Burnt sugar spangles
checker a green wall
the morning I'm on
an emergency call
with my former therapist,
who calls you my
major adult relationship,
& she is right.
Of course it hurts,
to lose that.
There's her, and then
there's everyone else,
& it doesn't feel close,
does it?
We're in a strange place.
I'd give anything I own
to board the next flight
from Dulles to Dublin
& nestle into the crook
of your arm over coffee
& almonds.
You put everything
you had into this one...
Instead I'm selling
this condo so full of you
that I can scarcely breathe,
moving back downtown
where the whitish blots
dip back and forth,
& waiting, waiting,
for something to change,
You just have to be patient
until she is ready
for one thing or the other.
& then it's noon,
& the call is over,
& the bobbin of sun
riffles back its little coins.
One thing, or the other.
Or the other.

A chance meeting at a bar,
   chatting under pouring pine
& knotted wooden star:
   To new friends and a shared shrine;
   to love aging well, like old port wine.

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.
Your words
are starry, lush,
crawling over quiet
amaranth pages in the air -
"don't go."

II.
Hundreds
of lights are smeared
like yolk by a long hem
of thunderheads that are hunting
eastward.

III.
I dream,
sometimes, about
the old lawns in Dublin:
the last time I felt clear and free.
What now?

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.

You'll tell me that
you hate this
neighborhood,
& the midnight

adventures
I had years ago
down Dahlia St
& Georgia Ave

will strip away,
thin, ******.
I'll notice
the broken walk,

the dead grass,
the trash gathered
in the raw verge,
I'll be embarrassed.

You'll be unhappy
in the new place
you're in, and
I understand but

I won't be able
to reach you.
I'll have learned
by then to shut up,

grip the air on the
silent street, take
some steps back,
let you have

your thoughts.
I won't be able
to save this situation
with magic words

said perfectly
in a pentangle.
I won't be able to
rescue you from

this drift, I'll
only be a tether,
a hand across
the void.

It'll all be new
and foreign
and everywhere is
a walk in the sun.

Washington summer
will be a hanging heat.
Soon I'll chauffeur
you into the slots

of the city, but I'll know
that won't salve
your feelings.
I won't do anything

but walk by your side
until it all ebbs.
Under the radio
tower in this poor

neighborhood
I knew so well,
I'll still my tongue.
I'll step through

the weeds to the home
where I'll hope
you will maybe find
something yours.

I'm inclined
on green couch -
I work towards
my best face,
my wrist angle
marries the *****-light
to the pane-shadow.
You, so darkly pretty,
totally oblivious
to the agonies
of little cameras.
We talk too few minutes,
say goodbye too soon,
fumble with the chemistries
that still crackle between us,
despite your wall and wine.
Little cameras reveal me
the wrong way, but
they bring you to me
across the thousands.
I'm redeemed
when my heart
pushes for you,
sweet glass.

Coifs of lightning disentangle
under a black cloud lattice.

Thunder rustles to rude growl,
bracelets of leaf are trembling.

We're eastbound, hundreds of us
on this loosened buckle

of corrugated silver flash.
The rain attacks the window

in excoriating scrawls
slivering down into a sluice.

Red-shirted woman, run now,
over the yawning pool

that shivers with addition.
Blue-breasted runner, fly,

fly into clay-colored false dusk
that heaves with humid breath.

Escape from this wet hunger
that walks over us so indifferently.

We stumble nightward. Rain laces
our eyes shut. We're alone here.

Umber hillsides tumble
steeply into leaf, pine steeple
vault and nave, brook vale
dim to hush, branch dam
licks dusk, red lake
drains to night, tight-drawn.

I'm pulled down the boulevard,
the shining hide of the hired car
reflecting all the salted yellow blots
that fringe the crashing air.
Speckled city, I climbed her stair
when the night grew late and taut:
I embraced all the darkest angles
of her room, the candied tangles,
the breasted murmurs, the knot
made of half-started words,
until the mind got waxy, slurred
by louche, unchaperoned thoughts...
O car, this hour with desire's bruised -
if you take me back, I won't refuse.

