In the dream my wounds
were bandaged with
chains of paper dolls.
Each doll had "4, 11"
written where its eyes
should be.

It was my childhood house
but every room empty
& dark. When I went out
into the yard the front
of the house had a sentence
across the brick:
"They will not fill it."

There was no sound
anywhere except
my breath. When I
went back inside
I opened the oven
and saw a coffee mug
holding all my baby teeth.

The car in the driveway
held four scarecrows.
The television was dead.
The picture frames
all held the same photo
of me facing away.
Just before I woke up
I walked downstairs
to the fireplace and
in the ashes I heard
my own voice say
"not yet."

Night-hinted marriage
& old story ******* -
then another mono morning,
my mind a mountainside.
When I almost make you late,
your face so serious,
my polished misericorde
slips between the shining
plates, it knows with such
precision where to cut.
It's a proving hour,
long ices of thought,
before I pull it out. You
rest your head against me
& I imagine dropping
the blade into a scabbard
of blue hydrangeas.
I ask of you, if I lay down
beneath your troubles,
empty my unhappy hand.

The cloud sheet
threaded above
us is full of sea
clicks and little
blue turns of
shaved rain,
an alley of splitting
water that crashes
sleepily into gray.

This is where
words dissolve,
& wet night
intentions are
thrown away.
All that's left
in the dark
is your hair
drifting in
the pool of
my mouth.

White roses hook sleeves
in a hot rain park
as we hurry to leave
a new fringing dark
of clouded eaves.
I drink mezcal, you sip
soft wine, we kiss
at the bar as storms slip
through streeted air
with a springing hiss.
Lightning lashes bare
angles of pink night.
We lean close, share
Sunday's appetite.

Your hair shakes
with a debt of stars.

City night can't
pass blue, and the

coin cloak moon
escapes its room

with a key made
from a rose thorn.

You lay into the bed
clad in pink silk,

black lace, your
skin fair as a page.

There is a breeze
that sounds like rain.

I dare to read your
emissary shoulder

& become dizzy,
my breath broken

among my teeth.
You could be made

of engraved silver
and I would not

be more speechless
or more delicate.

Shake the stars
from your hair,

so that a midnight
might curl there.

Light the little candles
bright as thighs

and join me here
by the window

sipping your whiskey
and watching clouds

chase a truant moon
towards the gigantic

green lacuna of
Grant circle.

Cut and curled,
our brandy faces'
blood-pulled art
lifts and drops
with water moves.

A hundred world
of summer place's
galloped heart,
some teething lops
& dayside loves.

The oak died
in the last

baseball year,
thick dollars of rot

splitting the crook
with a winter step.

I had given up
on Kelly from

Corner Drive,
old enough now

to let go of
the desire in

her Lions
nightshirt.

**** moved in
next door, saving

me from
mother's cancer.

The sun was a
gnaw, I lived by

nightfall, engaged
to the femoral

moon. ****
played drums,

his father
chain smoked, and

I hunted the changing
braid that filled

the wooden air.
It was another way

to be, exile from
the sick-house,

eating the words
of books,

replacing
the things I had

been denied.
The sick oak lay

like a vacancy
in the center of the

yard, too far gone
even for firewood,

black ailerons
down in the wetness

of the mantle.
Lord,

I could barely
even look at it.

Heart's chariot
on its side,

red line ghosts
in the wine glass,

all lost in
the wind locks,

bear the mantle
of blue, blue hours.

Call me yours
in this country
of dusk.

Call me yours
in the blotted lilac,
in the acrylic
evening, in the
time-plagued
water mirror.

You know that
I will kiss you
& break the
honeycombs,
raise the sheets
as midnight sails
while rectangles
dismount in the
orange and
a gibbous moon
dwells in the
nettles of new
constellations.

Call me yours
in the earliest
hours when
the forgotten
fireworks drip ash
like broken snow.

Call me yours
when the whales
of morning begin
to stitch their
broadside song,
each to each,
& you raise a
tent of light
with your smile.

You know that
I will kiss you
among the
almonds of smoke,
the yellowed books,
the soft repairs of
yesterday.

Call me yours:
I know it already
but the sound
is a high garden
ploughed with sugar.

