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I was thinking of you yesterday soporific pallbearer of the dark but more than this more than the ironmonger’s molten tongue more than fish fused rivers more than my Istanbuls and Hiroshima my valley of fled roses. I was thinking of you yesterday the way you salt the tomato turn the onion golden brown in the bath of your skillet gather the jewel sized olives on the Catalonian hillside our days vine ridden your July hands that braille my body till the cup of the earth’s secret fruit enters. I was thinking of you yesterday riding that grey mare carrying the sunset almost Quixotic the so many years of your life spent the half defeats the so many yet beautifuls. 
In the Big Mall My brother’s death may seem diminutive a quarter column in the newspaper a funeral service with thirty folks may seem as small as a side alley leftover pizza the shy man who walks with a limp in a big mall but if you think this way you may miss something the ruby in the pea the way dim surfaces hold colored light how a voice sounds when it’s noticed not withered on the vine but unpeeled that what we truly witness saves. from Blue Halo 
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We peel the dark with our hands peel a potato lady dress her in noodle hair cotton skirt, wire glasses train her to wax perfect not be misunderstood talk smart till the world listens. It is May time of corsages, a prom dress time when some marriages sport blossom ivory as snow others wither to death pitiless. The moon gets canonized the azalea want to feel more than monumental. We have learned to mythologize fear wear our occupations brightly mortar the sun shave down our legs parody want into a slush cone. See how I slit the dark down its veins make sunlight behave squeeze it into my bathrobe grind words press them into an irresistible homily. from All the Kisses of the World 
In the Arms of the Hexagon my mother’s eye shadow does not run her hands are becalmed as epistles and nobody eats the night away with its ravenous claws. The righteous believe they have a crystal ball in their heads turn the wind into strayless pigeons live in big porched, four square houses with deathless geraniums. Palsy has many faces. When my fingers engraved the moon you drew circles with your pen knife. Eventually the holes got filled in by a dim perambula didn’t seem so dissonant inscrutable anymore……… Poetry Salzburg Review 
In the forward section to the history of my life I pick onion out of a far field note-take the cloud cover the shoe on my left foot empties of sand neighbors chortle about blue locust. In the forward before this one my father scrapes clean his angry eye my mouth chews death down spits it out learns it is not so dangerous. I arrive some sparkling resemblance of my once self as if sky birds perch in my head pistols of onion are the impossible harbingers of spring will be sliced folded into my poorboy sandwiches translucent with light. from Love Adrift in the City of Stars |