South of summer
I lay in high grass

the end of a tremble
confident fifteen

It takes five-hundred years for a language
to become unintelligible to itself; the husband’s
cupped hands leave no shadow on the mattress;
and a broken window keeps the cold even after
you whisper its name in another tongue.
What is marred at the inlet silent spreads
toward the center of the river. I promise:
this flows in only one direction. Suffering
cannot reach back. The red water touches every-
thing, but it does not return again. We must focus
on difference above similitude, says the scholar.
But we’re trying to find some first sense of love,
or loss, in the little room of the husband’s chest.
Outside rotten word, husband, laced with rivers.
We try to say I drown in your meaning, but
the surface freezes; the word, motionless.
Why cannot everything in the world
correspond? Why must some things exist
without their perfect shadows? Moon, inaccessible
seldom casts its mark on our face. The kind
of alone that lasts a whole life, like wood-
pecker whispering when the last light is out,
no more words for the tree. When the river
runs back, we will understand.

We all want that live sex raw wing tipped boots center of that raised ring. We all want that tattooed eagle braless clawing at our brain until blastoff.

You wanted to fly, you wanted to spear fish, you wanted manliness and the spider perched inside your jaw.

Prove it.

You wanted to prove it so much you threw your voice out moaning so the audience could hear it.

We all want that audience to hear us triumph, pin count, eruption of boos, chorus of dueling chants.

We all want that vindication, stomach inflation, penis pumped-up celebration.

You wanted to hold the high school first love nights like an invisible ink cipher.

And you also wanted them broadcast to your absent father, and the classmates who hated your gap tooth grin.

We want the moments back that get moments back that remind us that we are never going to get those moments back.

We all want that live sex showcase, wing tipped boots center of that raised ring raw.

He held up his hand.
The focus seemed to
have shifted. Insulin
traveled through the
blood, full of those vali-
dating sounds usually
associated with native
fish spawning. At a

point where the river
was shallow enough,
grooming patterns—an
off-color sexual aspect
of phonetic habits—
finally found shelter.

Once more you force
its fisted mass. Blanched white
with a feather of pink—
the bloodless promise?
Has the chemistry of want
exploded the dreamy cluck
of that heart in your chest?
Under the sky, the grave
of dawn’s planted again—
its beginning wed
to the same milky stone.