How Lucky to Get Flushed

From an angel’s eye. Cutaway
of supernal gunk. How lucky
to see you here

whole, repaired by rivers.

Staying is easy when we trust
the medium of things. Car and
tape. We nap

on an open floor like votives.

What of the Lake, Its Pigment

Served in plastic cups        a false spring blush
the streets blare with occasion        not mine

still I am compelled to swim its muscled lather.

Some occasion is my occasion        parade        for others I am squatting in the back
grounding the envious meadow to glisten
kickstanding as such

that wet vehicle
that soft twang
that warehouse at the end of grassland
annex where leftover books keep
at one point        every spine burped velveteen.

To bait memory with our gums showing
combats an essence of what’s present
borrowing extremities as they wish        to be used.

Down where in the nowhere I was arcading
slinkies pinched from a high shelf. Full enough
of these games but not yet won        I think
we know each other on a cellular level
we know that towers are watching

then we tapped and whispered hey this is not an accusation but you got older
(sleeps with a machine).

The sun is too hot to peel        and this chart will shoot up when it’s stared at
reviewed weekly like telekinesis
like you want it so bad it just does
what it should — climbs

you got older
and you got this
auger

when the water wars reach
we may want to be lakeside for practical reasons and also those of splendor.

Baby Breaths

Second summer: less sound, more suggestion
of feldspar, a cracked mineral verging
on hatched rock. I am made           for making. I watch

a tugboat spar rings of wind, choreographed
and docked. Babelike, in the bent care of
buildings. Is it normal to lock           eyes with a cherub?

I ask more of a green field. It says goodbye
to the raw and mission-critical me, small-
time sprig of a minute ago           when I was nothing. Now

I could consider the junior-most: the neighbor
kid with asthma, who we locked in the shed
in a storm. The chihuahua’s           snapped limb, only half

an accident. I can move myself until the mile
simpers into acknowledgements. I am tapped
open by the tenderloin           gently, its physical process

of humming. A daisy rattles as it rinses, so I try
hard to picture holding it. Am I ready to be on
the other side? Was I ever           a thing that strikes soft?