I dive into your
burnt sugar eye
and bathe there
while the moon
stumbles to
fullness. Riots
of peaches joust
in the sunset
while sways of
black walnut
throw shadows
to the street.
Radio towers
blink away
in long ovals
of distance.
Lonely cars
drift as if on
the sea floor.
I share this
with you
while waxy
breezes trawl
across the face
of the new night.

You punctured my heart
   with your name -
      you had my full attention.

With irises black and sleek
   as limousines you passed
      my soul's guardhouse
         & entered the grounds
             unannounced.

But you were like Baba Yaga,
   cruel almost by accident,
      tongue of threat and spell,
          your achtung heart
              curling inward,
                 filled with teeth.

With a pestle of words
   you ground me away.

In the emptiness of my
father's birthday the
year after he died

I'm picking up my girlfriend
at the airport, and July
is a singing bed of trees.

A giant shadow roams
through my mind. Birds
slash in a surging field.

How is he gone?
I feel things slide
away from me,

memorials in the air,
when I confront
the gear of absence.

I drink from his favorite
coffee cup - "Key West,
A New Slant on Life."

I invoke him in so
many ways but the
shadow still moves.

The sixth of July
arrives and departs
in nails of heat,

& new faces draw
the sting away
from missing ones.

Myrtle grows wild,
white moon bells,
blood blossoms -

I trap these things
inside his old
Nikomat camera

as the day arches
its back to let
the shadow by.

I can't help you
where you are.
The apple crown
of summer is stuck
in my humid lung
and words dry
out on the line.

It's fine to be quiet
together. When our
arms cross my Sicily
is ten shades darker
than your Istanbul.
I inhale the silent sun
and run it through
my teeth like yolk.

I hardly know what
to say. I'll be your
flying buttress, your
Pegasus wing, your
silver brace, even
as the kingdom
of my words falls
into string.

Your halo combs
through the steam
trellis.  Old sprays
of Baltimore sugar
fan across the table
by a salt whisper.
The white steeple
of creamer with red
lamassu prowling
anchors the coffee
shop's Tuesday
crucible. I drink
mine cold as you
sketch the bustle.
When I leave for
the office, your art
eye is still tight
as a lens, amid
the brunette shots
of night-hearted
espresso, the cluck
of the businessmen,
and the steam tree
that wakes you away.

The same Madonnas,
the same pitying faces,
the same arched necks
of the same saints...

Clear it all
for a new palette.
Stone over pine blaze,
fringed gentian blot.
Broken-columned sun,
splayed in glade sand.
Drift water stroke.

Rescind
the School of Athens,
the Madonnas,
the arched necks.

What can they say
about lilies plunged
in the moon's syrup?

I see what I am
& what I was
in the surging hazel
mirror of your eye.

The dragon looks
into the froth
of the waterfall
& remembers
the carp that
spent a hundred
years leaping.

You are somewhere between
your yoga mat's page
& the sun-stuttered stage,
balancing geometries,
days rich like honey,
always near to a kiss.

You write poems, and
they stick in the teeth
like sugar and salt.
Your drawings, heavy
with black hatches,
turn the eye over
and over. This,
it's your city now.

The drunk came down the marble stair -
"You're talking out of your hat, Ned."
Ned says dying is OK, other things are worse.
The drunk came down the marble stair.

The humid plate mail clasps the skin.
Boys eat fireworks on the hill.
A burning windlass in paper-pale sky.  
The humid plate mail clasps the skin.

Live an authentic life, if you dare.
Don't let them take it with expectations.
Don't let them take it with advice.
Live an authentic life, if you dare.

Machine riot pink
stone light sails
velvet bay blink.

Ice lynx ink
black trunk rails
machine riot pink.

Jade earl sink
shyly arc pails
velvet bay blink.

Chair hollow think
hint blinded gales
machine riot pink.

Reverse zip drink
plum brass wails
velvet bay blink.

White mint sync
bright pint hails
machine riot pink
velvet bay blink.

Tomorrow the air
brights with
spark shapes
as sky fumes.

Beneath the
fire point pattern
my mind will be
elsewhere, pooling

across highways to the
airport where she'll
step from the plane
the day after.

Once the thousands
have decamped
from the green basins,
I will reclaim

the soft galleons
of lawn with her,
the grand marble
systems, rectangle

lullabies, and gallery
gardens, a new life.
And I'll tell her
about how I watched

all the new lush stars
that lived syllables
before collapsing
into pops of ash.

