The moon wears a dull brown gown,
& the stars seem braced up there,
a few tired Christmas bulbs
pinned to a threadbare pine.

Dublin is just as far tonight
as it ever was,
& again I'll sleep alone
in an alien city

where fleets of black-bellied cars
crawl among the funerals,
over the fur of the earth
roughed and matted with rain.

In this last push before sleep
I'll choose instead to remember
your susurrating hair,
fanned across the pillow.

A woman on the walk
chews on a white gap
that hovers in the tree.

A fleet of dead clouds,
dull gummy bumps,
reflect our hunched signals.

Even the road is false,
a mouth of crushed oil husks
that eats our fried blood.

This all collects into an afternoon
of chemical mistakes.
Thoughts that spongily refold.

We're reading with flashlights
under a shared blanket of grief,
eyes shining; incandescent wax.

There is a
bent blue hill,
a green pool,
a bleached heart.

Remember when
we saw Lucy,
in the checkered
room, that drowsy
drunk woman
leaning against
my back, singing
every word?

There is a
red elm blaze,
a white tooth,
a bleached heart.

Can't you feel
I'm trying to say it?
Look, I know
words are not
my bridges.
I feel them perish
between us.
Can't you see it
on my face?

There is a
gray brick crumble,
a yellow deadlight,
a bleached heart.

The stair-shadow bar
a blackwood twist that swims
& recurves under elbow and pint.

Eyes knock in the false, exacted twilight,
against the yarded backdrop
of felt puddles stroked with chalk.

Here is a glass of rye - it waits
in amber for the pink warm wash
of my prowling, kissing palm;

here is a glass of Powers - the sweet
scent flowers the stale angles,
fumes away beyond the lip line.

Things can't quite be read -
what does the canted shoulder mean
when it turns my way?

Words tumble into the chrome-crumbled
struts of the barstools. A kölsh floats into me,
then two, small columns of silted yellow.

On leaving, I am amazed to find
the cheer-charred night, rude gestures
of moon sweeping the towers,

& a fearful silence that finds its harbor
deep inside the glen of my ribcage:
a barking heart, chained to its house.

I love you
like eating bread dipped in salt
like waking up burning at night
like drinking water straight from the tap.
like opening the heavy package in the mail
without knowing what it is,
excited, happy, suspicious
I love you
like crossing the sea for the first time
like something moving inside me
when night falls softly over Istanbul
I love you
like thanking God that we're alive.

[Seviyorum seni
ekmeği tuza banıp yer gibi
Geceleyin ateşler içinde uyanarak
ağzımı dayayıp musluğa su içer gibi
Ağır posta paketini
neyin nesi belirsiz
telaşlı, sevinçli, kuşkulu açar gibi
Seviyorum seni
denizi ilk defa uçakla geçer gibi
İstanbul'da yumuşacık kararırken ortalık
içimde kımıldayan birşeyler gibi
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Yaşıyoruz çok şükür der gibi.]

The heater lopes
behind me, so
I don't hear you
rugging your way
up the stairs
with your gun.

When you point
it towards me,
the lights switched
on yesterday.

I saw two snow eagles
and a naked girl
The one was the other
and the girl was none
-Federico Garcia Lorca, "Ode to the Dark Doves"


We drove all night to Long Island
to the Islip shoreline wedding
as knees of snow bent over us.

We knew it was our last stand,
all the endless arguments were finished
& all we had left was black market ***.

With this classmate's marriage
our bond was in its last hours.
Frost-fleece freckled the bay face,

crested skin chopped and skimmed,
as her licentious hand drifted quietly
across the dark car division to my thigh -

she loved when I was pinned like this,
waiting for her next move; soon enough
she persuaded even the snow to pause.

At the hotel the room heat was off,
so we turned it on and looked out
on still, bleach-banked hill backs

& things between us were hushed
until she undid her chilled hair
it dropped slowly to shoulder

& she said don't move, don't move at all;
I could see my breath hanging in air,
as I was undressed and given to the cold.

A crust of wax
affixed with
breath hovers
near the window.

Doctors retreat
oh-so-quietly,
afraid to break
the soft blood
of this moment.

The hospital
sheets are so
impossibly thin,
like wafers,
& they shine
as a fluorescence
wanders through
the five of us.

