This is the first time we’ve been here since 9/11. The seedling that was planted gives us shade. The toddler who kicked our ball might be a surgeon. The ins & outs of brains. The infant in a stroller’s given birth. Maybe that is her behind the swings, pushing both her twins who’ll live forever. You tell me I’m mistaken. We were here in 2010— albeit half-an-hour. The sun had melt our lollies. A woman who was pregnant said hello. Her stomach like a wet balloon. Her child by n

They say you shouldn’t swim if you can’t see the bottom of the lake. Four steps out and fog below the surface. You respond in kind with murk. An earthen appellation? Cannot be called the same as what’s in water. And what will you call me, darling, as I slip beneath the sheen? My toes which feel the slime you’re clearly convinced we should not touch? My chancing Neptune’s cleansed it all with purging breath? Air is not the air that’s under the grade. Where the stones which y

It’s the full moon that is boring, you orate as you set up your reflector in the dusk. Its vanity of look at me. The crescent is a judging karambit, one for the end of days; a reaper of galactic grains. The half-moon speaks of balance, a cosmic yin & yan. Its meld of frump/enchantress. The radiance. The acne and its aftermath of scars. You add you speak of Luna not your face. And then when it’s abstruse. The shroud of modesty. Or hiding what we envisage to be there. A dusty,

White is not the void we think it is. Even when blanc et blanc. Do not call me lazy since my 8 by 11 is framed— my initials in the upper left. Don’t whisper it’s been upended, like a slew foot while the ref had scratched his nose. What is the colour of ice before you bleed? Our galaxy has no inverse. Nothing can be capsized in the sun. I stood on my skull to prove it—pondering less-is-much. The Buddhists put to shame. Your jealousy is unbecoming. You could have been a prodi

It’s not a different drum to which I march. It’s an inimitable trumpet instead. There’s actually no parading involved. You’ll assume I’m talking Davis— miles of midnight blue. Or maybe Louis Armstrong— the asphalt of his voice. Gillespie makes me dizzy— the spin of his crooked horn. The bend within the tunnel— where light has gone to die. Symmetry has no place to hang its head. You will be & I will bop. There’s Arturo & his Latin Train, the scorch of señoritas. More ahhhs t

Our dilly-dally dog is the reason that we’ll die. His last-second sniffing of the soil. The bug in the corner of his sight. The mantis that will leap instead of pray will bear the blame on second thought. Our smashing through the windshield— like a baseball that’s been clubbed into a neighbour’s just-put-in stained glass. The shepherd and his lamb. The key I forgot to oil will be the death of us. Its resistant nudge of time. You should have prodded me to buy a lubricant. Dist

She showed us nothing is beyond our mercy. Watch her play the lifeguard as her palm’s a paramedic for mosquitos. Form an IV with her veins. Even locusts get CPR— the warmth of her every breath on each appendage. She gave her Cheerios to the voles we scoffed were vermin. Stuffed them through the cracks like tiny donuts. She offered kernels to the crows so they’d forget about the worms. The more it poured the greater her recompense. Repaying her weathered umbrella for all the y

This carny is a smarmy huckster. Uses shells once home to snails. Swiped their only domicile. Even the pea feels guilt. He’s the realtor keeping mum about a murder. Boasts about location. A public school adjacent. We’ll see its boarded windows— he’ll say it’s only closed for renovations. Will reopen slicked in tech. We’ll wonder about the other houseless laggards. He’ll say it’s evolution. That the French prefer the crunch of vacant husks. My mind depicts the one that slipp

Math is a peculiar beast. It’s how we frame the cosmos. Its meld of number/letter. It’s the way we fell our gods. The preacher on the corner disagrees. Jesus thought of each of us on the cross. Hands me a tract on hell, how we’ll spin like it’s the spit at Swiss Chalet. A geneticist was asked how many of us fuckups have ever lived. 117 billion. Ten seconds for every one would take thirty-seven thousand jaunts about the sun. That’s a long time to be hanging in the pall of our

Your line in the play was a monosyllabic moment. The tree in the leafy corner calling hark! You could easily recollect it rhymed with bark— yet still you flubbed it up— the boy who played the beagle yipped & yapped, you lost your easy cue with his distraction. Snoopy uttered nada for 50 years. We were privy to his thoughts & nothing more. What would the balloon around your skull bare as you skulk in a comic strip? Acting as if you’re mute or Marcel Marceau. Or the extra in t

