This bullet is for you he said and poured another drink. Of course when the robots take over no one will notice. Har har gulp. But should I really tell you about the feeling that came over me one day vast as the sky while I watched insects swarm a red mass of hair and bone by the side of the road. If only. The day was hot and he had just been forcibly removed from office so we thought we’d throw a little party. Little did we know that her speech would sour the whole thing and make each of us long for the home we would never see again tucked into the side of a mountain where dogwood blooms and that little pond with so many frogs in spring. But that’s the way it goes. When they bring it out you try to eat with a smile.
-
such energy though these eyes still blurry
but the day begins early & takes the blame
for every flattened patch of fur on the highway
for the last two weeks and what do I know I
wasn’t there but you feel the flies surround
you & maybe we got off on the wrong
foot and maybe that’s all there is now
in the still heart of the great machine a
few sparks with dances to come and yes we
can agree that I use the word too often
but it’s still the right one for the job and
out in the forest it sniffs a mushroom
and moves on since the field guide’s at home and
doesn’t want to take any chances
-
the rain over my eyes a plastic yogurt container dug up after thirty years with a note asking about the neighbor’s rhododendron
and I want to quit this empty Dorito bag instead of violets world
but I lapse into something like prose and the gnomes leave in disgust their thimbles still half full of sticky beer
-
something other than the hook in your mouth? Hold the end of this
(First published in Under the Basho.)
-
that sentimental day we recite our atrocities a la mode
which rhymed at the time though not in retrospectthey say it may never be untied though
will serve as a warning to newcomers
peddling some dewey gospelthe car wouldn’t start as we had not
calculated for the variance in the
new gravity and its effect on the ancient
components that likely will takeweeks to fabricate but if you’re still with
me we can descend into the canyon
and investigate the rumors
of this miraculous vegetablelike drawing a hand with the hand that’s drawing the hand
-
her toaster,
now a senator, votes on
the moon’s independence
-
There’s this river underground
the birds sing of it as though
it were a gem as though a gem
were something they had interest in
though perhaps my translators
but no don’t let me blame them
this river at times packed
with grey slush moving fast
enough that the fish wish they
had eyes but here on the lost
real estate development the
philosophers have left
with the fabled food trucks
that won’t return
-
those anthologized ones could sing
a line like beaten gold and decree
the world this way or that for time
present and time to come but now
we face exile if we fail to laugh
at those who reach deep into earth
and instead must waste so much
pixelated paper for no
more than a productive cough
our hands are too weak for oars our
feet too tired to climb the hill
and report on the clean air so
we ask the wrong question now that
the mountains have lost their last green
spirits but we have no one
no priest to pronounce the signs singing
from the steaming liver—but no—let’s not
soil this by dressing up in a song long gone
one day the animals that remain may
gather to snort and stamp a sweeter
melody in air free from our cardboard
-
XXXXXXX, whose job curses us. In sister cities of emerging-market stars,
(First published in Under the Basho.)
-
-
over the sound system your approximate name and number for the mandatory slow dance and performance review
-
Seven in the morning of the first
of May already so bright in clear
blue air birds make their plans
immense. Time for our little
dog to darken the earth with her
mighty stream and then a few thimbles
of kibble. As I doze my way back
and glance at the car of the neighbor
I try to avoid
a wide disc of wood from some
unlucky loved tree on
the driver’s seat.
I guess everything I
thought about the spring is wrong.
-
-
a nest feathered with fingers sticky from pulling out your eyes
(First published in Under the Basho.)
-
before this morning just the blank blue
black before the sun fades it back to
the usual but now just feet above
the broken basketball hoop great Jupiter
and greater Venus inches apart and
though I don’t know it now the next
few black mornings in dark blue
cool they will sport in that spot in a
slow silver dance that even without
my glasses warms my hazy blue head
-
-
-
and though I’ve made so many plans
when I look in the mirror by accidentbefore a shower a small bird tumbles
down the stair forgetting about wings and sowe come to this moment when momentous
things may be mouthed into the shabby mirrorof the sky and from the neighbor’s apartment
something like a snort or sigh
-
at the organic cafe unsure of your unwrinkled hands scraggly long hair scraping fine features the constellations of pimples your rough shirt dark stained apron standing tall and to the side you grant a glance and goddess you were all beauty pink cherry trees burst and burst my eyes wide as fried eggs
-
trick of the recursive planet. Though, with his pet dodo on the run,
(First published in Under the Basho.)
-
dear friend, we’re it not for the tears held back—
but no, let me start again. After all, it is spring
and the half-clinging leather of newly uncoveredcorpses satisfies the flies. But that’s not it either.
Somewhere around here there is a small book from
the past that I’ve carried for years and never read.
-
though the team was broken up we still hoped that somehow we would triumph over the league of loners though we were weak and needed supplies and spicy food with which to regain our competitive edge and as the day finished drawing obscene doodles in the clouds through the gaps in the tall buildings we occasionally glimpsed the blimps of our enemy scanning for weaknesses to exploit though this all feels like ancient history since the hastily written but iron-clad armistice ushered in the new golden age no one really wanted
-
in astronomical units
under my eyelid all the long summer
grit from the forgotten pyramid
my grasswe(e)t toes too long to trod over any meringue
a golden bubble chases the pigs
while Nobody plots
late unrhymable light my splitting shoe the same
Her trilling toes through
morning-star-wet grass
over calm water an orange concierge ogles a pint of rhyme
-
with time running out and the clasp broken the last thing the mortuary students needed was this extended commentary on the subtext of that smirk
-
What solar-powered syntax will break through the city’s thick walls later wielding a heavy pen he stumbles never to blink again
But the pen won’t start so the precious possibility with a suitcase secretly packed disappears beyond the hill
Where the music comes from on those nights though despite his best attempts we left feeling as though we hadn’t eaten at all
-
Bones is back
If you love tiny gems of super-condensed poetry, check out Bones, which is back from hiatus and better than ever! They just published #23, with a few from yours truly…
other animals 