Guttural

The wind picks up
dead leaves, then dies
and that's the whole season
for you, if fall goes well.
If all goes well the ice will
wait a week, maybe more,
but then the electricity's gone
from the sky, boom
goes the transformer
and you wanted thunder.
Street gutters, you will soon
relate: gunked up, runny,
and where does it all go?
Where does it come from,
this rotting mess passing
through and over and gone?
Tires slow before the light,
slurry shot up like
low, hissing firecrackers.

Starfield

    Tonight

the skyline

is         still

riddled

   with  the

   light

        kisses

of    offices

emptied.

Last meal

Moth to the porch light
with me the sunset over
last summer's sting
and stains from the grass
dead this year, sallow
patch of memory receding
but it's better than mud.

Reseed. Maybe
next year.
I need some time alone 
but she wasn't
no moth, no dust, just bite
and blood and gone.

Buzz pause smack
too late and forever
just-in-case swatting at
what's not there
every night since.

Fix

She was the girl that always had a match
But never a light
Mmm hmm she said to everything
One tap and ash falls from the tip
The smoke drifts from firework lips
And the summer day so muzzled
You don't see the maw of night
With incisor stars snarling
The whole time hiding
You-should-see-the-other-guy
Bruises from the boys
Arm and arm down the sidewalk
Neck and neck to the tape
That breaks and everyone's won
Except her, again.
The racers tried to race her and then
Erase her before she bucked.
She knew better, knew
That nothing was ever made new
Just the same stuff moved around
The way it's been since the first bang
When she felt so much closer.
Cigarettes bright burning to ash
Burst blood vessels heal
And skin is ready again
For the night with bites untender.

Place Cell

From London to Berlin!
I just finished reading and I had to tell you, dear,
that if you lined all the neurons in your brain next to each other,
they would stretch that far (I'm assuming this was never tested).Wait,
it gets better. They're saying we have
a neuron dedicated to every place we've ever been,
a little Christmas tree light that blinks
when we get there, grows brighter
the more we visit. A head full of lights!
Maps of electricity wired into the gray
matter, housed in the hippocampus,
a lovely word which, for me, always conjures a hippopotamus.
There's no way a hippopotamus could fit
in someone's head! But all this neuron stuff
stretching so far, who knows? Anyway,
the bathroom, the office, sure,
they give a jolt, but imagine the light
from your bedroom in the old house.
The strands of holiday lights lining the
sidewalk from my apartment to yours,
the electricity with every footfall.
I just had to tell you, had to come over
because they say this is how we find things,
how I just found you, again,
how the brain shocks us to remember
to turn right there, follow the row of hedges
ten steps, pass the bookstore, quarter mile and take a left,
three houses down and twenty-four stairs up.
Zap zap zap,
every place between you and I on fire with this light
so bright, and so dark when I stray from the path.
When I'm not near you I become uncentered.
All my maps end where you are.

Edges

The days' sunned,
long legs stretched
off the blanket and
into the blades of night.

You'd said something
that stabbed and stuck,
but I was quiet.

It was hot
and there were ducks
and fireflies and probably crickets and you,
you were still
there,
fine,
I just don't remember the words.

You kept looking into the woods.
Tired? Concerned? I could never tell.
You went off to the trees and I didn't follow
a word you said as you went.

You came back and, almost bashful,
asked me to help pick the burrs from your dress,
to check for ticks before it got too dark.

The grass was flattened and browning
by the time we pulled up the blanket
but the blades, like us,
would recover by morning,
sharp as ever.

Recipes for summer

I.

Twist the tray
    cr
     ack

then
        plop
       plop

& two Cs of
lipstick stuck
on the glass.


II.

You'll need a

tree
  t
  i
  e
  d
 to a
hammock
  t
  i
  e
  d
to a tree

Do NOT flip.


III.

Whisk (1)
girl away to a beach.

Cook until golden
brown.

Soak the feet
   & salt to taste.

Chill
til sunset, then
reheat on High.
                
Wait five minutes
                          or don't.
Burn your mouth.

Atmosphere

A hot afternoon with clouds
like afterthoughts. The tree outside the window
waving to say the wind was picking up when
she says something about how each breath
is cycled through the atmosphere
every seven years or so.
Then she yawns. He laughs and looks
at the clock, says he'll time it.

She says she likes the fan on
for the noise.
Tree still trying
for attention.

