmwon, our first thought was to dive— frolic in …
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on a list of games that buddha would not play, one is [that he abstains from robbery]
Once I watched a screen-ready trilogy of deer graze my front yard in Iowa, only by the blobbed bulbs of their eyes in the dark. In the dark, our eyes have the rods to see only in black and white. A triad: a father, son, and some downed spirit. Forgiven …
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Machine
Say we do this again say we know it best with our eyes closed, oiled fingertips the thing we want is machine is mechanized tongue; in these words, in their primary shape I betray the evergreens; nothing can stop the industry of …
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White Gladiolas in an Unused Jar
The white gladiolas were planted late, in haste, and bloom now haphazard from their weight and too much wind and wet. All summer, this weekly deluge—sometimes days’ worth of droplet to drizzle to downpour to gutters running, storm drains rushing. The season nearly gone. I’ve picked the horizontal and cockeyed. …
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Child Poetica
For the Son I Never Had The way you say “air conditioner” slays me and when you’re older, the way you cut the wheel PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREEEEEEto make a corner. Why shouldn’t we talk about what never was? Not because of a lack of love, but because of something more opaque the …
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Pier 60
Hurricane Billion Dollar Betsy roaring toward New Orleans will kill 73 people tomorrow, but this afternoon, September 8th, 1965, all these Florida boys see are bigger waves in the Gulf than they’ve ever seen. Denny, Rob, Sammy, and my dad are four wet cores of themselves — fifteen, growing into …
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