These pieces move
through a morning ether
of pale string dawn:
knight of coffee,
bishop of grass,
rooks of blonde
bones sleeping
in the *****-thicket.

My heart eats a shock
after knitting careful
plans for weeks now.
The metro train
rattles and shines.
The sun hides
in castled cloud.
Everything feels
bigger than it is.

They ask so much
from me, I could
never give that much.
Still, the day is long.
The complacent heart
will learn and adjust.
I still cherish you
with all my psychology.

Chest packed
with fearful
breath.
Sun wash
the bright
piece low.
Don't move
farther,
stay here
by my blue
posting.
Answers
flock and
scatter.
A handful
of lilies,
the knot
that cruels
in the throat.
Come and
claim me -
isn't it clear
that I just  
want you?

I was going through
this box I've had
since my father died
it's full of the things
he saved about me
my third grade report
card calling me social
but not much of a rule
follower or my dorm
room clean-out card
all those things but
what tore me up
were all these short
stories I wrote when
I was 17 or 18 and had
these dreams of being
the next Joyce I barely
even remember some
of them but what I do
remember is that dad
always wanted to write
a story together father
and son and kept giving
me ideas to start my half
of it and I never did
I never wrote a ******
word I might have sent
him an idea and then
never followed up and
now he's gone and what
I wouldn't give to just
write a few **** words
for him to show him
I took it seriously and
maybe give him just
that one more chance to
open up and tell me what
kinds of things rested
in the broadness of his mind.

Our thoughts float with gin,
and a little beer.
O darling, let's begin -
our thoughts float with gin,
and soon we're grin to grin
& the night floods with cheer.
Our thoughts float with gin,
and a little beer.

It was like when you breathe
snow in your lung, gasping
into that ****** plastic mask,
hooked to the machine the
doctors sent home with me,
feeding it the foaming medicine
that was supposed to free me.

One doctor let me listen to my
own chest with his stethoscope,
& I heard a landscape of old
paper, parading. That's you,
he said, that's you.

Another time I sat and watched
as they pierced my hand for
blood, to find how much oxygen
my lung was passing on. That
doctor taped the needle down,
apologized, We don't get many
kids, he said as my blood
wandered into another machine,
& my lung smothering in its cage.

I grew out of it, eventually.
I hit eighteen, could run
without hissing, without pain.  
The long nights under the blanket,
struggling for breath, I forgot all
about them as I discovered *****.
But I never quite forgot that feeling
of being at war with your own body,
trying to pacify it, trying to beat it
back, trying to trick it, trying to
drown it out like dead television.
What's yours is never wholly yours.

Arm's ray,
leg's root.
Deep fold,
sacral route.
Turn away,
plant foot.
Breathe, hold,
hold, out.
Triangle's
reach -
I find it there,
in these angles -
skin's speech,
bone's prayer.

I hear the
fan blades

churning the
darkness,

& the minutes
seep like cough

medicine into
the floorboards.

Sleep is so thin
tonight, wasp-

waisted and
easily broken,

rising just
above me in

the black dell
of the room.

Beside me is
the flatness

of the fabric
where she'll

soon be, to
model the

sweetness of
night's middle.

But until then
I drift in

& out of the
dream where

I'm losing teeth,
my slow heart

pushing words
around the room,

thinking about money,
weighing my soul

against a feather,
using her pillow,

rustling against
that flatness

& inhaling
the vacancy,

listening to the
fan blades

churning the
darkness.

Tree, tree,
dry and green.

The girl with the beautiful face
is picking olives.
The wind, rake of towers,
holds her by the waist.

Four riders passed
on Anadalusian ponies,
with blue and green suits,
and long dark coats.

"Come to Cordoba, girl."
The little girl doesn't listen.

Three bullfighters passed,
thin-waisted,
with orange suits
and swords of ancient silver.

"Come to Seville, girl."
The little girl doesn't listen.

When the afternoon wore
dark purple, and was fading,
a young man passed, who was wearing
roses and moonlight myrtles.

"Come to Grenada, girl."
And the little girl doesn't listen.

The girl with the beautiful face
keeps picking olives,
with the gray arm of the wind
tight around her waist.

Tree, tree,
dry and green.

**

Arbolé, arbolé,
seco y verdí.

