RIPPED WHISPER
Teach me how to kill
time or joy, but not both
the fog reflected in the pond
looks brighter
I read Nerval way too late
& love how he believes in god
because his friends want
to hear him talk
ARTIFACT AVE
When you see my death, will you tell me?
Hold the envelope up
to the light? Middle school, beautiful
anger, tiny wind in the mouth
of a rabbit. Three vultures on the roof
one with a foot
in the chimney. The ash
of little answers
I brush out in the spring
like your hair
ROPE MEMORY
I sneezed so hard I heard it in the guitar
Spring feinted & summer came in
From the left, hinted at only
By condensation dripping from my old car
Who has wisdom
Is it the nuthatch
Up to six eggs now in her wateringcan nest
Who has wisdom
Is it the string instruments
Making good
Use of their f holes
Who has wisdom
Is it the poets (no)
Who though
Is it all the finance guys
Who will retire & die
Unguillotined
Is it the lovers
Playing board games together
The weavers
Assembling memory
From bright twine
For an early computer
On a spaceship
Parts of which are still on the moon
Is it the moon
Is it two gold doubloons
Is it philosophical
Nominalism
Who has wisdom
Anybody
SHAPE SORTER
What’s crazy is we live
long enough to toss ourselves
differently into the waves
of time, like as children pain
was endless, intolerable, & now
weeks float by like coriander
in the potato soup of being
not our parents but not
entirely not them either, snow
falling more in the memory now
than in real life, mid-Atlantic
winters mostly gray duration
punctuated by rain & surprise
65-degree days, fresh apples
in the grocery store, edible
stickers that tell you
the four-digit code to type in
when they won’t scan.
The man who invented
the barcode scanner helped
me survive my teaching
career, all seven years of it,
by giving me money. I spent
the money on things like white
board markers & laminated
posters with messages
such as: “The essence
of mathematics lies
in its freedom.” Set
theory has a high body count
when it comes to madness,
Cantor lecturing on Bacon
-Shakespeare connections
that no experts now believe
because to look directly
at different infinities
for too long must just be
so inconsonant with living,
in which most seeds
crack open but don’t
grow, or are flooded
to the surface to feed
the birds. Asphalt worms,
displaced snails, the whole
system of governance
that emerges when pack
animals need to move
upstream, even the phrase
pack animal—does it mean
animal in a pack, or
animal I’ve put a pack
on? I try to tell someone
I love I’m here if they need
to talk, & the message says
“Seen”. The cats take turns
rubbing their faces on the new
fish toy I got for Mackerel
& Kristi shows me a video
of a possum doing the same
thing, slubbing a pillow
that smells like his mom
until the wildlife
rehabber pries him
gently but firmly
away. The other day I
tried to pray but
my mouth wouldn’t form
Hail. Probably too low.
All seriousness, though
do you let ice
from the sky
hold your tongue?
Why not? (One
long, hideous thought
I have kept
to myself: what if I’ve been
good enough cue
drums the whole time?)
FIFTY DAYS
Someone cut the middle out
of the book of love and put
a poem in it called “Of
Expiry” which begins: “One
fatherless afternoon / I
brought in the mail / it was all
politicians / & offers to accept
money / in exchange for
divers services / none of which
I need now. / The language
of relentless imperatives /
has started to get to me.
I / have this blue shirt
that doesn’t / fit anymore,
but I still / put it on,
/ sometimes, just to see
if / my body remembers /
how to shrink from loss.”
Somewhere in Chaucer
there’s a story about
Saint Cecelia preaching
& converting people
after surviving
a fire bath
+ 3 executioner strikes
to the neck. The shirt
still doesn’t fit
so I go outside. The miracle
of Saint Cecelia is not
that she doesn’t die,
it’s that she does
when god decides
INFANTICIDE IN FOXES
Bye heart,
old ticking
thing. Pond
overflow
runs behind
the trees, naked
as the day
they were
taken for
born. A cub,
handled too
roughly &
carried by
his spine, dies
+ is buried
under wool
tangles, to be
dug up again
in a few hours
for food (the 4
weeks before
that
spent
below ground,
a little
Gethsemane
of learning
to see).
The good
isn’t something
we can trust
or know,
stress of the
first-time
mother,
hiding
in a barn
from snow
KEEP TALKING
Hounding for sapphires, my life
continues like a court case neither party
has their hearts in anymore. Legal fee days
give way to sluicewater nights, the river
is so cold you can’t do
a whole pan in one go,
you have to split it up like gravel
in the crusher. My dreams
have gotten harder & harder
to remember, I know
I’m still having them somehow
but most mornings I awake blank, alarmed
& disprepared. Asparagus touches my head
gently, with a paw through the rods
holding up the stair rail.
Are you okay says his face.
Yes, you’re okay says his walking away
