No wonder, you who know history, read portents, now sleep uneasily, blades wrapped in raw leather tucked beneath your pillows. Morning lines at the whetstone, coffee and small chatter, conspiratorial whispers, a dime’s blot of oil, grinding steel on stone—

“Say sorry Mita, ju leetle sinverguenza, pendeja for estupidez! Her sharp words slice through the pineapples on the tropical wallpaper of her tiny dark kitchen scattering drops of sweet juice on my cheek and on one eyelash that dangles in front of my pupil too afraid to fall off

But this is poem and not hopeful consonance so I write ephemeral which is fleeting and ethereal which is artificial construct of the human brain

there is life happening across this world, around it, inside it at the instant tea touches your lips in the morning; you: not alone in your husk, it is happening, right now, you, me, separated by our skins

He takes me to a bed where there is no rest I rattle with him His moans overpower the sirens of the street and shakes his body in a variety of motions

Wall after wall, cave after cave, many armed, many legged, many headed desire dances its heart out. Liberated by the im- measurable devotion of anonymous hands.

the love you feel when a baby is first born the night he left for college (the morning he returned but only because he forgot his hat)

I tremble in a flower’s vocabulary— retract my hands like from a hot sky or suddenness dreams which pass through my body are no different from hands

You don’t see her,  hair like wings ephemeral catching fire from Florida sun, wire fences no match for birds taking flight unnaturally.

The night locked and cellular, the landscape grows increasingly perplexed at the Color aspects of American democracy,

There are plenty of seats on the summit. You can see the dark clouds amassing from miles away. I had a big wedding. I’ve stood beneath a waterfall.

I imagined her soul, slipping into muted sleep, slowing its swirl, dimming its spectrum of colors - until like a photo, darkening to monochrome, she would become the very depth and quiet of her own shadow. Fire slowly dims, coal blackens, into night.

Prisoners could enroll in college courses and some even taught. The people of Alabama often formed remarkable friendships with the prisoners and gave them many gifts, as well as invitations to their homes for a meal. After the war, many Germans brought their families to vacation in the South and to introduce them to their southern friends. These friendships lasted for decades.

The thing about a lake is the crazy men who fish there, in the copper- hearted flow where cold springs and greasy seaweed gather. Shimmer.  Buckle.  Fish bodies writhe beneath, more life always where one can’t reach. More life always where watching is not allowed.

They were not deer, such as the men had known in Virginia or Vermont, but antelope whose haunches flashed when the heave of portage brought the men too near. The men believed they were something they needed to kill, not just for food or for the pleasure of pursuit, but from a need to supplement,

And so, it seems it only takes one summer without rain, a drift of weeks, the world gone mean, to make a start then, offer age assent. To give surprised consent, or to at least – time bossy, brooking no dissent – begin to know there is a change now on its way. Not today. Not right away.

I dream each night our house is burning,               and I watch and watch. It consumes, I am consumed, by the pit in my gut, burning rubble. Spiders watch from the corners,               with their wide shining eyes, but do not spin a line to save me-

I stare. Pinks, grays, blank canvas politely obscure below her neck, hint at her thumb resting on her collarbone.  I raise my hand to touch trust, let it fall.

Anyway, they form a scooby-doo-esque gang of lovable misfits And solve the mystery of why I keep waking up unsure of who I am And why its so hard to explain what that means Entering your life from the outside can be a jarring experience

The yard you plotted then planted has come back wilder, the way seeming winterkill comes back wilder for its next life. So you think, pruning-time! — when, with a looming shadow and a gust of backwash, the ponderous bird alights, the porch rail trembles with its weight.

a man must lean on his liquor getting through the prayer line walking fields with all colors flaring soft or fired with hard light the walnut shell his face is the tan smeared greasy eyes a mature man out of time

Son of Esarg the axe-thrower, smelting and pin-lining coasts with bronze whirls, smoothed by Macha’s shawl. Forger of tools, lately found half-sunk in peat in a depthless bog, with his elbow crooked upward. The gases preserved his jacket, the raised sinew on his small finger, and the blazoned buckle he himself fashioned.