My father
slowly assumes
the translucence
of memory.

I know it's over by
the stillness of his hand.

K----,

You are fresh milk
& I am lemon pulp.

My acid smile pools
on my face, pink curdled shadow

aimed at your corner.
You are so young:

you mock the silver sway
that drips down my cheeks.

You are draped in yourself,
but I don't really mind,

because you're clever. Inside you
I think there's something tender;

but it's not for me to uncover.
I'll sit in the angle,

the beer cranny, and glance
your way with eyes full of sugar.

The night dies waltzing
on yellow lemon heels;

the day is born in a flicker
of snide cream cloud.

Dead men are heavier than broken hearts. -Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep


Birds in flock are tilting
in the pink gloam,

a black convex wine stain
pouring from the last orange faces

of exhausted trees, flayed
by the new freeze.

My oldest friend smokes menthols
in the driveway, discussing

the crushing vicissitudes
of the women we have loved,

until voices thicken
into mint-smoke plumes.

Night is a coarse dough
come November:

knotted, knitted, clay-skinned.
These gaps between us all

are so lonesome. You expect
the silence to eventually contract,

but it doesn't; it won't.
Birds are slanting so heavily,

as if they are drunk.
"Dead men are heavier

than broken hearts."
They slip away, so that

the only sound is wind,
crawling up the hillside.

I'm hanging above
a checkered floor,
Lucy's on the other side
singing La Vie En Rose.

I wonder for a moment
if I could love you
into loving me,
but let's face it:

it's never worked before.
When she hits Night Shift
and I think how the lines
knock me out one by one

I just let go.
I shift against the bar
and serve as
my own self-prophet:

"I'll tell you when
I'm dying of something"

In high school
I met you,
you belonged
to my sister's circle

to the fresh night
to the scent of a book
open golden spine
in a vanishing

bookstore.
These impressions
of you were right:
You told me later

of your pride
in breaking
into the play
despite the crossed

arms of the drama
clique, scorning
you, jealous.
& you started

a coffee shop
to fill the gap
& cure the smallness
of a small town

that struggled
to hold you.
You were one
of those I knew

would be leaving
soon. Too clever
by half,
already in the world,

already aching,
a blind seed
in a paper garden.
You got punched

in the gut
by the burned out
girl, initiating you
into something

nameless.
Sliding out
of the house
after hours

to see the boy
under moon -
No, to see
the black days band

& float above
all the hands,
some touch you
as a woman,

& it was in this
awareness
that I met you
in the land

of dust jackets.
My curiosity
was sharp
as a wasp's song:

you were
a walking yes;
you told me
about Anna's

bonfire flicking
your face
as you cross
the quiet fields

littered with love
& you wrapped
in sky until
the girls went hunting.

How you pierced
yourself at
that festival but
I suspect

you pierced yourself
in others ways too -
you were so aware,
looking

for affirmation
for connection,
even with the teal
pager you kept

in pocket and
would then
plug in your
secret phone

just for the call.
You challenged
it all,
rebel

determined
to be yourself,
acute push
against the bonds

of salted adolescence
of a Persian family
of being a woman

in a world
that tried to
fold that
against you.

You told me
all of this.
I met you then
and never

quite let go
even in the years
that moved
like free water

between us.
You came back
& my old
school thoughts

drifted out
of my mouth.
You gave me
memories

that I engrave
here. This is
all you.
It's you.

The train's
cleated toes
perch on volts
before dipping
into the cobalt
hologram of
morning.

White pebbled
floor reflects
in the window,
the platform's
strip of faces
wades through
ghostly stars.

The train climbs
the rusted ladder
with humming
hands. The anthem
of sun a blinding
glint on the hide
until it shrieks
into the earth.

Tunnel's halogen
skin dappled
with aluminum
song. This is
my stop, step
through the
birthing wings
into the ceramic
meadow. Gate
opens, subtracts -

I'm an Orpheus,
looking back as
a silvered Eurydice
is pulled away
from me with
a scream.

Thoughts like fire,
all about you.
Wilding desire,
thoughts like fire
devouring a pyre
to love unsubdued -
thoughts like fire,
all about you.

This is my left hand in the mirror,
twinned and pinned to the glass,
hanging in the black valley while a song
rips me along the old perforations,
& the whole moment splits -
the light wavers over the mantle,
a ball of ghost, a past thing,
memories sold away in ingots.

