Instinct
serious psoriasis serious eyebrows
higher, higher, higher
I was five and secretly wondered
if my mother was a crater if my father was a scarecrow
let off from some planet let off from some hook
by a
vanilla queen hairstylist king
who
rejected and cast out plucked and shaped
scary things
it could not stand
to recast, to reshape,
was father’s accusation when he was mother’s accusation when she
thought my ears lay dreaming
in clean silence—in bed—
but I was awake, heartbeat adrift
among the sounds of
cosmic collision
teakettle whistling fireplace crackling
sizzling firefly lights barking neighbor Dalmatians
squeezing my face deep into beating the back of my head into
the pillow
casting worries
toward
a painted fish, a hunting knife,
silken scales and a clear tail silver glint and a sharp tip
sketching a white line
a swirl of motion
swimming away carving away
down, down, down lower, lower, lower
to another planet to another hook
far below
the creamy luster of the moon the scraggly aspens in the woods
Cherry Horses
Like the hunger we discovered
inside a barn with a picture window shut tight,
making love with unmasked fervor because
transparency to boys who willingly linger
in the scrub are birds riding the wind
through lime trees deep in the dunes
above the proof of existence: retracing every
regret: we’ve been there. But what of you, enticed,
enthralled, entranced with how a song
becomes its own myth and religion: out from the dark,
polished in the tube of a throat, so stubborn.
I know what it’s like to lie sleepless in your brook,
both as the willow (and) the gardener,
scrawled on a wall of ivy behind something
performed in the service of truth. Already beaten.
Lying naked on a bamboo mat, we felt
our hearts stop searching for instructions, day
after day, chamber by chamber, the high notes descending.
I can live in flotsam and dirt, though
I won’t get far: a storm howling with
beauty is the aftermath
wrestling through the pale wings of morning
breaking into your arms. I remember
there are many kinds of hunger,
but it would make no difference. Every sequence,
in every city, all one the earth, even the
shining in the hair at the nape of your neck, the dark
back of the curve held in by itself finds us scurrying away,
removing ourselves from the bossy,
because those not found
form sounds in such a way
as all we did was wait there. Keeping vigil.
Epiglottis
Cloaked in a dense, sooty haze,
chimney fires blazing
skylines to earthworms,
record coldness outlasting
lower rung wood prices and
fresh food and it’s a near
impossibility for death to not
wail multitude horrors
filling the dark corners
of the city’s labyrinth streets,
penniless masses huddled like
a giant coat splayed without
buttons, braids, or beauty,
because faithfulness is not yet as
important as straight. Close. Coming.
Bring scissors, tape, and finer needles.
Gods like their fashion tidy. Like their followers.
Like the robes holy-smoke men swish upstairs
far from soot, earthworms, and corners;
far from wound-scabbed hushmarks
rumbling across the bridge,
looking neither at the river nor at the poverty,
too busy fraternizing with other transfusionists
cloaked in a dense, sooty ha