We knew him well before the fall -
before the nights when the only stars

were the dying ones whose darkling scrawls
slouched into the bedtime bar

to perish with a knowing wink,
smothered in an iceless drink;

before his slippery smiles
were filled with gravel,

before the many tired trials,
& clapping gavels;

we knew him well before the fall,
before he shook us off to crawl

into those tents of blue and gluey smoke
crowding every corner

with the lies he claimed were jokes.
We all felt like secret mourners

of the boy we knew so well -
or thought we did, before he fell.

A bruisy trumpet of cloud spills
upward from tower-top neck,

faceless grey guyser
pluming from brick bottle.

No wishes are granted today:
instead, the sponge-honey skulls

of dithering sidewalk elms
dream their green dreams over us

as the sun falters for a moment,
scattered through the lawn.

Come slip like shade
into my outstretched hand,

walk with me in an afternoon
somewhere between rain and fever.

O Irish
girl, here
is a dream
of old
Furies
adrift in
the young
night,

arrogant
and
swift
as the
swans
that swim
the canal
out your
window.

Bittersweet,
this leaving.
It may have
turned a little,
but it was always
underneath you,
a comfort.

Still, your
blissed heart
is filled with
butterfly wings,
& the book-edge
horizon beckons
with sunrises:

You'll go east,
to friends who
can intuit the
new green spaces
growing inside you.
Tell them
       everything.


I will be waiting,
the face that
adores you,
like a prince
trapped in
a mirror,
restless to come
& enter the
world of hands
and lips -
& whispers that
ignore the ear
& dive straight
to the castle
of the soul.

The purple folding face drips
into the cake-colored battlement:
night is here again.
The sun has kneeled into the treeline,
into the gauze-clouds
whose humid cobalt heads
hang, hang, just hang
all angled like hammers
in a carpenter's belt.  

Everything seems to be ending:
cicadas have erupted
in tens and sevens
with bright scarlet eyes
to die on the sidewalks
in little hums and hisses,
looking at me through
whetted blades of lawn.

I'm moving soon, to the point
of the old triangle
where we haunted
the coffee and ice cream store,
where she stole a little shining spoon
that we used to mix the luminous milk
into the coffee pool.

How will it feel, after dark,
under unfamiliar high-stippled ceilings?
So quiet - she's gone -
her vacant clothes
no longer flutter in the closet
when the breeze slips through.

Will some rain come,
blue-brushed brow,
& wash this feeling away?
I feel the night moving,
crawling on insect feet -
the air is full of absences,
great holes that go unfilled.

The wind is settled in the east,
and the clouds are gathering
heavy hems.
I find a single dark hair of hers
on the inside of the pillow case,
years later,
years later.

This morning I watch
knitted clavicles of light
hurtle in and up the wall
in my half-packed
living room, while cubes
of fresh spring hew
strongholds in the
birded birch yard.
But I am ready to leave
all of it for the ruptured
gray weeks, the rain lash,
the fog bars, the burnt sea,
the little tilts of rainbow -
for her - would she have me?

You are the passing shadow in the lavender,
the new wet leaf on the budded branch.

You sweep the year away again,
the morning ploughed blue to yellow.

Low tide grips and goes,
a seethe of chilled salt and muddy mist.

What remains is a breeze:
your cotton sleeve sun-speckled.

I send you this verse
as a mourning dove lifts

its black penny eye
under strings of evening,

& sings a falling song
cheek to cheek with the glass.

Primo Sonno, the traditional First Sleep that was common before the Industrial Revolution, it occurred between nightfall and midnight after which the sleeper arose to interpret dreams, pray, write...

The cherry liquor puts me down
around the time the snowfall arrives,
when the blackish hem of night
is snugged over the last lacy orange light.