La niña del bello rostro
está cogiendo aceituna.
El viento, galán de torres,
la prende por la cintura.
Pasaron cuatro jinetes
sobre jacas andaluzas,
con trajes de azul y verde,
con largas capas oscuras.
"Vente a Córdoba, muchacha."
La niña no los escucha.
Pasaron tres torerillos
delgaditos de cintura,
con trajes color naranja
y espadas de plata antigua.
"Vente a Sevilla, muchacha."
La niña no los escucha.
Cuando la tarde se puso
morada, con lux difusa,
pasó un joven que llevaba
rosas y mirtos de luna.
"Vente a Granada, muchacha."
Y la niña no lo escucha.
La niña del bello rostro
sigue cogiendo aceituna,
con el brazo gris del viento
ceñido por la cintura.
Arbolé, arbolé.
Seco y verdé.

-by Federico Garcia Lorca
translated by Evan Stephens

Morning light skips across
the water like a smooth stone.
Tall bridges coagulate in
memory, colored the
bright yellow of the savanna.
The city swarms with business.
Coins sleep in the fountains.
Rain comes in old surprises.
Noon slips. And soon  
I'm thinking of you again,
sleeping in your green city.
Oh, if I could ride the sun
to your sunrise, throw off
the shining bridle and
kiss you from the
soft grip of dreams!

In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
          Heart

And in the late afternoon
I wanted to be a nightingale.
          Nightingale.

(Soul,
wear an orange color.
Soul,
wear the color of love)

In the living morning
I wanted to be myself.
          Heart.

And in the falling evening
I wanted to be my voice.
          Nightingale.

Soul,
wear orange!
Soul,
wear the color of love!

*

Cancioncilla del primer beso

En la mañana verde,
quería ser corazón.
Corazón.

Y en la tarde madura
quería ser ruiseñor.
Ruiseñor.

(Alma,
ponte color de naranja.
Alma,
ponte color de amor)

En la mañana viva,
yo quería ser yo.
Corazón.

Y en la tarde caída
quería ser mi voz.
Ruiseñor.

¡Alma,
ponte color naranja!
¡Alma,
ponte color de amor!


by Federico Garcia Lorca
translated to English by Evan Stephens

Aşkım
ben her zaman seninim.
Bu yarım şiir
sizin dilinizde
asla yeterli olamaz
duygularımı ifade etmek.
Çok bağlıyız,
Anladığını biliyorum.


"My love,
I'm always yours.
This half poem
in your language
could never be enough
to express my feelings.
We are so connected,
I know you understand."

Des champs de caramel dans vos yeux
la vapeur de la beauté tout autour de vous.
Le foulard de nuit vous enveloppe,
les manches du jour sur le sol.
Ville froide, ville chaude
ville du cœur
vous êtes un citoyen universel.
Je suis votre cartographe,
votre biographe,
votre poète de nuit.
Je présente votre chanson au piano.
Femme caramel
quand ton cœur s’ouvre
c’est moi qui suis là
avec une bouteille de vin
et un cierge.


"Caramel fields in your eyes
the steam of beauty all around you.
The night scarf envelops you,
the sleeves of the day on the ground.
Cold city, hot city
city of the heart
you are a universal citizen.
I am your cartographer,
your biographer,
your poet of the night.
I present your song to the piano.
Caramel woman
when your heart opens
it's me who stands
with a bottle of wine
& a candle."

Ange rebelle
voyageur, nomade
le sucre dans vie:
pour vous, je fabrique des lustres -
j'écris des centaines de poèmes
qui éclaire l'été en noir.
Je regarde tes peintures
et je rends grâce aux esprits vaudous.
La rue pleure la nuit sans toi.
Le ciel va dans un sens.
La rivière l'autre.
Ange Nomade,
mon coeur va dans tes mains
si proprement.

"Rebel angel,
traveller, nomad,
the sugar in life:
for you I make chandeliers -
I write hundreds of poems
that illuminate the summer in black.
I gaze at your paintings
and give thanks to voodoo spirits.
The street cries at night without you.
The sky runs one way.
The river the other.
Nomad angel,
my heart fits inside your hands
so neatly."

Empty dress on hanger's *****-arm
where is your mistress? See that I burn,
stoked by her absence, and burned words
wheel inside me. Dusk's rusting flood  
of lawn where once she stood is only
now a crisp green leaning shadow.
Without her I'm a thousand times tired...

