*

 

Routes dappled with obligations
all their own and lie down
to get up the other side
or why isn't it asleep
or wandering the cold
nestled against the lips
locked around a match
flipped open
in a sputtering light
given how accurate
the ship is now
a grizzly set of hours
stern stern consort of
counting backwards
almost set aside
too complicated
too alone
in a summed up book
with buckshot in the chest
balled up forms
of love gone damp
and give back what must

office, substance, steaming light
up and lie down at warm
wondering the other side
of why aren't they asleep

 

*

 

I own not one photograph of my father—the words, I think, of an aptly named poet whose name I recall one night while I'm up late with a slice of cheese.

The apparition which then visited upon me sought only to reassure me that the use of the first person need not be avoided. Simply ebbs and flows in a rising hypothesis.

I had to admit the caldera may have been an embellishment.

What recollection I do have of him was an odor. Metal. Like copper on the tongue.

 

*

 

What has the light in this place done that intoxication is no longer scholarship?
What tender door has assailed me?

How could it have been that beneath my flesh was a classless society?

And that I so primitive could not wager an essay on the matter?

 

 

n e x t

 

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