12/31/15

the last thursday
hoary sky bowed with crows
and layers of mist
tidal taillights wash under
the bridge, towards the city

12/30/15

a thousand bulbs, bare and blinking
carve a stage in the red nape of night;
wattage blooms to eviscerate
black-coated passersby,
dissect our careful insincerity

12/29/15

his toy trains
live Sisyphus lives,
dun-colored ring on the floor:
hear his whispered whistle as they step
thousands of times into their own footprints

12/28/15

the dream with the gun
loose skirts, she pries you from the floorboard
with her wicked steel tongue

wake torn between the morning light
and the fanged exhilaration of wolves

12/27/15

diatomic scale -
cloud of midges
dense as fission

grating kiss of microscopic jaws
one hundred pearl buttons, split

12/26/15

cells can't see sickness,
they keep on, mitosis and nuclei
twining fingers of duplication;
wake up from a week-long coma with
howard hughes fingernails, rip van winkle beard

12/15/15

let the dish hover
in midair, the faucet frozen
ribbon of water
his tiny tears hot and still
hold your tongue, hold his shaking sobs

12/14/15

Leokadia,
in the kitchen, sunlit,
I held your wooden bowl:
edges rough-hewn, touched to smoothness,
satin inside lost to the gouged thatch of use

12/13/15

hang your head over the rail
to watch your sputum split the river
and become the river

your spit is warm and you are alone:
a human excuse

12/12/15

the sudden streetend thrust
of brick and concrete sills crumbling
under black glass windows -
a secondary apparition,
four boys crane their necks from the stoop

12/11/15

when the hurricaine
falls silent beyond the storm door,
green eerie slash of sunlight:
momentary stillness feigns death
like the white belly of a snake

12/10/15

mid-morning sunlight
slants through the chain link
like the fat blade of a cleaver;
a falling knife has no handle,
I have no name for these hours