Zigzags If I knew Socrates told us to question everything I would have been better equipped to tell my mother why I disagreed with her why I lacked her enthusiasm for being born with curly hair that went in every direction off the top of my head like a field of unruly...

The Pilosity of Memory  Although mindful to remember but unwilling to commemorate, during our nation’s holidays,   during grade school, I carried our flag, hoping it would end my parents’ wars.   That might be why I still gaze at armies with suspicion, why...

Hee Haw We walk where the blade talks high wire of a divide between schemes of dreams and the certain verdict in the capital trial called living   All walks punish with wishes We wander dead ground a travail through felled trees of knowledge   The hee in the...

Bodies We found them rolled together in a sack, soaked by runoff at the bottom of a grass embankment. Tossed from a car, no doubt. We peeled them apart and laid them on a bare log in a skinny roadside copse to dry. We were nine with little idea of what we beheld;...

I’ve Spent My Life Separated from Living Separated by doors, windows, walls— swallowed by digital throats, settled into a stomach where I collected friends and hearts like stamps.   I’m not sure what I want on my gravestone, but I know it’s not: Comfortable...

Grass and Marble There’s a harmonica in my pocket, a spider crawling out of my mouth and on my backside a lovely long tail that’s been hiding, tucked in my pants. Instead of arms I have wings lacy but strong. Out of my belly button three or four babies spill out,...

francis bacon’s black mouths: a love poem painted over and over because he wanted to perfect blackness in different states of mouthness the black before the scream i’ve printed ‘em to put over the bed folded into origami orgasms as if doing squats over a speed bump...

This is Kansas, Toto There is a two-headed man living just outside Topeka who rarely goes into town. On Friday nights quite late he’ll wander into the roadhouse and order two Heinekens. He’ll draw the odd stare, but as long as he puts a twenty on the bar the drinks...

Thumbprints and Tree Rings   Are basically the same, yeah? Circular markings on living beings that show we originate from one genius source, one brilliant astral scientist who saw the stunning in all creation and said, I think I’ll leave them symbols of their...

Trauma, according to Webster's "An injury caused by an extrinsic agent or behavioral state resulting from considerable mental disruption and duress; acute physical suffering or emotional upset inflicted by a mechanism or force that causes trauma." I've spent years...

chrysalis first bite in an anorexic’s recovery   i’ve lost the iron sting of leaves once devoured— green bitterness a stain on the backs of my teeth.   “still hungry?” cicada chuffs from its split-shell pulpit. my half-open mouth, raw as nacre, tilts toward a...

terminal ii How quiet a mouse must be underfoot as it feeds on human destruction. This house changes with the seasons, its long steps shaped like a mailbox & languishes in the snowmelt, freezing and refreezing as the days grow longer and nights lengthen as a ruler...

The days are suddenly shorter; the scent of brisk air when I wake, inviting melancholy   tied to winter need. Instinct buried deep, that sunshine and sustenance will soon grow   scarce? But there’s comforting memory as well: heat from the fireplace blaze, a...

House and Universe   The single-story house’s flat roof would have been a wondersoaked site to lie and study clearsky starscape, but I remember flatness without below, without above. And I remember, rather than imagine, how bruiseblue regimen of the old, lost...

A group of college students takes a stroll the morning after September 11th   The stripling season’s light – timeless but tirelessly untrue. No matter – bright is that penultimate geometry felt round a sensible world, To which the goosefleshed credence of morning...

Postcards from the Knife-Thrower May 15 Vallejo, CA   Magdalena said, let’s forget we’re strangers Let’s talk about ragged breath gasps for air Let’s talk about binding hands Let’s talk about pleasure too deep to describe Let’s talk about exquisite freedom of...