To Remain Lost
The old roads are not of the body.
The fish swarm the surface.
Plants find their own suns.
Inside each reed a glass lining
we’d plant in the wading pool
for the museum to police itself.
If you know the right people
you can photograph the moment
bodies of water come together.
We hold things with partial fists
shoes on the windowsill,
slow safari of furniture.
A bruise, a tomato, a running from.
Weren’t you under the bar,
a smile on the counter?
Weren’t you a car full of balloons?
The brain is a long walk.
It’s morning. Or afternoon
after a shower. Flowers moor
in large oval spaces. Later
the elevator cage, accordion
door. There’s enormous darkness
outside the apartment tonight.
I need to start cooking potatoes.
The plants neatly balconies.
The chefs and waitstaff open
and then close the restaurants
across the way. Smoke breaks
together. From this far.
The sidewalk tables are ruins
that we walk through, eager.
It has always been like this.
A sear with a varnish of butter
and fresh pepper. A swallow
of wine. A swallow.
Building Life
It is not possible to spend hours.
By the third page a stormy forest
surrounds each house. Bats purring
in my kitchen walls. It will be ivy.
They’re gift wrapping the drywall
& expecting us. The easement
surrenders itself. The child only wants
to sketch the bats. I cannot find
the end of the park fields. Lead me.
It will be a softer season.
They’ve drawn a heart
on my son’s forehead.
Savage Flowers
This time there is no forest emptying itself
of ghosts. I’m tense but it is nothing
the Cross Bronx Expressway wouldn’t help.
I don’t want any magpies in the poem.
It gets too confusing with the shingles
falling into the yard. I don’t trust them
or the clouds with lost eyes. The sea
is a large thing with faces. You should live
in the countryside with the swarms of bikes
whooshing past. We’d plant lollipops
across the hillside. We’d convince many
we are farmers. Maybe we should
stop shouting that the cat is pretty.
Snails like raindrops on the neck.
I am your tongue, sleeping.
Poem
Can you know how deeply the fish
are buried in your eye?
How your nose is a foundation for a tree.
How a bird I cannot mention is in your other eye.
Nature happens. A fish becomes comfortable.
The Russians don’t love us.
The heart. What can I say that hasn’t.
A name hears itself.
A name walks her home.