“The street is dangerous”
the boy says to his sister
in hand at the crosswalk.

It is 2pm on the corner
and the school kids
begin to pass the cafe.

Strollers and stragglers
others bounding alongside
their tired mothers.

Some gaze upwards
stretching their arms
towards buildings and lights,

things they cannot
reach but hope
to one day grasp.

Others absorbed
into small devices
held in their hands,

things they cannot
touch but will try to
for maybe a long time.

So many come still
all at waist height
in their multicolored jackets,

Pokemon backpacks,
and Spiderman sneakers
that drag along the sidewalk.

And finally the little girl
who touches all she passes —
the iron fence, my chair,

the table — as if the world
only becomes real
under her palm.

i want to split my shadow from my body
to feel the peel of its black scab

press my soul smooth
under the hot heel of an iron

i flip through old notebooks
each page an incomplete image

i see a child smearing paint
to feel it glide beneath his fingers

with no need to believe
in the colors that swirl under his hand

he only loves the stubborn way
they gum up in his palm

i see myself as a blank page
waiting to be written into motion

as if some line of dark ink
could form a portrait

each turn of phrase a brush stroke
thick with oil, the heavy layers piled on

i see a man awoken in a dark room
dinner is over and daylight passed

through the window snow falls in clusters
and hits the ground with tiny puffs

the house is empty except for muddied prints
tracked in by someone’s shoes



he traces them down the stairs
out the door as they wind through the yard

past the wooden fence that borders the tree line
as they are slowly swallowed by the whiteness

My life began and ended
then began again.

Old relatives and friends
came and went

like images scrolling
on a computer screen.

It’s green glow spills onto my skin
and into this dark room

where time stands still
and clothes pile in the corner,

while outside perennials bend
and open their petals

towards the sun
to swallow its gaze,

then bow back down
in respect for the ghost moon

who sends spirits that fold lines
into the faces of those in sleep.

They play with our dreams
like wooden marionettes

and smooth the edges of memories
just as bone dulls a steel blade.



I’m sure they have visited us,
whispered some secret out our mouths.


As I sit here, I try to place us
somewhere between the cycle

of day and night, between
pixelated moments encoded

in gigabytes on my hard drive.
I place a number on a virtual file

to hide it from prying hands
that come like a mist in the night.

Safe between the ones and zeros
and electric highways of a computer chip,

not so different from those in my brain
where nerves endings could zap

me back to a time when I knew
the dip and curve of your collar bone,

the taste of menthol on your breath,
those late nights when we first met

and fell asleep to the sound of the dogs barking
as the neighbor’s children left for school.

I owe nine hundred ninety-six dollars and ten cents
to a bank somewhere in the hills of Upstate New York.

There in a concrete bunker men collect ballpoint pens,
dribble coffee on their wrinkled ties, lick their palms

slick their hair and punch my number into a database
where a machine speaks my name into a receiver

and plays a smooth jazz song -- a genre manufactured
to hypnotize the listener into eternal apprehension.

Last night for the first time, I thumbed the soft cove
behind the empty piercings of your earlobe.

We're loaned out little moments (your breath in my mouth)
and charged interest (for the spit on my lip.)

I always ask too much -- more than I could ever give back.
Every good day marked with its cost.

I want to know how your body fits against mine.
If anything could ever feel completely whole --

more than just a fraction of some old god's fortune
I've borrowed one too many times.

One day maybe he will come back to claim it.
Until then let's learn to be frugal.

A mason jar filled with spare pocket change
also collects lint and hair and small skin particles

of friends and strangers. Let's learn how to love
within the means of these small bone cages.

Save solitary drops of sweat and stray eyelashes,
the dried specks of mascara and summer freckles

collected on cheeks. So when the time comes
we can pay back this long line of gray men in suits

who clutch fat folders of financial records to their chests
to keep them from spilling open.

How familiar this dark feeling
of being given the gift
only to wake from the mist of a dream
and find only torn wrapping paper.

Know that when you touch my hand
a comparably sized fist of energy
lifts my rib like a window blind
and wakes a tired muscle from dissolution.

The horizon in the West is a golden peach
but only through the lens of smog
which tells us this beautiful lie
in apology for its slow caress of death.

Some of us were born to spread a terrible disease
and can only hope to dress in colorful beads
of opal, purple lilac, and quartz
lest we let it feed on our own unbecoming.

I will not say I have not carried a sickness all my life
-- dragged this rotten sack of fruit through the dirt
in hopes of reaching the earth's end
to roll it off into the infinite black.

I.
I am the word in your chest
you can't scrap from bone.
I am home with the lights low
and doors latched shut.

II.
I am the lettering of your name
etched electric in the brain.
I am a whisper of crab grass
with dandelion breath.

III.
At night (        ) distant stars,
a soft glow from years past.
You are the dreamer in bed
who wakes in the womb of amnesia.

