Colin Doyle, untitled (Depression glass hand)

After the wintry diagnosis
of soon-blue lungs, we flame
the ether—

my blood loud and gummed,
winds sinking—

our hands in grief become serpent-footed fish,

clasped together              —despite rising floe
—despite no restraining

the sudden wide poison

in my flesh captive
to paths unsprung—and yet—

happy denial, like surface,
still dolphins this region—

so as if from sea we upfloat, sidelong—
pregnant in and by lakes,

palm to palm, pretending
we are fluid undefiled—

so that we can
meet lightness—and not shatter,

but Run.

Colin Doyle, untitled (Guantanamo sea glass)

At Camp X-Ray, our weather (the bullet train)
cannot listen due to headlong.

Tenderloin lights and glassmen.

If everyone is the police, where do we survive?

Excludables include all affection,
even that of pastries.

Another corporal leashing
jumped orange.

Our headstalls? Mouthfuls of blood feathers, gristle.

Venereal are the elephants
of patience. Of the buried law they sing.

Gasoline has dealt with our river——————.

In every attic our mothers keen, bulging
with pins and mermaid

tears. Iodine vistas. Indecent sleep.
A boxed rock’s thoughts.

Occult chains suspending.

On to the next hook stop: eel quay of Delta.

And then a final sanding, a rounding—
into grain—
into vanishment—

erasure of imperial eye.