Ars Brevis

Nimble mobile sculpture flashes thirty
skinny metallic coils— slinkies, potato peels—
squirming into-&-out-of each least breeze.

If you set the thing outdoors for any longer
than one slick video take though, actual
weather corrodes it to fixed pits &

crooked cramps just like your life.

Let’s hunch in the backseat
together: you, me, & snort white dust.
I don’t remember

exactly but yesterday somebody
rushing Greek swore she got whatever
she still had left of her ownself blown away wild.

Dance

Soggy fog: the lake slumps.
I was just about to wrap
& ribbon it when the one perfect birthday
gift for you seized my wrist & wriggled & twisted
offkey to the wrong song the lake
still likes to pluck its shallow harp
strings to & sing.

Happy Return

Semiangelic, I descend
a measly sky through crisscross
layers of little untidy clouds. Rain
below hurls at the access/exit
gates, kicking up to exaggerate
each lurch of the day.
Was I thinking? One tires.

Long splashy drive, then all’s
gone fine back home. If I never left?
Well I never, a chorus
of rural ladies exclaims
from their booth in my personality.
A mental leopard refreshes,
changing spots before my eyes.

Eyes have it! rules the chair. We prevail.
Curtsey to mama dead in her ash jar.
Duffel unpacks, smoothing away, &, however
unsteady of heart, may I subsume
now into whatever the scrawl
of the gypsy moths at the wet
windowpane has in mind.

Hero

Third jelly danish: home-sickening.
Sucking gooey fingers at age
forty-seven & counting: If the bad boy
hasn’t amounted to much, that’s the good news.
Lengthening odds-over-ends somersault downhill.

Mornings ooze off in all directions.
Lost track of every & each
item I alphabetized into safekeeping: tall
tipsy cabinet by the medicine chest: pinched
ribbons, photos, a medal, clippings, fame.

White lies gossip under my breath.
Crouch me at my locker twiddling tumblers.
Do you love me still? You loved me once as if
I danced all night bravado in parachute silks.
You sang my name like a home town.