Some Bad People

One of my friends lost an eye in autumn
one annealed the new kid with lye
he was gonna flake him good
like lutefisk all is meat after all
and one grinned like candy
or a gel laid across a light
one had a spell
in Australia one got up
to some things
in summer the nights are gloves
thickfingered and pressing
gills shut and boyhood
is a side of beef vibrating
on account of the worms

The Assumption of the Crop

The fawnchested flicker pounds out another grub.
Turn. Turn. From the acreage, parceled out to men
the road circuits through a field where corn patrols
the sky and ground lip, near to the dickering
of men and men, and there’s a need for motion.
Huge anthropod, John Deere oilblooded
godheads slip over an ear and another ear
wisping fluid, petering out bugdom.
I would like to kiss one of these behemoths
thread its needle, crouch, make some masa in a hole
for an offertory. In church the benediction
goes sour, but at least it’s quick, the game
starts soon, the game is all this fog around us.
Drive, man, drive. How’s it curdling already?

Wintering on the Coast

Bodega Bay’s topknot quails kept noses down
beetled by at top speed under the car’s struts.
Seals shot their diesel, recoiled, deployed a honk
and pruned acres of the spume with their mud fins.
In this country dad rose when Venus struck its match
wide arms wide, thinking about the wind
and he scored a truce with the sea’s belch.
I collected limpets like pills in a leather sack
and no one placed a hand on us, disturbed
or footed down the sanded castle walls.
Our only neighbors jellies on the wrack line
that congress of lice moving in a pall
and a paw washed up at the final noon
from an otter, peeled pink as silicon.