IV.
I am reflection in glass
and water and stone.
You are (
            ) crack of dry dirt.

V.
These moments(
          ) written years (
    
                  ) before your birth.

VI.
(        ) are the yellow bruise (
          )
I (
         ) the skin (                )

VII.
(               ) light (
) does not travel.
(                                  ) it remembers
all we have forgotten.

The snow has been falling for a few days
or years now. It drops from the pines
in white plumes, needles shoot
out from the glaze of ice. Did you
know in 1849 a snowflake
fell from the Scottish sky
twenty feet wide and shattered
cloud glass across the frozen ground?
Right now the radio says parallel
dimensions may exist while I realize
I need to put another notch
in my belt to keep my jeans
from falling to the floor -- to keep
distant suns within reach. Did you
know one scientist suggested the universe
is a giant crystal growing in a five-
dimensional liquid? I try to picture
its jagged edges swelling through time,
the snow falling in clusters
while the tea kettle hisses steam
and the television talks just a little
too fast. I take out the pocket knife
and lay the belt on the ***** floor
and dishes and snow piling
up around cars and door-
ways, and empty bottles and cans,
***** t-shirts, crumpled papers,
pots and pans. The knife sinks into leather
and creates a hole to hug closer
to my waist -- to hug myself into orbit
and anchor myself to the earth. Did you know:
When I was younger the sun
would shine the flakes together
into a thin sheet of ice we could walk
on. The light's reflection was sharp --
with eyes closed we took slow steps
above all the small pieces
that would soon melt,
not wanting to break the illusion
of our height, feet above the ground,
on a gleaming surface that could give way
at any moment.

The shuffle of feet
to an out of time
drum beat. Sweat
and stink, shoulder
to shoulder

is what they'll remember
when they pay seven
bucks for a wrist
band stuck to arm
hair, and a marker stain
on the back of the hand
like a black badge.

Tomorrow no one will
remember how guitar fuzz
cut like a razor or the bass
burst in their chests,

because when the last note
decays in the back of the bar,
all the kids will have is a ring
in their ears, and a scratch
in the throat from a sound
dug deep into elbow bruise
and beer can crush.

Tomorrow they will hear it,
when paper tears from wrist,
when ink is washed from hands,
when feedback is faded
and speaker hiss cut.

The bar is slick with liquor
and the lacquered wood is worn
where elbows rub
and beer froths over.

I have spent my last dollar
on cheap whiskey that clings
to the back of my throat
long after I've left into the snow

and slush of winter streets,
holding onto some sort of
temporary beauty that weaves
through the threads of traffic lights

and glistens on the sidewalk,
like a gold coin
that fades with the night.

You're all drawn curtain
and door hinge creak
she told me. Fogged
mirror crack and cold

window draft. Drool
drain drip and
refrigerator politics.
She told me

to shape up. You're
all washing machine
spin, dry skin
and old record skip.

She told me to listen
up. You're all click
of the lock and
ring of the phone.

Carpet stain sore
she told me. All
bedsheet crease,
alright, all mine.

If you were to release
another whisper
into the mouth
of the night,

If you were to crack
the knuckles
of the chain-link
fence once again,

Shuffle across
the gravel's
dry and scratching
throat,

Shift yourself
in between
the tongues of
city lights,

It would not be the same
as the first time you tucked
the sun behind your ear and said:
“Keep driving, we've got time to ****.”

It could've been
the sweet scent

that sank into sheets.
It could've been

the peel of the red
dress from shoulder

blades, like a layer
of skin.

It could've been
black shoes

left by the door
that shone

like piano keys.
Maybe it was  

the room draped
across your back,

how you pulled
it around us,

shrinking the world
into something

we could
understand.

No,
        it was just

the hollow sound
of the closing door

that made me wish
you never left.

We waded knee deep in the puddles
of vacant lots when the flood filled
our gutters to the brim.

When the rain died down and the water pulled
itself from the streets we watched the rainbow
of oil swirl around our ankles,

walked the wooden footbridge that broke
apart under the weight of our feet,
the water-logged wood rot

splitting while rusted nails slid
out of place. We followed the streams
back to the plaza, back to fake IDs

and the ash-stained tobacco shop.
We found ourselves under flickering
lights, leaning against the rusted

siding of the family market, faces hidden
in a mask of smoke. We got lost
in the electric hum of the laundromat's cyclic drone.

They paved over it all -- covered freckled
skin with cloth and hot tar,
crushed vacant houses like hollow skulls,

ignited neon lights and street lamps,
strip malls and drugs stores
that burn holes into old hiding places.

They still try to sift through shattered glass,
silence the hiss of the popped bike tire,
wipe away the blood flower that blooms

from my scabbed knee.