Summer’s Approach Tangerine bright muted In white heat of summer Moon-thirst drinking bloody sky Grown white pale You wonder Why does the caracoling wind look back at the faces Of the weeping? There’s honey in the ledger Where the names of prophets should be They’re all naked On the corner of Fifth and Main drinking honey wine And debating Chaucer’s motives in the moonlight
CARTOGRAPHY The earth is perched on my shoulders whenI open Google Maps, the world contained in aboundaryless boundary filled with simulacra.I think often about hurling it into space,letting this weight fall from my burdenwere I not so committed to the people inits grooves, the nooks and crannies ofraised reliefs and time-tossed ravages.Atlas learned the earth
THE BEES AND THE BEES Were you told about birds and beeswhen your body changedand hair spread like mold from fecund flesh?The bread was fine yesterday.The coach in health class said “fertile,” a word thatdisturbed us all. No, not us;boys who boisterously bragged about future conquestsnow gulp at the the thought that their seedmight bring
Triga Deep underneath in the dark of the earthLies in a vein, unaware, and inertSomething special, something wanted,Terrifying yet great-Small motes are floating, blinking awake.Sift, overland, through a fine meshed sieveGrains, particles, sands, and some sins.Failures and pleasures with bright orange stains,Blossom and grow, flat on the plain.Atoms in water, humble-benign,Blue shadows dancing in human
Green Hummingbirds helicopter to surveilthe begonias, all that’s on offer withlantana between blooms and begoniasstretching like they’re being pulledout of the pot, often in shrivels by nowbut seasons are not themselves these days.Last of the cicadas manage a murmur,green grenades waiting for footslipto spark their death sputter, kamikaze intopeople and trees, shade revealing many greensof
Essential Services My name isn’t really Pippi. It’s Janet. I hate the name Janet, so I re-named myself Pippi when I was ten, after Pippi Longstocking, my favorite book character. I found the books in a box in our attic. They were my mom’s. Dad saved all of her stuff up there, “In case
Moon Over Lake Mineral Wells It’s embarrassing, really, out of all proportion to the sky it swells in,Fever dream of some early nineteenth-century landscape hack,America, savage and glorious kingdom of viral enormity –And me, had I been dabbed into their foregroundAs pioneer pastiche, staring directly at thrilled viewersWith a square-jawed, half-bored expression, my eyes sayingThis
The Jackson Files “Gotta get this goddamned thing open, you can tell there’s stuff in it,” said Marcus, trying to jimmy the cabinet open. Keisha was digging through boxes of clothes and random junk. “Well don’t break it. God, they left so much.” She shook her head. “I didn’t think of Momma and Pops as
