First, circle your palms
around a dogwood tree.
Now squeeze. Strangle
loose every scaly leaf
until the moths that are
its petals unshutter their wings
and leave. If they should swirl
about you like a thousand
shrouds, die. If they do not,
then follow. Bring a net.
If a net is unavailable,
circle your palms around
a drop of the dizzied wind.
Take that moth upon your
tongue & grin. Should it thrash
itself against your teeth,
you are neither the sun
nor moon it navigates by,
keeping its body constantly
angled relative to their light.
Poetry of the Non-Prose Kind
Becoming a Lepidopterist
Almost Asemic
First I have to say words are generally damaged beyond the point of legibility, even so, I won’t let coyote just go to anyone, not by verbal expression, he is truly a awesome pen, he is smooth and works good off your legs and has a sweet temperament and a good thinking mind which resembles writing but avoids words, he love s to b with people and will always b my pseudo gigantic, unexplored property, possibly when testing a new pen, I truly believe It looks like writing, (but we can’t quite read it,) Tony said he has a lot of meaning through his shape, others take us for a ride along their curves, we like some, we dislike others, I had to put down my pencil that I had since a yearling she was n15 she broke her leg devastating, She was my best friend I just don’t feel like since she s gone not yet anyways I must say he does need a hot wire he seems to get himself in trouble gets his foot stuck, stands there wordless writing till u get him free so yes hot wire if u want to talk u can call oh and my pic s arrive at a personal, absolutely correct mis-interpretation.
from Notebook: New Mexico
Along I-25, Heading for Santa Fe
What the mountains
offer
where there’s nothing
you want?
In this faltering light,
the light.
Rain, the rumble of future rain
—lines found in habry, Helen Degen Cohen
In the middle of the universe
in its silent eye
like a black pearl,
take a deep breath with me, and rest
in the deep forests of the earth
wildflowers
silken blue, among orange poppies
deep, deep in
and the silence blows.
Now her high time is over.
Let her lines speak—
it was, really
all the little days
the things she saved alive
with such wildness
a rose in her hand
weightless and smiling
humming & humming
Oh Lord, there is
her poetry to lie on
and wind, and wind and glisten
and harps
writing shadows in the golden sky.
Lantern; orgasm. Silence.
Later, perhaps, the holy moon.
Not glamor but Glamor
Paper flowers hid flies,
props floating over the dust.
Bombs X’d the precise spot
between now and nails.
Still humming, night air
played from a vent in the wall.
And down, dust-marked, surprise
made lips reach to the ground.
Under the quiet spoil, all the glamor
(the odor of flowers) scooped wraiths:
soft, beautiful strangers.
Dreaming in Red, Awake
at grandmother’s house, watching
sliced-open figs
plump, ooze fertile seeds and sugar
self-medicating: sage parsley ginger
boiled, burning, taste of root-flesh tattooed
along esophagus, abdominal knots
shifting shape, kaleidoscope, always
heavy, bright pomegranates
their husks nothing but fists
filled with blood the figs
placentas undone, the cats clawing
the trash bags
screaming in the night
Three Thin Shadows
Once you sell your horses
you’re never the same.
That’s not necessarily true,
just an attempt to say
the unsayable as loud
as the wounded frog
roaring across the valley
from a roadside ditch.
White Cap
Crossing the river into The Cheese Kingdom,
the wind tugs your steering, and I turn to face the crowd
of white caps applauding my half-a-lifetime achievement
award in the category of idolatrous indecisiveness.
I scratch the back of your head, baseline of my serenity.
If I were a theist, I’d say this is how God reveals himself,
refreshing my homepage of expectation. Coffee, the minor
American god of Mondays, delivers us from boredom.
Fade
A rustling way back there,
a slight sound.
Something
that moves around.
Trees. Shrug the wind
through, over the pale spill
of ice into a purloined
distance. Outside,
the crepuscular
cries of what remains.
Not starlings but maybe.
An incessant cackle.
Teeth. Against a darkness.
Milkweed casts out its seeds.
Snow drifts down. Wings
spiral around.
A glass slowly filling.
Fallen in stray shafts
over the fescue fields,
wintered light still
cleaves an afternoon.
Red Dot at Target
Disconsolate tyke, wriggly little urchin.
I let her pick her pinkening scabs.
When she pricked my cheek,
I tweezered out the keratin,
occasioning a bloody show.
Posparto already,
depleted, sorely lacking,
and here’s a laser
sighting me at the bodice.
Where have you gone,
my lumpen and impish scamp?
Mark me on my knees now,
forsaken and zeroed between empty shelves.