This sordid exorcism hinges
on night pictures that I can't shake:
a backward lens, a frozen belt-step,
a long lawn with green marrow.
No, that dream is just watery pulp,
like when you squeeze a plum too hard
& the juice sticks and stains
in the white noise web of your fingers.

T-----,

My guitar chattered in my hand
at the elm and oak wall of spring

as you beat drums with a covert heart,
strutting tattoos that died in ****.

But you didn't show on Saturday,
or the one after either,

leaving us drumless in the pool hall,
having to call Jimmy quick -

at sixteen we were quick to forgive.
You went into the Army

but left under a strange cloud
after an incident in the mountains.

After that at the odd house party
I watched the goodness leave you,

a lake sweltered away to motes.
After you fought Rory on the planks

of night you were unwelcome,
you vanished into mummy's threads,

hillish murmurs and silhouettes,
just an occasional twenty-year thought

I have when winter's stretch succumbs
to green oak glitters, vivid loaves of elm.

Even so, I send you my best.
-Evan

O sweet friend:
I'm glad for you.
May days never end,
O sweet friend,
but always extend
with verse's glue.
O sweet friend:
I'm glad for you.

Night's face
on the pane,
gin's lip slips,
a dark dress spills
into the grave
of unfinished speech.

Yet perfect thoughts
sputter down,
candied eyes
launder the late hour,
& embroidered shadows
of perfect length
& distance pour from
lye-bright lamp.

Here in the waiting room
it's beige and safe.
Nothing like the room
where I'll divide my trauma
into lean little cutlets.

When I can't take it anymore,
I'll watch the fish
living in the doctor's tank,
thoughtlessly ******* down
bright quivers
of lamp stripes.

It fell below
freezing today.
They say it might snow.

My morning is slow,
I saw sun's only ray
as it fell below

the black blow
of cloud's spray;
it might snow,

a flaking flow
gray on gray,
bringing me low,

as though
it knows you're away.
They say it might snow

like crumbles of dough
dropping my way;
sinking, falling below; 
it might snow.

Stout gulls shriek out
divorcing moments
as highways sag,
knocking margarita lights
one into the next.
Checkout is Sunday morning,
lobby as vacant as on arrival -
sign the check,
go through the motions.

Well, here I am, without her -
in this new dark space
where I'm slowly breathing.
I pour another drink in the dark -

a few tremulous stars
encrust the subfusc city mantle,
& a bus growls off
down a flat hallway of road.

The floor is paved with books -
the cat sleeps under a half-moon
that's curled like a rotted aloe leaf.
How are things in Dublin, I wonder?

The night pools in the air,
above the sighing branch.
The kitchen is smaller here.
Grief leaks into the tight hours.

I see a bathroom light snap on
across the street. Birds clap across
the row. A car races down the rack,
& one more minute stutters away.

Everything is blue:
the night-skin, blooming
with ten thousand street lamps;
the hall light in the stolid building
across the street, where shadows
drift leftwards like old smoke;
the dead clouds, that process
themselves across a drum-tight
cobalt heaving with rain;
the restaurant at closing time;
the cars that push up and down
the gaudy road;
the laughing bridge above
the humid blue park.
The city drinks ink and chokes,
throwing blue dice,
forgetting everything.

Strange thought before a surgery:
we're all guests signed in to visit  

at a nursing home for the gods -
we make our obeisance and tell them

of our doings and goings,
but they're feeble-minded, rheumy,

ensconced in cloudy rockers,
not watching or listening, perhaps

they reminisce on discarded cosmos;
we're forgotten, or, worse,

acknowledged but irrelevant -
either way they'll share no wise.

I feel only silence without and within
as I lie down on the paper bed -

casual as ice, the doctor carves
away the excess swim from my *****,

by needle, knife, and fire -  
his third on a humdrum Friday.

I gaze through ache at pock-faced ceiling -
it gazes back with dead fluorescence.

I sneak a look at a lustrous dwarf star
that caught me in its shining net

like an uncommonly nonchalant fish.
I limp to the car, up the stairs,

befriend the bottles of null,
the pocketless black: the new me.

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.

The rain stops time tonight -
it halts in icy webs on glass.