I have jamais vu - I see the familiar,
& feel nothing, an iron-browed stranger
gazing out at the dim flake-fall,
the urban hush that sweeps away the scrawl.

At midnight I wake to an insistent horn
deep in the street pockets. I dreamt
of people with guns following me,
gluey-eyed, marching quay to quay.

In the dark, I almost remember her.
In the dark, my stomach is filled with acid.
Shadows hiss in the bleary mirror,
a cold breeze scrapes a little nearer.

In a photo
a man is
lighting
his
cigarette
in a
grain of
shadow,
his face
just for
a moment
caught
on a
hook of
light.

It could
be anywhere.
Maybe
even
this city,
clad in
green
squares
& stone
circles,
whose
soft
evening
runs
like yolk
into night.

Then
in another
photograph
I saw
the
hallelujah
of your
face.

I forgot
the
speckled
city,
I forgot
the man
& his
vine
of light.
My own
name
seemed
drunk
with you,
lost in
the wine
of your
talent.

Some
things
are
branded
on the
inside
of your
skin
forever:
the taste
of milk
or mint,
the raw
flower
of ***,
the slow
sacrifice
of the
candle,
a first
love,
& a last
love.

Darling,
turn me
inside out
& sign
your name
with fire.

Eight years
is long enough
to let yourself have fears.
Eight years
is long enough for tears,
too. It's tough.
Eight years
is long enough.

Green-stroked leaf
over lapis door
with four panels -
black vinyl
perches shining,
a motorcycle,
a motorcycle.

It enters her eye,
the day's spillway
laid down
to beige page.
Color and form,
thrown from her hand,
thrown from her hand.

The sun
pulled your
plane across
the petals
of sea.
On afternoon's
blossom
you're here,
two months
of waiting
fulfilled
by two silver
lines.

Come,
and be my
Renaissance -
share the gift
of your mind
over a cup
of strong coffee,
and talk,
just talk.

In for a penny, in for a pound,
just throw the cork away:

the glass is filled until we're drowned.
With murmur and rumor we pray,

dreams mantling like thorn-crowns.
How much could two souls weigh...?

More than a feather. Well, together we're bound,
& together we'll stay.

Who'll buy the next round?
Pint-hands are cold and mottled as clay,

their faces spinning lost and found:
can't win if we don't play.

When the hour comes round,
there's a bill to be paid

before sleep seeps from the ground
like steam... No, lover, this way -

come sever the spine of the town
with me, two fraying strays

riding each other all the way down,
eyes flat and cold as old ashtrays.

It's a fundamental law:
all matter emits radiation
(all of us even you right now)

& the energy level depends
on the temperature of the object
(inversely related to intensity).

This is black body radiation.
Here, in our meager summer rooms,
we have long infrared auras

(only lizards see them);
our atoms are gracefully aching away,
smeary leaking daubs in halo.

The hotter something is
(like that fling of sun up there)
the more energy it heaves away.

That molten starry tussle
is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit
(& so we see it yellow-white) -

"But," you say, "what if something
is hotter than a star, what then?"
Something, you mean,

like the strange chemistry that burns
burns burns burns burns burns
in my brain on a Tuesday night

when remembering an autumn day
in a cemetery in Paris so many years back
(Chopin Morrison Abelard Heloise Wilde Piaf &c)

it was such a perfect day with her
(the synapses and relays are all
clicking clicking clicking clicking

with wild remembrance)...
Well, then (in theory)
I should be giving off ultraviolet light

at an almost infinite rate (wouldn't I?).
I don't know what it means
that I am here in the plush dark

quiet and quelled by thought
(except perhaps the catastrophic energy
is scrawling and etching me into oblivion).

