Tree branches touching
in the breeze of autumn:
to have known you this way
is no less touching
for its randomness, its
avolitional [Read more...]

All dark long drafting in bed,
I scratch my longing down your shoulder blades—

Your dual-purpose back, a dry erase board,
upraises pink wherever I touch it.

Mark a wild garden. A map you read
each morning in the mirror.
A hidden-in-skin compass: rose lines & needles, [Read more...]

Let soldiers stand for violence.
Let the suburbs stand for childhood.
Let paella stand for love.
Let zero stand for death. [Read more...]

Returning
they revive the ancient
language of youth
though cadence falters
and inflections flatten.
Words slow
for edits
before they reach air. [Read more...]

What would you have me answer
that I do not know your name?
What else did the willow tell you
she, young and pliant, assured me a hello [Read more...]

Man is made of ordinary things, and habit is his nurse.
–Johann von Schiller

I. BEDSIDE

Bedrest follows at long last, and a nurse,
like a bridge over me, holds bedrail
to bedrail. To think I’m awake for all this:
how streams are changed in their beds,
how a day is engineered, the blood being drawn,
the bloodwork done.

How she spans me, fixes me,
the keystone set in her eye.
[Read more...]

The night should cohere around some limit:
such as a wave that has just crested.
For since I saw the ocean after dark,
the stars fall like tired owls onto my dreams,
to shimmer and swim. [Read more...]