All my friends have ditched;
I sit alone in a ***** tower,

the others look with pity
as I sip this cloudy beer.

I think about poetry:
a hundred years ago

I might have survived,
carried by some fortune,

but now I stare at the moon
hungrily, gently starving,

slavering for metaphor, but
nothing comes, nothing comes.

Rain freezes on the step.
The moon devours us;

my mind is a dead machine,
full of ice and grief and rust.

I was fifteen
in a birthday
room for Alan.
Lamps out,
air thick
with the flick
& sag of
a movie.
My slick hand
taken by the girl
on the floor.
White noise burst
in my mouth.
My heart
crawled
down the stairs.
The lamps
puffed on
and she slipped
my hand.
Each cone and
rod in her
green eyes
glistened,
adolescent.

I saw her again
at a house party
when I was
twenty-three.
Drunk on
Haitian ***,
carving out
a blood rhythm
under
a canopy
of memory.
Her lips shined
in memorial
to what teenagers
had been, once.

Later, I threw up
the *** into
the bushes
below the kitchen
window and I heard
her turn
off the faucet with
an indifferent laugh.

I'm just sitting here,
thoughts sieving through the pane
in little tarry slices, sluicing slurs
or slurries against a night
of Georgian house-faces crowding
their brick-point cheeks
eastward towards a flat disc
of frost, cut with black wings.

The storm glass has birthed
a wicked ammonia flake
from the quartzy ethanol thigh,
which I guess means rain
will break in soon to blotch
& pock the walk, breeding
petrichor into the wine-dark
water-heart of sinking air.

I make rough gestures
towards civility and society,
keep the words floating above
the sutured margins of the wound;
wouldn't want to alarm anybody.
There is no rescuing sleep tonight,
only this scrying glass clotting up
with starburst funeral wreathes.

Neruda
my father,
Plath
my mother -
watch how
their child
eats the
raw
peach
fingers
of dawn
with
teeth
sharp
as poems.

Within
me, a
tower of
patience,
where
I stand
calm as
barefoot
trees.

It rains,
drops
fat as
cherry
stones,
as I
nestle
my stripe
against
my throat
in my
good
black
shoes,
aching
circles
of smiles
on my
cheeks.

Darling,
come hide
in my
heart
& peek
at the
soft
world
when
you are
ready.

There is
room for
both of
us in
here to
watch
the
accordion
of my
ribs
play
Astor
on loop
until the
cherry
rain
dies in
the branch
of sky,
revealing
the playing
card of
morning.

Occasionally
I will
pack a
suitcase
of language
and flee
to your
heart,
hiding
behind
the petals
of history
and art.
I know
I will
be safe
from
the shackles
of the
glacial
darkness.

Neruda
my father,
Plath
my mother -
I'm patient
& inevitable.
Love,
forgive
my queries
& take my
nine lives.

We have
claimed
the sun.
Come,
let us
steal the
moon, too.

Earhart is static.
In Pacific attics,
searchers hunt smoke,
fold maps, pragmatic.
But the search for fires stoked
with brush is done. She provoked
the upper angels unprepared,
and was broken.
It’s so clear, all the air
over this sea: no twist or glare
blots the view for miles,
though magnetic snares
****** with fields of smiles
the wayward compass, routes
drift from proscribed aisles.
Did she ditch in the blue mute
expanse, flare's salute
a last hope to unwind miles?
Planes get drawn back. It's moot.

The art of
blacking
the teeth -

The kettled
smile, coalish,
wet with steam.

The lacquer's
taste, like the
spaces between
the night grass.

The beauty of
the dyed mouth,
& the kisses that
reach from the
bottom of black
envelopes of sea

Be with me, love,
tomorrow's our day.
Like hand in glove
be with me, love.
My little dove,
my lily bouquet -
be with me, love,
tomorrow's our day

I was a winter's seventeen
as I stared out the window
of an old 91 Pontiac
at two in the morning
& saw the golden grass
churning the leaking dark
of the middle school meadow.
The moon died, was reborn
to a scaffold's womb.
We stayed up, but didn't speak.
Not even when we saw
amber hands gripping the field brow,
arranging the morning.
She started the car in the strip lot
& stole me home.

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?

We look for solutions to this problem...
in the cloud rush, in the oven gas.

