Dust. Flies. The sour smell of exhaust.
Muskmelons sliced open in the street.
Pools of green shade in hidden courtyards.
Blood-stained flagstones.
How does this butterfly missing half a wing
still fly so well?
A sound too deep for human hearing
makes the towers sway for a few seconds
before returning to their heat-struck shimmer.
Car alarms start up all over the city.
The butterfly doesn’t miss
a drunken beat.
Hotel Agua Azul
Held captive for the diversion of furtive
couples on weekend flings,
below the terrace a spider monkey
swings by his tail, kicking off
the tree trunk with one hind foot
while the other clings to the chain
dangling from the collar. He keeps it up
for hours, as if driven by hidden
gears & springs. But draw a chair
within range & the pendulum stops,
he clambers onto the deck & slings
a hairy palm in your face, importuning
food, trinkets. Whatever brings relief
to a life of boredom, you think,
searching your pockets, going through
Snow annealed by sun
on a tin roof, followed
by a cold night, holds
together the next day
as it slides off
the edge & begins to yaw,
curling under the eaves:
a white claw. I think
of a Siberian tiger
with corrugations for stripes,
hell-bent on breaking
out of its fort. The icicles’
dagger-tips drip with
their own fluid —
saliva of a sort.
A wavy sky always denotes
After the unasked-for grooming
by that mob of wingless birds,
their strange soft claws reaching deep
under my feathers, they let me go.
The rock field dropped away
& I thought for a moment it was over.
But I still feel
that fleshy insinuation across my breast.
And something rides me, a small weight,
the same way I ride
this snake of wind.
What kind of clutching
doesn’t still the heart?
Its unshakeable presence makes me know myself
apart from beak & talons
as a thing that throbs,
She was clothed in a shift of worms and whispers.
I circled once & crept away, four-footed —
no hands for anything but the road.
That was one dream. And the night before,
a minor lord of the underworld saying,
Of course we take them down with us.
How else do you suppose they taste
eternal youth? Grinning like one of those
candied skulls from the Day of the Dead.
Such melodramatic dreams, I said,
& wrote one yellow word upon the snow.
Is the angler fish ever tempted
by its own bait? Does it ever stir
from whatever trance-like state
passes for sleep in the aphotic zone,
see the glowing decoy & think,
Ah — mine! & surge forward,
jaws agape, like the proverbial donkey
tempted by a carrot? Or does it get
snappish at its traveling companion,
persistent as a bad conscience,
haunting as the image of its own death?
Infant skeleton
found in suitcase after
elderly woman dies
A silverfish
in the sink when
I rinse my cup.
I lift the trap so
the water will sweep
it down, wayward
eyelash, eater of books.
And the rest
of the day I’m dogged
by a vague
anxiety, as when
an end parenthesis has
failed to put in its
expected appearance,
replaced perhaps by
a small hole clear
Highs will exceed 100
with a 30% chance of suicide.
We will envy dogs their long tongues
& they our ability to shed.
Rain will fall part-way
to the ground & evaporate,
like a name you almost remember
& then you can’t.
You’ll see a rabbit sprawled
in the shaded driveway:
its lucky left foot points
toward hidden water.
An earwig in the kitchen
will carry its calipers upright
like the nerdiest of engineers,
& later on you will consider this
I lurk in a wooded
bend of the railroad
where I won’t be spotted.
Duffle bag — check.
Zippo lighter — check.
Deck of marked cards — check.
All my life I’ve been listening to trains
& all my life I’ve been letting them go by,
each whistle Dopplering down
from summons to wail,
followed by a thunder
as intoxicating as any heavy metal band,
graffitoed messages flying past
too fast to parse
& a poorly aligned wheel
shrieking like feedback from a speaker
The ladybird
is a hard pill,
a dose of red medicine.
Her dogged way
of walking &
the gleam on
her elytra suggest
a certain brittleness,
a gift for sudden
flights of rage.
You wouldn’t think
such a small mouth
could pack
such a painful bite.
Like everyone,
I found her cute
Oh rare & wild ear, translate until bright
my rival making, my restlessness.
The river bears thousands of planets
& the church lifts an elliptical wine,
reminding us of lust on old records.
Up, bird! Bring pieces of ticking meat,
traumatic presents to fill with our losses.
Carry an uncanny whisk-broom,
utter sparse desires, jump.
Time extends beyond the ornate
lip & jar. One turns, wants, composes,
part human, part gyroscope,
raw twigs exposed together.
The ear spans ignored masters
& incorporates sheer guises of a cage.