Poetry

—a spectrum, an immeasurable gradient, during and after which

the places where you were can be tracked over a sprawling landscape

Be careful—I’m filled with glass.

I wanted to play Gabriel in a tinsel crown,
but was cast as the Little Drummer. I hoped
to carry the crucifix, to ferry the chalice
down the long corridor of St. Aloysius

The forest opens wide then closes once

After curbing what hasn’t sold

I sit across the street and spy on people

taking what this morning was mine.

The cold is a knife-slice on the skin.

There’s a moment—barely—when you see both
ocean and bay from the 280 as it mills north
near Millbrae, the waters flash what they know
of daylight, and you register being a sort of gliding porch
before dunking back under cypress

Barry was six-foot-six, fifteen like me, floating layups and hook shots
over our heads through the hoop in my driveway. We called him Big Bird
for dwarfing us, for his slappy feet, for the mouth that hung in a grin at all

Crucial early bark
   to learn, like dat?
Or no! The wooden ball