— for Johnathan Harvey The tops of the city buildings are braced in fog, the night sky cow-poked for blocks and the plains distilled from Des Moines to Chicago. Rooted in concrete, the poplar’s wind-heartened leaves whip at the windowand the white gravel path, littered with goose leavings, blanched and retreating—well, we have seen this before. The dregs of…
IMG_0016.JPG
they. will winters condense the water; will not fall, for 30 feet; of girder 40 feet; of water why, arks weld. to will not warm the heart how they will Image by: Elif Ayiter/Alpha Auer/…./
aisotropes
I had always thought of insulation as a good thick, wrapping something up, making it soft, giving it a warmth it wouldn’t otherwise have until I learned after saying it wrong, ¿insular? but that’s my word, not his you isolate as you insulate in Spanish it’s aislar, the same. to…
Statue of Limitations, I
The statue of limitations on how long she can love him has run out, she thinks. She thinks? She thinks: Beware those who provoke you to write poetry. She wrote «statue» meant «statute», statue’s better anyway, more honest to the reality of how limited it is, this container we live in, slowly dying. Was there ever a poem that wasn’t about death? Go…
The Sun on the Very Clean Tile
— My eyes are dates in water, my neck hair kicks up from cold air; the doctor is listening to me breathe on her padded table. When she touches me, I feel curled into ice lodged as a bullet in the eye, the sight of piercing through oil-fire over water with water. She has prepared an ointment for my lips, the clear…