ink – other animals

enough ink for a single letter. Having lured the neighbor,

(First published in Heliosparrow.)

Having darkened my hand with dark ink in
an age when close and
distant are cloudy unaided having
made so much that no

body wants to eat I wait for the latest
historic storm and the
scrape and salt that wakes us too early
or too late

model mountains pen in
sugared cars I try to

lift the snow with a wave
of homemade rhythm into
sky like berries almost black

but do I fracture some rule with
this spell how many feet do I have

to long for long-lasting mud
and the birds who

visit though we won’t learn
their names this year

either but the tracks lead
to a curve turning

back on itself with a smile
the breath leaves

green leaves shake

so let’s finish off the crackers
and call them
cookies we can watch
a movie through the neighbor’s
window just
balance on this skull

in a smear of ink but let’s play

Yahtzee so tired of all my

jokes but how much for

anyway turn off the hearings

and listen to my stomach

full of primordial

soup for a bluer sky when

we all have a moment

to floss again and plant

some grain or at least

some new suspicions

if there’s no ink in autumn

a mouthful of berries to bed

the wrong way a rope

around both legs

Sunday afternoon while light won’t stop streaming past the sudden silence of unbroken bare trees and what apologies to make while the ink dries and the thinking machines reset in the year of our lady redacted

all day I thought I was some other day the ink seeped out starting with what in your chest before you can fly 1,000 years

snow starts
too much
ink in the pen

easter I fill a pen with green ink

first smile of the year my fingers stained with blue ink

a word I didn’t expect a drop of ink uncurls in the water