Poetry

The squirrels deny themselves from front and back 
and only word into view from the sides when 
their outline rejects the coup of geometry. 
From the south we delight in the polar symmetry 
of their foggy tails cupped by rounded hinds. 

1. Annie Edson Taylor (1901)

Don’t hate me because I sent the cat first.
Darling, desperate times require—
well, they require.
I told the little girl who owned the cat 
I’d buy her a new one.

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.

I didn’t say I loved you but I did 
and also him, the one who stole away, 
with all my sacraments
wrapped in his curling laugh, 
thief of my night.
We find ourselves together,
cobbling a mystery of fleshes 

The gentle tremor that has begun now in my left hand, between thumb and forefinger,
is not history. Its seed lies buried deep in sleep, in the neurochemistry of sleep
which traces its faint salt patterns on the stone of my soul. Stone of my...

You know I’m actually not who I appeared to be
kidding. I’m actually not sure this was my idea
of a good time, not sure what’s exactly what
in the glass elevator whose bellied window
swerves your face away from your face.
I’m actually not sure...

the world is made perfect why not rebuild here lies the water made of motion same day different peace is a matter of time

truth is the enemy it’s over the best part about terror is territory together we opened the border

I dream us young, again,
mother and daughter back
on 69th Street inside
our old brownstone—across
from the church, patch of lawn— 

a house neglected, wrecked,
as if the family
had been forced at gunpoint
to move away. In corners
dirt stacked like...

curbside on an Arp-like table. He’s alone
of course, in the arts district as it were, legs folded, 
swaying a foot so that his body seems to summon 
some deep immensity from all that surrounds: