Ring
tiny bell rant coincident near curve
wet sunlight negotiating sill and
chipped-paint ceiling a lesson by hint
and degree I’ll tell you why and there
was also winter how you articulated
joint and turn voice like a memento
like a relic you whispered you supposed
and my discerning my resolute spine
understood I sat up to listen to longing
streaming in wire-seamed glass and then
and no not again the same sky-hollow
afternoon the single forgettable hour how
threadless and clean how I lost you finally
into the pocked mouthpiece of the phone
and now and nevertheless the receiver still
off the hook like our imagined old days
pushy signal droning like a true and
ancient word unfastened and yes I am
lucky in slanting shadow rigidly un-
voiced I am fixed and irrevocable I am
barely visible in this long-windowed room
Mercury Retrograde
trick of light a ghostly planet’s
failure to turn its reversal
like your ring slipping
to knuckle like that specific
absence your voice resolved
recorded replayed addressing
no one exactly still catching
slowly this press and shade and
shade the way we speak to one
another our remote and decisive
machine rapport not wide-eyed
or singular or slight and I
am of two minds I hesitate I
ask and find without warning the
midnight open window dreaming
this ordinary radiance spilling brilliant
losses and returns your answer
unswerving from the urgent first
it locates me nameless in the bright
planet’s forgetful gaze now
unguarded and unmistakable under
Mercury’s perpetual spinning
its distant and indelible habit
Network, Constellation
screenlit and glowing word
by slippery word the toothy
demands tiresome flicker and all
this simulation this lexicon falling
flat pleading won’t you without
a trace of cheekbone or ribcage
please and please and please and no
memory of a body’s creased heat
metallic shiver marching the spine
every consequence rendered blank
and blinking or bound and
scripted almost routine steady
to the end out of sight saying
I want and I want more of everything
illuminated page tedious marks
the sender is echo echo and
our distant secrets constellate
radiant like cold-night far-flung
stars white and always heatless
