While You Are in the ICU I Cannot Write   I cannot dredge up words, blue suitcase stuffed with dirty clothes, hotels and more hotels, 3 cities in 3 weeks, every morning up early and off to the ICU, where sometimes you eat a bit of what I bring.   A night of...

The Hastening   Gleeful spiral of spring growth, flattened stalks under summer’s blasts, dazzle of yellow as Gingkoes toast autumn, closeness of wide cold winter sky, each so short, time on fast track.   I can’t keep up, can’t turn the pages of the calendars...

Waste Management At five o’clock in the morning I am awakened by a distant thunder. Rather, by a sound like approaching thunder heard at a distance of five or so miles. But there is six inches of snow on the ground, temperature in single digits. Could this be it, my...

It’s Not a War   What’s inside me? Surgery clips, a stent trail, stones, plastic. All the people inside me are clamoring to get out, sliding little doors open   in my belly, lurching onto the bed, red dressed, blue uniformed, drums throbbing, trumpets...

Cardboard Car Hanger   Its needle-sharp smell penetrates the cheap shop, the type where people riffle through racks, thoughtlessly throwing underpriced things into carts. Intended purchases left behind in places different from where they were picked up.   It...

Bettor in the Giant’s Den   The heart of the stone sweats In the foothills of some place or another (I forgot where now in Nevada). The wet stone, moldy-in-sweat, Moss drenched, marinated in Fungus-warmth, red-splotched.   The casino is a lichen (or a mold)...

Are You Coming Back   Last night I tossed and turned, the night torn mad with slamming doors and clanging radiators. I threw pillows and covers all over the room, woke in a terrible cold sweat. I walked to the kitchen gingerly, feeling the swollen, sore pad of my...

Angels in the Architecture Suppose there are angels in every room, sometimes seen, at times confused with ghosts, but no, ghosts are impatient wanderers, quick to put on boots & stomp through the hedges. Angels, half-asleep, thinking of cellos & the flicker of...

what will I do until then?   buy seven white nectarines at the farmer’s market, eat one each day, do this over and over as the nectarines become pears, the pears become   winter, the leaves will turn to eggshells underfoot, and I won’t remember what it was...

With Barely a Smack on the keister, our young brother was sent back down home to till his soil solo, Vesuvius bile vomited out of bitter lips - even still! Venom unabated, poison spittle distorting the crops we consume: hell, it’s in our clothing! Endgame? Dissolution...

Polynomial Lines as points that flow from the first to last, planes as groups of lines that define a surface,   some rippling surface a topographic map defined by rippling lines also to mean mountains   but they move too fast to define a moving figure a...

Burn Pit   Always, our need to know.   The way a burn pit is in conversation With its burning.   How we are ordered to breathe, To stand and breathe   So our blood can acknowledge What is entering the lungs.   The particulates of precious...

Cadaver I dreamt last night that Mothra died. Three pebbles and a few rented orphans attended her wake, a modest affair. I was working. I was lurking inside a bouquet of Forget-Me-Not’s. I was fucking around inside the last coyote’s lair and I still needed a hair-cut,...

Antlers Reflected in Water   I wake with that fear again, leaping then hindquarter stung. I’m out and I’m fake.   How am I in charge of myself? I’m wasted opportunity, a bug lit for only a second.   I hiccup madly, remove the dart, resume my unfounded...