Poetry

and of course he’s beautiful         
goosebumps over his ribs 
like tiny fists under a thin sheet     the sheet
all mudwet and taste of walnut 

Hmong people say one’s spirit can run off,
Go into hiding underground.

Only the physical stays behind.

Dear friend, dear fearless        reader, dear soft spot, dear        drummer’s
Backstage sweat-soaked T-shirt        kiss, dear one                  sweet     world-without

-End, dear if you             find this, dear feckless, damned...

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

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.