There is a mourning dove
cocked and tense on the olive sill
in dense rain, watching me.
I could fly to you,
if I were built like that -
hollow-*****, flashing past
these green and pink limits.
My arc would be unique,
no little starling chop,
no house finch bolt,
or fish crow sine,
past seeded wood to the sea,
I'd manage the upper air,
the transparent sinew,
landing in that little fork
by your slid window;
the song I'd sing
would fill your heart
with new choices.

We'll be seven
hours apart
& heaven
for poor Evan

is across the chart.
I already feel
love's dart
transfix my heart.

But night's wheel
goes by,
& day's repeal
undoes the seal

& soon we will tie
our voices tight.
I send a lullaby,
carried with a sigh.

“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.” -Edgar Allan Poe

We're all sick animals, tied together
on this clouded ball. Wet snow erupts
on a Sunday night, a gray flake navy,
mobiles above a black crib -

snow loosens into shaking sleet.
There is no one here - not even me.
The night is pink and orange,
under an anesthetic dome.

Don't we deserve more, better?
The streets are filled with taillights,
red rivers of light, salted, frothing,
as the freezing drips spray the pane.

Maybe we don't. Look out there,
at the wet world. We're just seeds
that open a root to the flood, swept
away into the teeth of the past.

A quartet has lulled me
to sleep this week:
Ardbeg, Bowmore,
Talisker, Laphroaig.

I'm holding this in,
living coughing strings
of days oh so carefully.

Walking home
through the drowning
grove in the sunken park,
I vacillate like a nurse's hand
choosing veins. Either way,
blood is coming,
with a blooming bruise.

My particular curse,
falling into these affairs
that end up straitjacketing me,
choosing the wrong things.
I need someone who'll reach,
but narrowly, narrowly.

Come, see the men
waiting for the silver
metro side with
pound-penny eyes.

Their little pistols
of breath break
the morning into
loaves of ash.

Look - the train
is a giant's rattle,
churning us all,
tattooing the path.

The cleaning woman
escapes the door into
a cleated brightness
full of hexagons.

The man in the suit
with the sad wrist
avoids my gaze
with leathery intent.

Look - children
chase a lost sparrow
that flew into
the station vault.

I exit the orange gates
out into the empire
of the sitting sun.
The sounds of the metro

decline into the earth.
Deduct the moment
from your day,
be glad of who you are.

A gaunt green so full of song:
a lark bunting nests in the holly,

under a marmalade chariot
with Catherine-wheels:

I mean both senses of the word.
Self-lashes leave stripes thin as days.

O, how I move my hands for you,
from pen to wrack, choking away

the sobs, sometimes, because
your city is far from this city;

but other times I run my thumb
across your kitchen scrawl,

across your glassed-in face,
across the things you touched

when the dream was living.
The gaunt blue princess

holly quavers beyond
the trellised net, thronged

with twig now: a little bird
caches its frail life away

from a cat o' nine tails sun
that is whipping & whipping.

We lunch on dust.
We wake, wage our campaigns

of mistakes across a quiet,
wary, unwaving old world.

No greeting, no parting,
no arriving, no leaving -

we are jabs in the air,
crudely curbed animal feints,

& then our names are packed away
& left forgotten in a taxi,

or in a train station bathroom,
or in a fray of rain.

Don't think too hard about it;
that, too, is a mistake.

Look at them, the rain-spotted Lovers:
hand in hand under lathered moon
as the bars flood out at cold close.
The night grass is April swaying
as they bluely stroll down the road,
unaware of anyone, anything else -

there could never be anything else -
isn't that the rule of all new lovers?
No care for a bright-cheeked road,
no anxious looks at a dartboard moon,
just two pairs of shoulders swaying
closer, closer, closer...

Yet now that the bars are closed,
they must join to something else:
a long laughing file beerily swaying,
a newly louched breed of lovers
under foam-headed moon,
carried down a water-hearted road.

Perhaps they sweeten the sotted road,
these two who veer so close
& share this last garnish of moon,
carpaccio of stars and space and something else.
Cars throw dapples across the Lovers,
shy white coins in spotted sway.

