28 January 2019

drafts

window wind widow hole widen wooden wander

blows bellows bows below barrow bare bereft

apart after afraid a port a poem a prayer apt

25 January 2019

the end

on any other afternoon repentance

calling for a cab,
the ribs of an umbrella

darker and colder and
very like a whale

a cup of something hot and eternal

22 January 2019

19 January 2019

study hall

all the different kinds of lie

wondering if you remember
freeze tag

the Latin name for it terror

in, out:
a bookmark

 

rehearsal

the storm begins
in the kaleidoscope

between yesterday and today, lake ice

whether or not
the gun fires

someone’s owl at the end of act three

13 January 2019

heat mirage / where the snake went when I stopped looking at it

We believe we’re not like animals, we believe we choose what we do instead of having it chosen for us by biology and circumstance, but this is a fantasy. What we choose is what we had to choose. And the more you remember, I think, the less choice you have. They say those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it but I think it’s the other way round. History gives us ideas. History makes us feel like our actions are justified. We look to other humans to find out how to behave. History is the vast and troubling story of how humans have behaved. But it’s not troubling enough for us. In fact, sadly, it’s inspiring.

if I were tame the story of my feathers

somebody else’s garden I’m buried in it

10 January 2019

I haven’t come out of the forest in days; the shadows are the worst thing about trees; no, I don’t know who we should blame either.

what if the chattering of squirrels baptized me

and without any practice too whippoorwill

one last question from a voiceless insect

7 January 2019

Viruses and rage aren’t a good combination. I haven’t slept well in a while because I keep waking up to cough and end up spending a couple hours coughing and fuming. I’d like to give several people a piece of my mind but I suspect they wouldn’t be nearly as impressed by that piece as I am myself at three a.m. It hurts to swallow and think so naturally I spend as much time swallowing and thinking as possible. Sometimes I turn on the light and lie there furiously noticing that the world is not in the shape that I prefer and that no matter how many of my favorite cherry cough drops I suck nothing changes.

here’s january
a tunnel
under the snow

 

 

4 January 2019

In high school biology we dissected our way through the animal phyla, slicing into specimens that had been ordered for us from a catalog and whose blood had been replaced with formaldehyde for the greater convenience of scholars. I had previously thought of myself as squeamish but I turned out not to be, or at least not outrageously so. What was inside things, I admitted to myself, was worth seeing, no matter how appalling it might be.

spring rain
the worms
come to the surface

waiting for the future I cut a worm in half

segmented worm
the war longer than it looks
on tv

1 January 2019