XXII.

ancestral blood let
wonder woman
mitochondrial
might beating
the flood with
children that
pound the earth, first.

XXI.

I never fly in my dreams

Outright like a bird or superhero

I rink a dink rumble into the sky

In a miniature green airplane

Like a character in a cartoon.

XX.

Taking a break from writing

Results in a day of laboratory

Thinking. Testing the sound taste

And determining theoretic hypothetic

Rules to live by. It takes me a few tries

At the same experiment to dissolve

Down the sugar pills and get to the

Real. Medication like blessings,

Reaching inward through the spider

Tangles the seeping tree vines

Themed and labeled into sink jars. 

XIX.

What is the

exigence in the

floating circle of the

rhetoric chasms compounding the

inordinate amount of mashed words in the

sweet sour bucket of none sense that expresses me sometimes?

XVIII.

Sometimes

I am perfect

The spindle

of my machine

ticks like

meant- to- be

making material

to weave with.

Sometimes

I can sustain

All things like

a delta,

a bleeding river

of sweetened soil.

Sometimes

I am nothing

The tiny spaces

between atoms

expanding

until my matter

dwindles

to a few spots

of ember

And sometimes

I am everything

the wind, steam

and brick, raw

and domestic

the dirt and drapes

constant and

inconsistent

and everything

sometimes

is true.

XVII.

Looking back at old work

does not please me.

The gods in our bellies change

as they do their infinite studies.

Their understanding

widens like a mouth-

a canyon yawning into completion.

XVI.

how many prayers I put up
on a cluttered cork board
papers of words fluttering
like frantic wings pinned
until they resemble nothing
not my breath
not my close wish
just a thought,
detached and soaked
in melancholy.

XV.

Sitting next to my grandmother

with an unreadable box of letters

was the most tragic thing at Christmas.

We sipped soup

and ate strukli

at the tiny table

with the snow falling hard all around

the veranda and my socks drying

on the radiator.

The radio goes,

plain and serious,

the evening news is in

and I am sitting with

my whole self

weeping.

the relief

of places

warm, slow

and shared.  

XIV.

Are the deepest roots

of the oldest trees

the fingertips of God

or a riddle?

XIII.

my fingers produce

minute vicissitudes

on your skin:

a porous

and perfect

material to

signal with. 

XII.

You will need to

anneal your skin

with irascible memories,

the stinging

cut tugs of experience.

Only then will your body

be unburnable,

even while the Earth

shatters to potsherds. 

XI.

I am pretty sure

Tofu Pups

Are worse than

Any squishy

Ammonia meat

Produced in the

Heartland of America.

Their rubbery existence

Makes me sigh

With snobbery.

Why shape soybeans

To resemble

Your moral dilemma?

X.

I wonder what yellow ghosts

Linger in limbo

beneath the stairs.

Do they breathe the dust

And blow out like bulls?

IX.

Thinking

like a callithump,

a jumble of prizes, colors

and noises, a jungle of images embellishing.

VIII.

Cooking with thin grease

snapping at wet potatoes

just sliced and salted.

Cool salad and the cicadas

going and going

in the late haze.

Finally, cevapi

ground up and grilled

after being to the butcher

only once the whole summer.

And the sincerity

of being alone

willingly,

the deep breath

of womanhood.

VII.

Digging while dirt-covered

we become the dirt digging itself

into and out of its own hole.

VI.

Working through fear

is a swampy trip

into the green frizz

of the memory maze

that settles in the brain;

Mustard gas residue

from the great war of

stuttering adulthood.

V.

You are new,

A peaceable diplomat

Some kind of advocate

For the place I could inhabit.

You create an apartment

Where I stay for a few minutes

Each day and start to understand

What things I could have

If I could be

A better me.

Be patient with your briefcase

the hardness of myself is rustic

the oldest oak waiting

in the whistling whips

of sapling-thin pith.  

IV.

Rain

            Saves

                        Everyday

the washing wetting wielder of health.

III.

I depend on an unusual budget

Of space and time and words:

a wallet swelling into whole

countries of infinite richness.

II.

Elasticity, the gum stretch

of puttied people

wearing, wearing until the

muscled arms and legs

twist and pull,

mangle and melt.

I.

A heaving heaven:

the ironworks of depreciating cities

the long wait of living

of moving and feeling frequent

feeling famous in the criss-cross of human crosswalks.