the first ride since the accident

we promised to meet
on the west most chocolate bridge
I knew you would be there
early
the railway rusting
below;
your hands dry
on the stone parapet
eyeing the flat broken expanse of loss, sundered
via highway

meanwhile
I suffer
the terrible introversion
of slowly turning legs
and grinding cranks
and the kettle whistle of my breath
behind my scarf

followed by
the delicious heaviness
of a bicycle
at the top of a hill.

you look
very much the little sister
that you are
mussed hair
sprawling about
your bruised shoulders
and chipped teeth
and you say

with a fair amount of mystery

you know what there's a lot of?
Music, in my blood

The Plausibility of the Oceanfront

Do you know how to make a s'more?
It goes
graham/chocolate/marshmallow/
mountain/moonlight/
the sand
shifting beneath your thin
blanket/one kiss/
graham.

We scrubbed the smoke from our hair,
and slept the thorough, indexed
sleep of the nomad. 

The cool ocean breeze exhilarated us
nearly as much as saying
"the cool ocean breeze"
but

after two weeks of rural expanse
I was relieved to hear
someone talking
earnestly
about weaponizing crows
while wearing mismatched sneakers
and a kc and the sunshine band t-shirt.

Cities buzz
with the ambient utility of thought
and the accompanying fever
keeps me up nights;
in a good way,
in a good way.

The One is the Good Year Pilot

If I am not awed, I am wrong
or tired
or perhaps a bit peckish;

I have acted as the avatar of wonder
on this plane;
existing primarily as a conduit
of delight.
I've lived among it, or tasted it,
or rubbed it into my cuticles.

There are times when the recipe
for life is three parts luminescent divinity
and one part indivisible hunger

There exists the gnawing angst
that the world is too much an expanse of
joy for one life.

And then, of course, there are the rest of times;
we are matted fur, and fallen crests;
there is a certain Madagascar 3 to it all

when even the once fantastic
invokes the tired whirling lights
of carnival rides;

life is equal parts
stubbed toes
and Cheeto powder.

When you are abandoned thus by the world
I invite you, all but one,
to create a dirigible
in the deepest core of your imagination:
green expanse spools out beneath you,
vast jungles of health and mystery

and then conjure
the wooden helm firm in your
hands, the Aurora
borealis'd
ahead
and your favorite sandwich
wrapped in wax
neatly
within reach.

Loss best reflected nocturnally, in the window of a train car

1. This may sound prescriptive and
authoritarian, but you must trust me:
it comes from a place of loss.
You will give up
what is left of your time
to the methodical process
of unfolding first
your clean linens and lunch
and then afterwards
your interests and such.

There will be time enough later for leaf-eyed
custodial duties.

2. I recognize in reverse order
your uncle Joey, your cousin Sarah,
your nana, Matilda,
and your own little snowflake, Persephone,
in your quiet concentration

If a little nibbling of the lip could be
sturdy and mid-western, well--

3. say:
"A little pretension will not hurt him,"
then
"I taught my son to describe his mood as
mixolydian."
We all suspect that he is very popular in banjo class,
but if he rides that recumbent bicycle to school,
it's all over but the therapy.

4. On the morning of the funeral,
I made a choice
about how I behave at funerals.

I would ask that you read
this eccentricity as vulnerability.

Memory: Atlantis

The first time I went over
my handlebars, I expected
a soggy crunch.

What I got, instead,
was a lifetime of weightless
confusion, followed by the
latticed cuts and green stains
of nettled hedge.

I had been practicing "wheelies,"
I had been trying to "jump the curb."
Now, I find it hard to imagine words
that would feel more foreign
to my tongue.

Where were we, exactly,
when you last put a blade
of grass to your lip
and tried to whistle
around the sour earth?
What of the callus where you gripped
the tree limb?
And what cries out inside you now, when
you remember?

I have long argued,
argued with great spittle-flinging
red faced
unmarked bottle
intensity:

there is
only one disease;
one scourge
that strips and offends our collective conscience:
a sickle-celled ineptitude
of recollection,
thick
and slow
and decadent.

Memory is the lost kingdom
or will be,
in the ragged centrifuge
of the future.

I will fume and spray before it, before
the grandest end of the grandest story:
one human remembers another,
remembers a taste, remembers the
fall that precedes the bush,
until I cannot.
In that moment
when I am torn out of my own life,
when my mind deserts
my friends, my home, and my name

in that moment,
when I am finally and
utterly lost to you, please:
tuck my blankets tight
against the darkness
and define "wheelie".