I found a medicine that I drink,
it clears the night wreathes away.

Duran Duran's "The Chauffeur" plays
while the rain stomps in the black road.

That was us.... we were then,
among the cobbles and tombs,

hand in hand, absinthe and sugar
searing the air. We were; we were.

You held my thigh at night,
a bone against the insomnia.

The dark didn't come until later;
it had such a broad wing.

The hours grew late. The purple vine
clawed upward. The walls crawled with taste...

I lost my hold on things. Do you remember
how we watched the old Dean Martin

movie on TV in Rome? I drank beer
from a can while you laughed.

You laughed - it was the sweet middle
that sustained the world.

Now... now... the hour is long in the tooth.
My chest is a grave. There is nothing after this.

No, nothing - I'm sorry.
Dig this earth for no purpose, friend...

My ash collects around the fingertips,
waiting for the grand canal.

Love, please tell me
where to cast my life -  

The ivoried downtown
and sleeted piers

of Washington,
where the Potomac

sleeps itself blue,
& the rows of museums

pull coffee teeth
in a closed afternoon?

Or the northside quay
& green garden walls

of Dublin, where I walked
in your hand, eyes to brim,

out to Phoenix Park
to search for the fallow deer,

but finding instead
only a debris of wind?

I'm owned by neither:
I wake each day

into a dead space
without color or shape,

only these memories -
do you remember

leaving yoga on
Connecticut Avenue,

the petrichor winding
out the night's full flower,

the nuzzling shine
of the walk?

I don't care
where it happens,

but that's what I want,
every day,

those steps home with you;
every ******* day.

Fat flat building with slick shark skin
I've found myself under you again -

remember how I first strutted heedless
into your faux-stone lobby, head full

of myself? And how I left an hour later
with cold water where my heart was,

bolting from your thin-throated halls
to blow off work the rest of the day -

I toured the liquor ruins, saw a movie
in a shared oubliette as salt draped

over raked velvet, strolled a park
packed with straying rose slips,

heels hushed and stuck to diary pages,
unknown castles falling within me.

Black-hided commercial mid-rise,
your windows eat the morning sun

but you're powerless now: I walk
through the freeze of your face.

Blue-bruise gore slips
down the slick mirror face
of the lithe knife that skips
between the ribs - I've looked
at our old photos again.
Rotting ash knots choke the slow
red rhythm of the blood.

A bird dies against the window pane,
just a small thump in rain.

A ghost-head cinder
leaps from a white stalk
thrown to the gritted curb -
the moon is a wrecking ball.

It's a night to fold away
my thoughts like old sheets.
I let my submerged face swim
like a black-scaled fish in my glass,
before raising it to my lip slash.

The roof tiles peel away.
Bellies of shadow perish
in the autumnal cascade.

This grief settles in the grave-gully
of the pillow. Crooked queasy dreams
rise like foxglove from the sheets.
A thick paste fills my mouth: sleep.

We held hands
as we approached it,
the pink, black,
orange monument.
We stood as if we expected
something from it,
but it failed us,
an indifferent oracle.
Your hand slipped from mine
as you stepped closer,
for a second you were
inside it, eaten whole
by its hide glue mouth,
before you drifted
in diagonals
to other colors.

White wine bottle on its side:
lilacs pooling under plate lip
in a sudden, sodden gutter
of roughened moon-cloth...

The ice numbs the wrist;
my name is absent on the list.
Quarries of coffee grounds,
are excavated inside my eye:

names are so clear now,
like glosses of witch-hazel.
But what of the empty iris pit?
Linen flocks against stone,

& memory's evergreen hold
is strong: green queen-needles
mixed with the little pink curls
shaved off the inside of the skull.

Cherish the little triangles of skin
trapped by the dial tone collar:
it's all breaking away.
What is happening to me?

Oh, little sweet one -
you found me early, and held on tight.

Hundreds of photos prove in chorus
the joy you took in living.

You would climb to my shoulder,
like a honey-brooch, and perch -

gazing green-eyed out the long pane
at the small traffic below, the playthings

of your curious thought. I cannot bear
to give away your beige tree

so frayed and leafed with hair.
I cannot bear to gaze at the rug

where you delighted in long quiet hours
of happy sleep, dreaming of running,

legs twitching. Your love of tuna,
& endless inquiries into the open freezer door

charmed me anew each morning. Your purr
gathered in little hums and circles in my hands.