Her weight shifts in the middle of the night
onto an outspoken floorboard
when the thunder was still far off.

Drops, then it all broke at once.

-

Back home after work and
he interrogates the sheets
on an unmade bed with
a long stare:
Where were we?

The floor fan on, oscillating
in slow disapproval.

It's been a few years.
Maybe there are still parts of her
here, there.

He takes off  his clothes, lies down.
Low thunder. He looks at the clock.
The fan clicking a bit at the end of
every turn for want
of oil after so long.

Hot, cool, hot, click.
Hot, cool, hot, click.

He closes his eyes, allows her to come
back, breath by breath. More thunder.

Hot, cool, hot, click.
Hot, cool, hot, click.

Theories of Extinction

It's not that I didn't believe it, it's that I didn't want to,
like when I heard that dinosaurs had feathers. All that time
spent, I was so sure. Everything I'd been told was wrong.
Your scaled skin suddenly plumed.
Snow falling around us like ash.

Eons ago I threw a plastic stegosaurus at my brother's head
and a spine scratched his temple, sent him scurrying to a
volcanic mother and, gee,
wouldn't the toy manufacturer have saved me
some trouble if it had been covered in down.

I've changed but still throw things
away, still cold-blooded, still wary of eruptions
but even more so of meteoric meetings with
the enraptured eyes of someone strange and new
and, well, we've only got so much time left.

You were always impressive,
even with all your feathers pulled back,
wings tucked against the cold.

Really, I thought we were too big for this.
It was decoration, to catch your eye.
All that color
grounded.

It's not that I didn't believe it;
I knew you could fly at any moment.

Delivery

This is the one place I feel powerful,
this selfish sharing. It's my choice.
Here, please
look here. It's me as a kid,
smiling, denim-jacketed and rolling in leaves,
blonde hair that will turn brown and the man
taking the picture, let me tell you,
he's a giant, a hero—he once lifted
the sailboat trailer off my brother after it had fallen
and pinned him, screaming for help and here he comes
so strong and calm he could've lifted five trailers, I swear,
anything for his grandson.

Yes, take it, please. Keep it.
My words to you, I want them
to keep you warm and safe
and reminded of the beauty.
There's so much beauty that I need
to share, to employ this power
to direct your eyes or cover them
because I can choose, this time, I can choose
and I have the power to change it for you
and still choose to give it all
away so freely,

as freely as the words
sometimes arrive, unwelcome,
handed down by friends
of an expecting mother
that lost the second heartbeat
and still has to deliver.
The cord, wrapped around twice.
No no no crying.

Circulatory

Her two fingers trace
a floating heart: together,
apart, together.

Doppler shift

The two of us on the couch in silence
before our words lined up in sentences, waves
pushed out by bats, approximate distances
as the consummate meteorologist over her radar
sketches the trace of trouble, the face
of an ex-convict run away from his sentence,
a storm witnessed by survivors with tears
streaming, torrents of rain reported
on the screen she's watching as the red
line, a clock's hand, colors the prediction,
the button pushed to sound the sirens
to say the storm is coming and like madmen
they'll run to get away from the sentence
on the screen with the meteorologist moving
her hands in a circle, the circling
of blind animals feeding, the swirl of clouds and
shiftlessly I reach out to you and place my hand on yours.

Airways

The day I was born,

An old pilot quit smoking.

I heard his last breath.

Bob and Lois

On their first date, he'd dropped her off at the post office to mail a letter.

  The room had a window overlooking a pond.

When she came back out, he was gone.

  Quick, labored breaths punctuated by slow groans.

She had nothing. Her purse was the in the back of his car.

  The persistent rattling rising from his throat.

It was late. She'd never been downtown alone at night.

  She started to sing to him, laughing that it might be the scare he needed.

She thought he could be trusted, that he'd be there waiting for her.

  The nurses said it could happen at any moment.

A policeman caught him spinning his tires around the block.

  His teeth were next to his bed.

It was getting cold. Fifteen minutes and no sign of him.

  A nurse said some won't go until the last Social Security check arrives.

Please, officer, I'm begging you. This girl is waiting for me at the post office.

  Her eyes were red from crying and the tissue box was almost empty.

She didn't know what to do. Where was he?

  His hair was light and thin and uncombed.

He pulled up to the post office and she started to scream at him.

  On December 31, his heart stopped.

I trusted you. How could you leave me?

  One nurse said that some hang on until they've been left alone.