Poetry

your name for purposes of identification

how can I when it’s failed

better a border made of water

harder to cross

each seed is different

like each tongue

how many heads

was the right question to ask

In the penumbra of an oak under sculpted
Moonlight, we pile the last waking hours

On our faces, breathe the wilderness of dry
Heat waiting for fall ventilations. It feels

I press my hand to your sleep.

Then I find your spent head under small
whirling tresses

having digested the clatter
of car horns, children

bustling into sweet shops.

the back of my hand and this neighborhood,
which is devolving even now into
a semblance of Detroit. I know not
to lead a horse to water because
that won’t end well. I know my name
and to the mirror’s mute face

Chambers fall to splinter gravel.
Leaf grows from my throat. 

Walls forsake the crumpled ground
It is meant to hold up.

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In the end, everything turns out
right, like the last ten verses
of Job, where rings are given
in supplication and apology. Where sheep

My reward for waking: close walls
and limestone dust, spit
evaporating from my tongue. First

I count and recount
my toes, throw out grain
for the carp, snatch a femur

We stack wafers the length of our arms
in half-hour rotations, inspect the chocolate coats.
You’ve eaten a Kit Kat before-—at least
you’ve seen them on newsstands next to gum,
but this isn’t about the finished product.
This is about the factory...

The peonies are popping! A fist that is also a kettle that is also
A pact petals made with whatever cabal of bees decides to stick

Around. Let’s all us shake on it. Ah, these lungs of mine the perfect
Emergency orange of extension cord coil...

When you are young,
and he kisses you
from the side.

The muscles in his jaw—
I see them.
The infinite 
desperate stretch of his,
rendering the whole
of blunt language 
insufficient.