light through a window

his smile was a type of camera, and we talked about the girls in the halls, and we had scarlet conversations about how glazed everyone else was and how they were the dead straw of life and how Karen Carpenter knew how to make us feel exalted. we stole books from the book fair and he became ripe with guilt and burned them in a small pile behind his house to hide the...

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lifted

do you remember, she danced in our dreams? - and how the questions were all ominous, like first-of-night touching the landscape? do you remember, everything was so badly described? - and how the shallow valley of old winds just wouldn't cease to vex us? do you remember, naked flowers under a bruised moon? - and how acrobatic fate was all we had to clutch in those moments of...

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i'm not certain in which room

well - i'm not certain in which room He thought you'd ought reside, since - square is round as square can be when all you do is hide from - all His hurried days that race across your pebbled street, since - blades of grass ignore the touch when faced with His retreat toward - lightness chalked by blackish coal that's dug with bitter hands which - bleed upon His...

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stonecipher

you crack me open and the split receives your relentless flow; you jest - your wit is wicked - and you release great waves of silly. if i were to remake you in some other art form what would you be? what i have now is poetry, that dance of watery concessions to language. i would draw you, then, with crayons made of blood-wax, blindfolded; pin it on a surface, drink...

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she comes to terms

she had no agency, and she never spoke. impoverished, wandering, cool-eyed, intricate fabric of hand-spun hopes. there was once a riot of beautiful people on her small stage, a cult of the tired who danced between great oaks of the living and the dead. with bright thoughts on all harbors, she was one of them to be sure, but an old wind wound up and carried her into an...

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