At the cabin in Snug Hollow near McSwain Branch creek, just spring, all the animals are out, and my beloved and I are lying in bed in a soft silence.
Sometimes it’s seaweed in your throat you can’t cough out / or an ink cloud expanding in your skull
Before North took a seasonal job / fishing for kings in Alaska / I’d never admitted to myself / that he was my only friend.
Inasmuch as our faces / bear resemblance, / now, to what // I imagine of them
Able only to recall / his parting footsteps—the chipping away at / a tree one fells at last
Through the window, what light gives / new meaning in the day.
Some days, I sail on an empty boat to a country I don’t know. / With my navy-blue passport, I can go anywhere.
Spring turns to summer, hopes fly high. A golden romance—in my bloody fists I smell osmanthus flowers. Under the pulped sun, lovers grow young and younger.
After the death of the dictator, his son wanted him embalmed. His son wanted him on perpetual display in a glass box.