My mother’s kitchen counters are forever scented by lemons she juiced

it’s because i have time now, in these stolen hours in which tree shadows stretch across the windows and outside, and the air is just starting to drape itself in cold and to exhale its fog into the golden streetlamp glow.

All vessels have names, even a container ship whose utilitarian appearance does not elicit poetry. Ever Given. Blood oranges, mahogany, lemons,

There used to be a snag. It was in the chest and like a ponytail caught

You fattened the pigs in your stye with acorns and beech mast, And with a wave of your wand, you transformed them into men.

question mark-comma-hyphen marks punctuated by division upon division                         a leaving-behind

Lo! Were I a woman bottled and kept, written of as battles bloodied and blessed.

You asked me how to kill An ant colony I told you to press firmly on each speck Until you thought they were no longer breathing,

The jungle has reclaimed the camp, a bed of daisies growing now where the pavilion was. The oil drum stands rusting, its remembrance burnt away.

Now, still, I’m sitting in the way-back, where I can flick my ashes on the floor and exhale freely.

Anti-tyger Anti-tyger, burning bright, In the anti-forests of the anti-night; What immortal anti-hand or anti-eye Could frame thy fearful anti-symmetry?

In the rain, eat pistachios The girl with the red dress, hands me a lily Secrets of the house—of the blouse—of the bruise I begin eating them and them and them: flax seeds We cannot live in mud of melancholy Like a sticky hot bun, this is all...

The things we do to keep alive: Whisky, weed, write & lie. We settle, we deny, we Play-Boy. We work & sleep & hunt to avoid the final gasp, life’s last sigh.

I mind the peak cabin with vistas in all directions need fire humming here and nowhere in particular while you dip a toe into icy time flow finicking a door

Bypassing clenched fists, their conscientious poems get published in conscientious journals.

When I see the roots of a tree bleed through the ground, now I say they are the veins of my grandmother's hands, spilling upward.  I recall the tender bruises up and down her arms

It’s dry,a fragrance tucked away, no longer lavender.

When the hums reach the edge of the crater, they return to the girl, and she replies by raising her voice an octave.

I knew he’d never kill anything and it wasn’t that  I thought you wanted that deer to get killed but I had suspicion you  did not care either way and that indifference made me more sick but

First punch landed at Stonewall, Bleached reef, powder nose, drip-drip-alive, Nightmare waking and post-sleepfuck-stares, You. Bought You,

skateboards     dope and pogo sticks banana bikes    and popsicle sticks ten cent candy     up from five

the air thickened with silence. a small robin robs the brush of whatever red berries exude from the death of this place.