Empty dress with your gauzy charm,
you hang with a ghostly turn
over a vacant ankle. Yet as you're stirred
in the air, hope presses my barking blood,
a spark and spur. Dress, don't be lonely,
she'll be back soon to reclaim us, though
our lives may seem to hang on wires.

Once I would
take a word,
like lake, and
use it to tell you
how I was afraid
of losing you
by hiding in
that word:

"I am under the wall of lake,
pressed thin as parchment
in the inhaling dark,
by the shape of where you were."

So what is there
to find in this poem?
The television's grit
and glow, by which
I mean I sit alone.
The frost in the glass,
by which I mean
I am thinking of you.
The fox in the snow,
by which I mean
I miss you terribly,
& I am not afraid
of saying so.

On the fifth of July,
after thin string nights,
you'll fill my eye.

We'll coax the moon nigh,
bask in grey light
on the fifth of July.

Verse I'll supply,
& as I write
you'll fill my eye.

Rejoice in reply
to a gentle bite
on the fifth of July.

Once bashful and shy,
I'll soon ignite,
you'll fill my eye.

Into the city you'll fly
with your delights -
on the fifth of July,
you'll fill my eye.

In the attic
with sister
old computer.

Insert disc 1 of 9,
King's Quest IV:
The Perils of Rosella,

argue about
who types,
where next,

do we call
the hintline,
5 a minute.

Rosella walks
screen to screen
in red dress.

We direct her
to act and
to die.

Reload
Rosella,
start again.

It took
all winter
to complete.

I remember
everything,
the whale and

the bridle,
the ball and
the hen.

In memory's
treasury
this is among

the most dear:
walnut table,
voltage hum,

sister yelling
watch out
watch out.

Please, love, worry not,
it'll go your way.
If it feels for naught,
please, love, worry not,
for all will be as it ought,
and by your side I'll stay.
Please, love, worry not,
it'll go your way.

You are my music,
on this long Friday.
Colonies of love
rescind the distance.
Your chestnut eye
amid glen and grass.

The scent of fresh grass
is rich as music,
rich as a soft hazel eye
on a sun-stolen Friday.
What distance?
There is only this love,

this cascading love.
No lance of grass
can close the distance,
only the piano's music,
a flight of Fridays,
a caramel eye.

And that Turkish evil eye,
hidden away with love
until that Friday
I tasted the bitter grass
and heard tense music.
And you, in the distance...

What distance?
Your soft brown eye
is here, a type of music,
an immense love
laying in the grass
on a whistling Friday.

It's always a Friday
with long distances
tucked under grass.
Your beckoning eye,
brimming with love,
singing with such music...

Love has no distance -
This Friday I'll make music
in the grass of your eye.

Voices beyond
the window
promise rain
after dark.  

The sun hasn't
moved for days,
caught in a net
of ash.

Father's Day
caught me
off guard -
I find one
of his books,
just stand there
holding it.

Something catches
in the chest.
The dark breaks.

I think, softly,
Where are you?

Rain begins
stretching slowly.

Across thousands of miles
you lay your claim on me
with your purple stockings.

My body is your riot, full
of blood's disobedience
& a climbing incandescence.

I am your lamp. Coyly
you insinuate provocative
thoughts. I'm helpless,

I'm guttering like a candle
on a caravel, burning
despite the danger.

Thousands of miles, but
there is only me and you
and a thin, thin stretch of purple.

Let intensities
drop away -

leave chains
behind you.

A forest's
bathing sway

enough
to bind you.

Release the
dying day,

so stillness yet
might find you -

quiet starts
to breathing's arts.

Back then, there
were no goodbyes,
and tomorrows
I swallowed like
chartreuse. Evening
buttons undone.
Bones whistled night.
Birds slipped as fire
rifled the yard.
I wanted to cry,
sweet-haired, low
with breath, as
someone built a myth
and then broke it.
The years deviled,
pears wasted away.
There were no goodbyes,
and tomorrows were
lost in the eye.

This is life?
Starting the journey
with a rough beginning,
carrying a turning mind
within a sunsetted body,
some kind of a self.

And this is the self?
Carving through life,
carving through the body,
on the streaking journey
into the mind?
It's a beginning.

Or something like a beginning.
I'll pick up this self,
clean out this mind,
baptize a new life.
Go on a long journey,
remodel the body,

the aching body
right as it's beginning
to stray from the journey.
Guard the self
against life.
And the mind,

be careful with the mind,
more than even the body.
Because this wild life
is only the beginning.
The roles of the self
change so much on the journey.