We both hated our many moves,
but you always found the best parts

of our new homes so quickly -
the bat-squeaks on the school roof,

or the mourning doves beyond the screen.
I miss the scrape scrape scrape of your foot

in the litter. I miss the little splashes
you made in the water bowl.

I miss you very much, little one;
you were the best part of me.

Watch the wild swans
that glide the pool.
In the blooming dawn
watch the wild swans
spread wing until gone -
A white thread unspools.
Watch the wild swans
that glide the pool.

I am wayward,
have always been.
Yet I'm one sleep
away from you,

& I'm still:
still as the night leaf,
still as the larch post.
still as the new moon.

Here is the pool
of evening,
come to take this
waiting from me.

I am wayward,
have always been -
but for you, lovely one,
I am patient as saints.

To Meg Eden, after reading her book

Ugetsu - a shortening of u-sei-getsu, "A moon obscured by rainclouds"

There are towers of water standing
in the distance. They're waiting for us
to complete our denouement
before the fat, snapping rain drums
against the pebbled elephant skin
of street sick, slick with black petals.

Rain clouds obscure the moon,
headless, heedless, puffed out,
bruising wildly overhead
even as the veil comes loose.

We had this miraculous day,
as if nothing had changed.
You were still exactly yourself.
I missed your voice more than I knew.
Your keen eye, the same clever lens,
it held it all in, the same as before.

Your lovely, quiet soul...
I hardly know what to say;
I cried until my face ached
after you walked into the hotel.

Stay in
late on Sunday,
when sleeves of keening rain
drape downcast hollies by the street.
Come here...

Spring is gin
weeping
in the hand,
Malbec against
the wrist,
the deep-drafted
light cresting
all their laughter.

It's hard to bear
when I'm over
here, in the other
hand of the night,
running beneath
the moon as it
wanes down
into the river,
as if trying
to push me
your way.

I watch the flash of their eyes,
the inhabitants of this mansion
who sometimes hear the rats
rushing downward in the walls.

Perhaps they pause for a moment.
Perhaps they have an upsetting second.
But they make their way back to the bar cart
& pour another grocery store *****.

Then there are those of us, my reader,
who step into the dark below the basement,
into the hewn room with the odd altar
covered in very old stains...

There are even those among us
who find the unfortunate stair
that leads down into the bleak bowels
where subconscious reigns,

where the sins of the father
are visited upon the children,
where faces are married to the pit,
where you can only stumble forward

until, at least, you reach the black lake.
Looking down, having eaten yourself
with a red smile and the knives of love,
you see your own face in the still water.

Laces even
as sutures
carry midnight miles
at the black river,
the broken-backed
streets of Georgetown,
a silent yard
of snow roses.

The anvil of night
just stops there,
& the chandelier
of air tightens
slight as wire.
Vaults of cold
ache in their arches,
as back windows
broadcast lives
vaguely beyond
fraying wreathes
of fog.

This is a city
of runners.
Thousands
cut open
the moment
& burn flight
onto the winter weave.
Skin is song.
The heart cants
forward, leaning
into the fallaway.
Always forward,
always forward,
runners sing -
there is nowhere
else to go.

I post a warning,
old friend:
I feel violently
about everything
you remember.

Like when
American iron
thrummed the air
all the way down
to Richmond.

Your future wife
had uneven floors.
I said hello
& was defined by it,
I was just
hello forever.

Peeling paint
rubbed off
on my fingers
as you two
went up
the braid of stair.

You in your
old shirt,
while I stood
unsteady,
filled with
the glassy venom
of cheap gin.

My face, knotted in the shopfront glass,
then smeared smooth, unfolding

in strangest waves and furls
until it's me again, the mask restored.

I do this several times. Step left,
I'm a minotaur, a funhouse scream,

a maze-horror, a twist and blink.
Step right, the pane straightens me

into a mid-life crisis.
But I can't help but wonder

if it's like a coat hanger:
once bent, never really true again;

the mirror regurgitates destinies
as casually as How Do You Do.

I wander down the walk and wonder
if my eye is still slivered and daubed

into a blanched, branched pool
of wild milk spoiling in the open air.