Tall Cocktails at Alexandra
An owl’s talon stirs the mixed drink. My eye measures
the inexact nature of movement—songbirds
over the river grass, the stellar green halo
of a titmouse. Another Cognac Sunday. Another
hill of ice bears the meadow
and dulls feed beneath snow. Blood
is a sash of sweet vermouth that travels
without witness over this embellished field. A dead shelter
of trees live in my throat as the language
of flesh dreams the accident at random—a quiver in the shank;
a loud fever sounding the skull. The skill
the soul sips itself.
Nightshade
The reticulated song of a sparrow formed
the window ledge before the thread
of music triumphed the heart. You were pulling
your stockings up in front of the gold edge
of the mirror. A small oval
ran down the calf; rain-fresh newspaper
smeared the gloss mahogany bureau,
& a dime store scarf slipped over the lamp
conjured a fog-dim reflection
of spring. Out the window
bird lice under quickery’s snap branch
in the grapefruit tree. You shed
yourself of the century & aimlessly
loved the spout & sorrowful carrier
of that small wild lung guarding
your hysteria by little nicks little wishes
song purging lipstick stains
on glass a language
untouched by human sound the still
shade of a room you will not enter the stranger
who watches you hold bravely into that dark listening.
Diagram of a Human Heart 3
Dawn weighs on the boughs of unripe pears
& melts the morning frost
which has collected like a gray bruise. Brushwood
carries through me as I walk imagining
myself as human. After the wake
a flat arithmetic streamed through my head
like tickertape: in speed exacting
incalculable sums of grief
multiplied by longing. A
flush of summer light
rusts, then wilts.
Joshua, Breaking
Joshua, grey, variant gray, your eyes—one
plumbago & peacock plume the other
saguaro green. You told me how
you wanted to live, then readied
your body into ash & snow & swept
the canyon; you whispered now.
The night rose, the hallow of my forearm
weighted by the dream in your head. & we continued
to lay resting under moss-caked-stone. Without
dangers. Centuries. A deluge of sun. Days
passed over without temperament. Memory
was a flock of quail scattered, the road stopped
in brambles. Now you said, as I tore
the edge of my slip on cholla, as the noose
over your neck tightened.
William Shakespeare Collage Sonnet 108:
A Dead Man Wakes Up During His Own Autopsy 21 Sept. 2007
What’s in the drunken unsaid brain?
A glass tips between tequila & lip;
what’s in the drunken unsaid brain?
No rain but a pile of palm fronds flood
the midroad. Scabs bloom up & wrinkle the chin.
Doc, you could pass my liver off
as a migraine doused in formaldehyde,
aluminum, a handful of peanut
m&m’s, the last place my soul broke open
into prayer & time & I & I no longer.
What’s here now in this small room of my living?
Speech registers the lack, the luck,
a hallowed swimmer. Mojave air
might fill the lung, aye the spirit
counts each day’s page o’er & outward
as the house of the eye, wakes
bright as a peacock sequin.