You say she’s the farmer’s daughter. I argue she’s his wife— regardless of what Wood unveiled in 1941. You’ll add that we can see it by her somber, vacant stare. A spouse would acquiesce— to the fate the cards have proffered. A daughter still harbours hopes of emancipation. I counter I can’t imagine them playing Fish. Gin Rummy. Strip Poker’s out of the question either way. Maybe Milk & Lemonade. The object of the game is to acquire the 2 of Hearts. It’s the only face that

There is nothing surreal about Dali. Everything’s run-of-the-mill, like a day at the Quickie-Wash. The clocks are merely socks & a pillow case, limp as legless trousers—from the doubling up of Downy—a sentry on the counter with Rebekah’s underthings, little Zach’s suspenders, and a collar as stiff as the bro with washboard abs, flaunting his shirtless bod. Penelope will regard him like the seep & froth of bubbles— which speak of too much Tide. Everything’s doomed to pop so wh

There’s a final time for everything. A falling off your skateboard, a bandage to the knee and kiss-it-better? Van Gogh’s harkening a rooster’s crow with his unpruned ear. The roar of an ankylosaurus in the ash, the choking dénouement of Cretaceous sun. The last sieg heil! that’s offered in a bunker. The echo that doesn’t boomerang to your auricles like the year before. The last I love you to your daughter though you couldn’t have sensed the man beyond the sidewalk in his cou

—for Carrie Confirm your confirmation by pressing 2. Scan the QR code. Let Zuck know you are coming. No. I’d like an envelope sealed with wax. My initials in its vermillion. A boy to run my message to your garden, where you await me on a swing—blossoms up & down its twinning ropes. Each one cups a moth or tender bee. I’d settle for a pigeon with my affection amid its claws, landing on your lap like it’s an airstrip. Curled like the horn of Aries. Unfurling I will join you in

This poem has nothing to do with my fear of flying— although it easily could. I sense everything from the ground. There’s a reason we call it Earth. Latin’s Terra if you will. Dhulka in Somali. Ojibwe’s Ni Mama Akii. This poem is not of soil but of birds. Of wing & worm & seed. Check that— even the worms are spared. The man in the maga hat has hollered speak English or go back home! His middle finger rises like a drawbridge. His world is hedged in hate. The couple at the tab

Your anger needs to cool. Especially as you curse the weight of russets up the steps—Sisyphus & his melon. A bag of 50 pounds is not a deal. It took you half-an-hour, your back’s been torqued by Thor. The physician said that Lay’s will never count as needed starch. You despise his kill-joy voice. Likely waters down his Pabst with lemon grass. The optometrist kept you waiting while your eyes were playing Twister in the mall. Everything past the ambit teased like some oasis. Ev

The lack of upper limbs is not the first thing that I notice. You make a hasty, sexual assumption, that I’m fawning over breasts, the slope of her naked hip, the fact her garment’s sliding off like it’s the climactic close of burlesque. What she was doing with her arms is speculation. Greeks are the masters of such. Maybe elbowing her way up to the front of the falafel line, or Eve-like with a fig or nectarine—apples are so cliché— tired of taking the rap for the plunge of me

Mona Lisa wasn’t captured for her tepid, quarter-simper but for her hands. How one consoles the other in muted glow. Her nails gnawed half- way to the twixt. Anxiousness will do that now & then, but it’s the visage which wonders the world. And a little touch of cleavage didn’t hurt. The chair was to be the star of Whistler’s Mother— the stark of vacancy. How it may have traded whispers with the wall. And who could swear it’s empty? A spider in the drapes we’ve paid no attent

You should never walk your dog if you are drunk. It just may be you conjure some ridiculous requiem, on how living would be better if dung was iridescent, vomit viridian; if incendiary plumes ascended in a floral spectrum—like the petals of Nagasaki, Gaza and Hanoi; or how gorgeous death would look if we bled in beige instead, the clouds a score of scarlet as if they bore our every sin to Beaulah Land, where it rains in mists of teal, sung of with our tongues which spit the

Too much of anything will kill you. Even love is not exempt or so I’ve heard. You lapped up all the ice cream as a girl, told your mother it would melt in your solar plexus. Even then you knew your innards like a glove its restless nails. Everything points to the middle when you’ve fled. Torridity's not required to fend the frost. My Sensei said the centre neither starves nor satiates. Suffering’s only grasped when it is carried. Children know to leap is their salvation. It