No, plural - the journeys.
Likewise, the minds,
and the many selves
you'll have. The bodies,
the beginnings,
the lives.

Because the body and mind
are always beginning. The self
is a journey. That's life.

There was your soul,
right in the heart
of the rain.
It fell home,
a runaway blue,
it gave you a look,

the kind of look
you'd expect from a soul:
deep cerulean blue,
a proposal of heart.
The look followed you home,
long after the rain...

Well, it can't always rain.
Return the look,
& bring it home,
the little soul.
Have heart,
and don't feel blue.

If you do drop blue,
or should it come rain,
fill the sail of the heart
with this new look.
Feed your soul
with a bite of this home.

Yes, ramble home,
long over the blue,
with a shine of soul
unscathed by rain.
It now gives a different look,
that won't pierce the heart.

Your sweet heart,
so happy at home,
absorbs these looks
I send. Sky's blue,
no break of rain...
a caress of the soul.

Look homeward:
still no bluing rain,
just heart and soul.

For years I swam
with pockets full
of stones. The cold
water rushed to
accept me. At
the bottom was
another night
& I lived there
for far too long,
pockets sewn shut,
& my lungs wings
of blackest mud.

I broke free, and
drifted up to
the veins of stars
wavering on
the water's skin.
I took the air
& ate it whole.
Poems dropped from
my brown eyes, I
found you, I was
ready. Dreams lay
below spruces,
with coins of sun
we bought tickets
to history.

But will I hear
those stones again?
Singing from the
false night of the
drowning floor? It
keeps me awake
in the lean hours.

You live on the canal,
by the little swan
that whittles the sun.
A sudden rush of clouds,
a clatter of sandals -
caprice of Dublin.

I knew of Dublin
and its grand canal
from old books tan as sandals.
I read Yeats for a swan,
Joyce for castle clouds
that yielded little sun.

But you, you were the sun!
You lit green Dublin
from within. Clouds
fled from the canals
of your eye. "Swansies."
And summer's far sandals

were today's sandals:
time shifted in the sun,
took flight like the night swan
through ancient Dublin.
You sent letters from the canal,
letters that divided clouds,

only to calve new clouds.
I've never worn sandals,
not ever, but when the canal
danced in my dreams, the sun
pierced my foot in Dublin.
You were my swan,

my elegant swansie,
killer of cloud,
conquistador of Dublin
in gladiatorial sandal,
herald and avatar of sun,
romantic of the grand canal.

Let me taste unclouded sun -  
let sandals upend the canal -
send swans by the dozen into Dublin.

On lover's lane
we cancel the rain
with champagne.
On lover's lane
kisses entertain
& endlessly sustain.
On lover's lane
we cancel the rain.

Like burning marshmallow,
the clouds this Monday.
Thumb over the phone
& the words to you pop
& sway like gin pink
with bitters. Lily lady,

O my lily lady,
kiss me marshmallow -
sticky and tinted pink
with lip on a rainy Monday.
Green window pops
arrive on my phone,

this sweet black phone
that brings you, my lady,
over Atlantic's salt pop
& volted marshmallow.
So on this Monday
when the sky draws pink,

& clouds too are toasted pink,
I take this thin phone
and find you. On this Monday,
my Dublin lady,
under a melting marshmallow
sky, I seek out your hot pop,

that flame that's popping
in the twilight, red and pink.
Sweet as marshmallow,
you burn through my phone,
my smiling lily lady,
even on a Monday.

& so this Monday
like a soap bubble pops.
I'm inspired, my lady,
by the silken pink
thing. On your phone,
a swan's wing of marshmallow.

Yes - Monday's poem comes pink,
& pops with phone messages
from my lady, soft as marshmallows.

I laid there
for hours
and listened
to the rain,
unable to
sleep. It
dropped
in mild
lambent
waves all
down the
grass rail
and across
collars of
trees. The
street was
splotched
with wet
shadow.
Eventually,
I knew that
sleep would
not come for
me, I went
out as you
suggested.
The rain
truckled
down my
knee,
behind
my ear.
I felt it
assemble
on my face.
Standing
in the dark
buttons of
the yard,
I put my
hand on a
corner of
life, and
stood in the
water brow.
Clouds sank
like the
shoulders of
frigates.
I went back,
having
annexed
a dream.