The Avenues

The prints of my fingertips, a lintel.
Your eyebrow

corridor to sleep. Sun on our bed—
my heart burgeons a fig.

On the perch of a lip
my feet dangle in shade > superstition.

This is the last time I’ll think, kite.

A wasp’s venom courses.
Revolving door. Cul-de-sac boomerang.

In its heirloom-storm-cloud
a silver ribbon of cruelty twists

through my DNA.
SNP: a pair

of scissors, wishbones
—hold its hands

the sound of two Xs.
Xs where my eyes would be

if I never left them to look for you.

Invoking the Inconsolable Divine

4 a.m. cat claw
leaf’s-flood-plain divine.
Needle-cluster-beading-
pine-resin divine.
Beseeched, bespoke,
can opener, Narcan-
do: revived divine.
Insatiable, rife-
as-March with pluck
plucky robins,
hands over ears-
eyes-mouth—
hopelessly divine.
Driver and wrench,
scorched, tapped out
—broke-in divine.
Wayward divine.
Ninety-nine named
and galaxy crowned
vaped, empty-bottle, recycled,
wretched, fetching, festering,
quotidian, misquoted and doting
divine. Besotted, becoming,
inexorable, insouciant
exclamation point?
question mark! comma divine.
Periodic table divine.
Elemental divine—
tenacious and tender
anvil and stirrup
jumping drum
arc light, penumbra,
nick-of-time, skin-
of-teeth, eleventh-hour
narrow-escape/lucky break
parking ticket divine.
Crapshoot
radiant radical
sporadic and random
specific, fixer and fix,
jilted—keening and kerned
curious, divisive, derisive
spliced, sparse, parsed
indecent, indifferent,
indicative

Constellations

“Who am I? And how do I know all of this?”

the wind speaks to me, also.     Cities up there
wink out        ghosts burning          although they shiver.
Air conditioning       or shade       makes them cold.

In those days,      chartreuse-new        seven sisters, veiled       in their own breath,
opened and blinked     beating like my fist-wings      with a treasure in it.
[Your Name Here]

Open. Close.            Like luck.          Like I can’t believe it
like transmigration,      like your voice I miss so much       in my nerves
your voice I hear so much     in my body     —     blue skipper    ghost shrimp
horseshoe      crab’s copper bright     vaccine blood.          Can I wink with them?
I am.     Can I wink them out? Yes, when I do.

Sirius eyes me         as ever.         Sleep is houndstooth          sky-forsythia
cemetery pinwheel flowers     animated, again      by air     like us, churn,
magnetized inner core          platelets,         planets,         solar fumes aberrate
mega-fauna turning      on a pin—     wheeling         casting lots,

lots and lots of lots     —the Bull of Heaven’s Jupiter eye, agitated
tail,      whisk glassware         scatter springlights

*         mayflies         *         dragonflies         *

night sky foam          pocked         April dried mud pasture         moon battered,
your face, mother, over my bed.

Frayed          I peer          through         feathers:
every word of this,         contrivance.

*

A pear rests,         amiable as a yellow melon         with two drops of rosewater,
its eyes.         I turn from it          say, it hides from me.

I see and not see.         Cast.          Wandering—

spittlefoam         my poem,         my pear,         my only          you.

Skyfishing                  talon-hooks:

I’m hunting you,         clarity.

Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Marie

1.

The Amitie aches of sky

[maybe this, maybe that,
(bobs, broods.)]

The sea ridged
like a mouth’s roof

spilling syllables.

2.

3.

This dirty—little—heart*

pitch deep
attains its vault

a continent of snow—
austere slope

Polaris burning
in a glass
of air.

4.

ntch-ntch-ntch [tsk tsk tsk]
snip, snip, snip;

(whisk whisk)

what was yours now isn’t—

once pristine blades, cough, glitch, blur
flare, occasionally, nicks, snagged glints, blink.

What doesn’t change?
not words their ([essential]/[accidental])
echo and bounce

(if every abyss had a floor . . .

5.

that street let me ramble—

like these words

who lit them

*Emily Dickinson