“Use the Crown Club Card
to see Justice League,”
he, she, it says.
*
Let the Mona Lisa stand
for private jokes,
passing thoughts, all
you never knew
about your parents.
Rope her off.
You’ve done that?
What about the rest?
*
I drift off
during ancient mega-floods
scouring the scablands.
*
New genre:
the faux selfie shot,
frozen mugging
for no camera.
Holding Patterns
1.
Holding any pose
is a pain numbed
by long habit.
In this way,
I am sister
to the ridged gourd
and the cracked, wooden
cabinet.
But what of the dog
full of mild
reproach?
2.
“Unlike many of us,
no one
has seen anything
like what’s going on
right now,”
you say to the cameras
you’ve managed to capture.
3.
If this were your last thought,
how long could you
hang on to it
before you saw
that it was holding
you
in its
weak fist?
The Reach
—For Renee and Sasha
Now is born again.
Demanding as always,
more sensitive than belief.
She is reckoning the distance
from what is not yet
quite herself
to
no one can tell her
what’s dissolving.
But now it’s David, now it’s Kathy,
now it’s Tom.
She doesn’t speak our language.
She does not mean it.
She does not mean she.
She is sending out runners or
putting out feelers.
We have manufactured animals
for her to reach.
Was this what she wanted?
Fossils
A raven marches straight down
that pitched roof
as if on a mission.
*
Intention
in birds or babies
seems amusing
*
The guy walking down the main drag with his pack and bedroll
has a clear purpose—to find someplace
more protected and claim it
before nightfall.
Not that I envy him;
I don’t mean that.
I mean that the notions of my neighbors
in these spruced up or dilapidated houses
with their garden gnomes, stubby windmills,
and crosses
are the fossilized remains
of his quest.