glasses with flowers curled on the sides
a hot LA summer, VCRs stacked high
brings me, according to you
to the sweltering shelter of memories lost

tuck a woman on her side and give away her liberty
she bit you, she's long bitten me
she sobs as you drive, have you ever heard a more terrible sound?
a mother lost, broken over the knee by her mind

call me

see how angry I am
left to roll, sticking talcum in between bumps of fat
while age makes me reckless and strong

try and tell me how I am
if you're gone.

smothered in a snowbank
breathing in the absence of sound
I'm caught in the grooves of ice, spinning my wheels
a hand dealt by cars and too little salt

if I hold out my hand, I can't feel my fingers
puffy and frozen
an extended hand, out on a limb

brown and barren

drink me up, me
maybe then you'll feel sober

i rub my feet to think
^a criticism he had

you small smell
tell me how i once knew you?
and then tell me why i once bent my body around you
to repair a doomed and deeper well

delight:

a secret in your pocket
of liking something you can't help to like

tucked between the stars and the skyline

I only get to pick one

the inevitable loneliness of
a) of watching a galaxy in all its splendor
b) watching everyone else at night

my grandfather has thin skin
he says
after I watched him buckle after a bunch in texture on the floor
a wire
a corner
a buckle in the universe

where man falters where he is confident to walk
and I watch the blood in a ****** mary leak into the corners of a white leather couch
a drink, spicy and cold
less orange than the purple that swells under his skin
and redder than the faded napkin I wrap around the icepack

he has eyes browner than my brothers
less brooding, more soft with an illustration,
a knowledge of all his children's lives
and I wonder, a tight cliched anxiety in my chest
would I ever be so lucky

to worry
about all my successful children?
or would it ever keep me up
to wonder
if they were happy
or after everything, all the gravel and grit
or after everything, in their lungs, in their brains, in their skin,
smoothing right, all their rigors
humming under their hearth of hearts

if I would just go to bed,
happy they would be okay
or
happy there wasn't a buckle in the universe