We drunks of course are also swaying
vaguely down the rained road,
but how different our rhythm is; these Lovers
tie spring breath tight as twine, and close
their fingers like mating snakes - no one else
seems tide-locked like earth and stubborn moon:

since this frozen-faced scrap of moon
refuses all requests, it's we who must sway
with them, at least until we find something else
on this cloud-tented tar-sown road
to hold us oh-so-close;
they're home, these Lovers,

& so someone else must follow the lolling moon
to become the newest Lovers who will sway
on wetted road as night closes off behind.

Sun is hotter,
but moon is nearer.

Yellow-belted dress
in runny mirror?

Come naked night,
intent is clearer.

In the day air
you can hear her

bright beguiling verses;
after dark is dearer -

moon-mouthed poems
are sincerer.

My mother's friend,
bleak-mouthed,
took me to St Matthews
in cinder glory
& kept her eye
on the thin gold leaf
spread across colonies
of saint's faces.

No, I'll never forget
sitting in the blue car
with my mother
when she told me
Eileen's brother
had killed their parents.

Eileen moved
to Bristol
& got married.
She made calls
that rattled my mother,
sent fruitcakes long
distance.

When my father died,
she couldn't stop herself
from insulting him;
my mother forgave.

A year later,
she died swimming -
my mother's mind
leaned back fifty years
& remembered someone.

I...
I remember only
St. Matthews,
the way the windows
below the azure dome
hissed with light,
& how Eileen -
indifferent to religion -
explained the rules
of the candles
for the dead.

Drunk on Hirschorn lawn,
all the sculptures rise
& take to air, bronze over bronze.
She floats the cocked corner
of my eye, a wince under glint
of gangly windows glazed
blankly across glossy estate.
Drunk again at noon, drawn
in by hurt - she surprises
with reproval - though it spawns
first in the self-soul, first mourner
at the living funeral. O Jennie, minting
through this garden with cotton grace,
tolerate a dazed smile today, amid the statuary.

Middle school, age thirteen:
that strange doubled feeling

when walking cinderblocked halls
painted calm institutional blue -

there I am, heart in hand,
clopping in too-big shoes

to the strobing gym to see the girls
in their new bright dresses,

our bodies and faces branching
into adulthood relentlessly;

to see friends wearing cheap new suits
& talking endlessly of Kelly and Molly,

of Sarah and cheerleader Brittany,
of the Other Kelly, Erica, and Erin

(some having thoughts of Bryan
& Kenny, Mike, and Other Mike)

Yet there is another of me
listening to checkered floor,

how the linoleum squares echo
as I stalk through emptied halls,

(how disturbing, when a known thing
is so reconfigured and unfamiliar...)

I reach the chaperone stand,
deliver my ticket from a hot palm,

step into the loud and wild parade
as the dimmed dance floor writhes

with pubescent shadows,
my shoes clacking and shining,

looking for Kelly and Other Kelly,
drifting to safer bleacher corners:

unaware that thirty years later
this night is still engraved

on the back of a breaking brain:
the year the harvest failed.

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.

I will write about it,
someday. Today,
though, my life
huddles under
a blue raincoat.
Someday I will
tell it all, really.
See, the problem
is that I have
given away
all my secrets,
but not to you.

Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.
-All's Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare

Another well-burnt dusk,
clouds clawing up and out,
denying the gray night-grave.

The evening is so fast:
raw-mooned, silvery-blooded;
our hearts are lesser-than.

Thoughts in a jar, prepared
for the thinnest journey:
O, the memory carousel...

No: Stop the grief, cork it up.
Throw the midnight away.
The gun is empty,

click click click.
The roulette wheel churns
towards the cold morning.

Careful, reader: look how
the black garden blooms -
shhhh - take a sip... forget them.

We were just telephones
full of young ***,
sharp breath and sticky,
talking into sleep...