Shared Space

1
When the breeze slips in the open window
and touches our skin
and we're wearing our softest shirt;
when our homework is already done;
when the coffee has cooled,
and the cats stretch their paws
just so
close our eyes for a moment:
all this is acceptable.

2
We lie as quietly in the dark
as batteries in a drawer.

I hope to never decentralize our shared nervous
systems.
I once thought that looking too closely at the seam,
at the stitches across our veins
could lead to a certain type of death;
on the whole, I prefer not to dwell
on my insides.

Remember: all the times
we saw the whole thing taut,
near torn
and knew that we could destroy
it with a word,
could rip the threads
of history and affection;
leave them for the movers
to discard.

This year, however
I saw romance in the labor,
the patchwork attachment
but I think:
lean close
to let the tension out
and add another stitch. 

3
Inside the first thing
is a fourth thing
and she says
in the interest of fairness, I tell
you this: if you mention pogs
again, I will
leave you.

Spring Poem: When the Geese Return

A goose is a brute
on foot, hungry and violent
and stupid--they stumble
about like little zombies

they hunger for breeeeeeaaaaaaad

Spring obscures us
dying ice cores;

if you stripped me in Winter
for testing
you'd find a miserable huffing
combination of despair and desire
hammered under into a
cold wide anger


I am a different person in warm weather
kinder, eyes wider
slightly thinner
more shallow, more content

I ache less, yearn less
I will take phone calls
I will maintain eye contact
I will smile at your dog
in short, I am less myself
or more, depending

on your opinion
of geese

Au(thorship)

To speak of the office
in my home
is to speak of the laboratory in yours

I've confused often
the click of the door being shut
the handle turned
with the muted peck of a goodnight kiss

Writing is like crying
it demands a pretty basic level of hydration
in its grainy, atomic core

instead:
the liquid-less void
a bleeding, dusty silence
between the desk and
a suddenly vacant door frame.

Cheap gilt rubs right off
beneath your parched and brittle fingers
what you need is a
more thorough entanglement
of the elements involved

Look here:
we are hunched
in crisp white coats
over microscopes and legal pads:
to adjust the height of the eye
is to strip and pare and reveal

at the right degree of magnification
all of us cries out for more of something else

and when we have strained our eyes
to the limits of our artifice
what's left is 
all ache and crunch; a
crystalline futility
and a hunger poorly spent

An Autobiographical Inquiry, in Four Parts

1
Sometimes
when I think I am unwatched
and seated in a friend's car
(I am in the driver's seat; perhaps he is in the bank)
I will press my teeth into the wheel
and, primarily, I will think about texture
about pliancy and grip
rather than the bitter taste of worn rubber
and hands

and what could that possibly
say about me?
And then I write it down;
what of that?

2
As a rule
I must be asked
to fasten my seat belt.
if I were in that person's place,
I think I would interpret this as a sort of test, perhaps
of whether I cared enough
about your life
to insist
but I would be wrong

Rather
I hate the metallic slide
and the tinkerer's click
the sound of false comfort

To be honest, once I am so secured,
I forget it entirely.

3
You are a woman:
when you are fumbling
in the cold and the dark

fingers stiff as pens
stiff as a drink

at a single key
at a single door
with the narrative of warmth:
an implied correlation between entry
and happiness,
comfort, contentment

have you ever thought
that our anatomies
are somehow lacking?
I sometimes think keys and
doors are built for romance
in ways we are not.
I think I could parse that one out,
but I'd prefer to hear your thoughts.

4
Hail stones
gave your car
a quality it lacked

I'd pay perhaps double
for a mode of transport with that kind of
depth

More honestly, though, I'm just jealous;
I wish the dents from storms I've weathered
were visible, in the right light
at the correct angle

I think, maybe
I have answered my second question.

Sterile Foodstuffs

In a supermarket, every
twitch of the eye
is a jarring non sequitur.

Though I once believed I liked bright colors,
the gleam and smear
of commerce
dulled that instinct;
stretched and stamped it thin
like maroon library carpet,
or the seats of a luxury sedan
twenty years on the road;
a tired sigh of a car.
 
I would eat these shapes and hues,
and will, but some days I feel more
or less ready for more geometric shapes

my terrible red car agrees;
together, we have eaten more meals from
gas stations
than we care to admit.
Here: the course bitter center of it, truly:
I am lying
on some level
if I do not share:
I love the senseless peace
of parking on the open, desolate roof
of this grocery store.