Apiary
My friend Sharon raises bees.
In her veil she cranks the handle
of the silver bee smoker
calming the hives.
Bearding, swarming
in the intimate harmony
in which nectar becomes honey
or beeswax candles for any altar.
Scouts return with tales of pollen.
The gilet jaunes
swirl around the point Zero
buzzing with anger at the money
the rich will spend
to...
NOSTALGIA OF A WORKNIGHT
She’s weary as an unused toy—unwrapped,
not touched. She’s not hidden but by herself
in back of a toybox, under the snapped
off arm of her last doll. She thinks a shelf
might be nice. She’d like to hear the soft click
as her nightlight went dark and slipped
into a sleep...
Paradise
lonely feet on a subway train
at half past midnight
she misses paradise
where every day she would
collect a pocket full of shells
why not give her home away
for another trip to the coastline without a name
our lady train rider flashes back to the nights
where she would stumble drunkenly with
another girl who split...
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
even the violence
seems germane.
same old Wichita,
ain’t it?
bomb every
last life boat,
make the bird
on the bill
soar free above
that ancient tomb.
a camera’s just one eye
but damn
if we don’t know
how to whisk a crowd
after wrongful
frenzy.
the NRA pays less taxes than me
you won’t
find
that shrapnel
wound
in their
tax ID #.
the business
end
of muzzle
is only prelude
of holy
creation.
“be...
Yarn
I.
Spread out like a tangential curve,
perched on window balconies,
I would stare at each abraded line of the sun
The sky was my favorite thing, how if I lay
horizontally, departed from the forces of
gravity and the will of life, everything was united
A quiet murmur would rush across the diaphragm,
knots and levers humming slowly...
11 243 Meters, Purple Mediterranean
The airplane wings draw new summer fragrances
in the fogs they’re expected by tomorrow's smiles
like a dawn or maybe a dusk
with a calm, lazy eyes the day
can witness the providence through all the blue truths
the winds lose their hearing with the speed of a fatal...
On the Crossroads
O’ father,
hold my fingers in your firm grip
and help me cross the road.
Suspicion
I’ve burnt myself half, fortuitously.
And deliberately, left the rest unburned.
Bike Accident
Helmet transforms into a skull.
The road runs as usual.
Insomnia
Night burns into an ashtray.
I fly to you with the wings of ashes.
Heirloom
When your mother raises her hand; earthy
brown, skin cracked open—
sun parched field—
iron hot temper
and hits you
the pain melts your
flesh,
bones,
marrow.
When your mother raises her hand to
strike you
the pain bites (your pet rabid dog).
She throws the foliage of her swallowed dreams—
barren land that was hers
and her mother’s
and her mother’s mother
who couldn’t...
A Fever of Living
Some nights step lightly,
like lily-shadows in blue water-
apparitions in transit, between dreams.
She awakens in a translucent purgatory-
a tread from an incipient dream
to a feverish slumber, to a body -
a map of nocturnal metamorphosis,
lacerated fish belly sewn with orange seams,
eyes like butterflies in rivulets of pee,
unmade and...
RIVERS
Should I multiply or divide my soul
in rivers under sheltering domes?
I have left bits of me
in the Elbe and the Rhine.
I have left liquid tears
in the lighted Seine.
Paris, Berlin, Dresden --
each city is an epic, a tome.
In rose gardens in the day
or beer-gardens at night
I have ranged and roamed.
The...
Ode to Muezzins
Muezzins used to climb the minaret to make the call to prayer…
(after Stefan Kaegi)
Oh to be on call five times daily
and feat days
ready to roll
cocksure in your three-balled
alabaster minaret outpost
honeyed and hyssoped throat
nose to the windscreen
positioned just so
between your faith
and a vintage Shure 55SW anodyne mic
an array...