POEM FOR DISSOLUTION


look how the land here
warps      reluctant to snap
back into the jovial rounded
figures of children’s
drawings that constitute
some collective reality        despite
a paucity of evidence

here the thick air aches
with the weighted alluvium
of memory clotted like souring
milk        each figure
of speech derailing her
ties to the real        some tenuous
thread of rotting velvet ribbon

and apathy stuns like concussion
as we sit before the postcard-blue
horizon watching time disintegrate
with a resounding              click




POEM FOR DISTRACTION


waking at this half-lit hour you lapse
into the incredulous body
of early morning, cool with languor
& stillness
                          there is soon
the retreat into half-dream, your
semi-permanent shell following
the journeys of waking
with gradual daring

in this striated orb
your suddenly immodest body
is drawn to another: gravitates
towards the plane of his moving
in an almost collision of the senses

such precision now in the casual
singe of skins                  brushing

together with devastation when
the new morning splinters
open like surrender




POEM FOR RETROSPECTION


that afternoon the past dragged
at your heels, trailing
in the wake of your footprints
and coating the door-handle
with a sticky substance

it has stroked your bony shoulders
with knowing grooved fingers,
melting into scuff marks
upon a wooden floor

this day;
when recollection
stabs like broken glass
into the palm              when
your thumb is laced with mandarin,
the spacious scent ricocheting
through layers of time          and
the clarity of vision
is unrelenting