I'd dial into your machine,
it was your mom singing
"Splish Splash" by Bobby Darin,
you were so embarrassed

(with that button nose
you hated so much),
but it was always OK, Kelly.
We met just the once, at Alan's party,

for his basement Exorcist
& you clutched my hand in the dark.
When you're 15, that kind of thing
takes on certain meanings.

When you broke us up
I sobbed in my bedroom,
pleading to Richard Pryor
who I had pasted to the ceiling.

I lost track of you
until you married my blond
summer steakhouse boss:
everyone said you weren't happy.

Now you are a minus sign,
a gauze-ghost, an atom-gap,
a redheaded dull-bladed heartache
who I thought I loved, once

(in my teenage way, I did).
I buttoned my shirt wrong
while remembering you,
I tasted you in a glass of rye.

There is a freeze coming.
Wear a scarf, a good jacket:
the rain is coffin lacquer gloss
as it shines and skitters into ice.

You love him,
but he doesn't know.
All the stars go dim,
you love him,
with every breath a hymn,
but it doesn't show -
you love him,
but he doesn't know.

"All fleshe is grasse" -
In danger of the mow,
we go to bed,
fight with touch
the shortness of life.
Death’s repeal is ***.

Welcome home,
little darling,
to the starry comb.
Welcome home
to dine on tomes.
Hear the starlings?
Welcome home,
little darling.

We were the shining ones.
Our bottles never broke,
coffee was always at
full steam. My perfect
memory pulled at the
hair of time. Your wrist
tattoo sighed in the sheets.
The bed ached. The sun
was a press. We were the
shining ones, to be sure.

But then you were called
back to the green. I watched
your plane. I dropped throbs.
My heart was broken harp
strings. There was fever
crying in my hands.

But you will be back.
You'll cross the hems of
the world. I'll hold you
again in the sweet of
the night. You'll draw me.
Your paintings will sing
Hallelujahs from the walls.
The moon will moan glory
from its lonely sconce.
We'll be flooded
with reunion.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day
-Lord Byron, "Darkness"


Eater of broken meats
touching the night skin:
an ebb and flow of rain
scolds the window.

My skin bursts with olive slivers
with no hand to calm it in the morning.
Scalpel water from the white basin
glistens on a lip tatter.

The moon is failing.
Crude isolate breath
hums above the bud-elm.
Young drunks are wailing

as they hug one another,
twinned by the street flicker.
I succumb to sleep's disease
with your book still in my hand.

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.

I walked out last night,
barley-headed,
soul burnt down to a stub,
into a black chassis
fenced with star -
my hairy-eyed heart
carried on so.
But I am thankful for you,
my friend,
who so easily righted my keel
back into the tide
with a graceful turn.

Your words sift the holly,
brace the moon,
they are petrichor
in the lavender fields.
They come across the sea,
I eat them like pastilles.
I refresh the screen in hopes
that they have spiced the page.

The way I imagine you now,
in this moment,
you are running,
lifting the beach fleetly,
trailing a supping sun -
go, then, and know that the world
is so much better for you.

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.

i.
Your names
are a sudden
throb on
the tongue.

ii.
Your names
are a beachhead,
and the splitting
tide across it.

iii.
Your names
are diaries,
secret days
of ash and ink.

iv.
Your names
are the green
vocabularies
of the branches.

v.
Your names
are a shock
of gin in the
back of the throat.

vi.
Your names
are vespertine,
a soft song
in the evening.

vii.
Your names
are a corsage
of ether around
the wrist.

viii.
Your names
are an antidote
to the long,
long day.

ix.
Your names
are dreams,
mirages that
divide and rise.

x.
Your names
are the dark
brick fork
in my lane.

You're glassed into the closed door,
gloss across you like an aegis
against me. On your phone,
your eyes come up, see me,
send sorries, draw down.

In my first visit to the store,
I remember pamphlet pages
and seeking quinacridone.
It was the white wreath
of your soft look that I found.