for when my thoughts make icycles and drip.

when my thoughts thaw into streams adjacent swamped cheap land, gutters by my family.

fuzzy red raw swollen hands, fists clenched on goose hearts,
on dartmouth writing clubs, my ivory skin sought tanning.

I remember my favorite russian girl i met there, long gone, her polyglot charm ringing like chinese bells tinkling,

Thoughts remember my daughter, grown under my intermittent sun,
As if she too is a visitor,
like visitors bless a place.
Like a place wishes to be flat
and run across by the rapid heart,
of a brown hare across the wet black asphalt,
of trapped wet lips, of an elderly man,
and balloons of blushing boys cheeks.

I squeezed the shoulders of baby's mum who's heart i broke as a fool stone. I gave her kisses rich as strawberries, because that's what she is.

Rabbits catch on hooks and crushed and stuffed in the black cool summer night full of ambitious boys' erections,

Reason to recall the things that are, the way they are wide inside the empty around that, which is most of everything, most of what blindness is.

My grandpappy went up Italy. And sixty years later this girl came here from Milan to explore. Tide in, tide out.
Now the hangover. Time to be sick.

-cbrander