When the surgeon closes the blinds
When the plane shakes
When your kid is late
When another voice answers your lover’s phone
When you wake up and can’t move
When your team is losing
When you can’t reach their hand
When the baby has a fever
When the train rattles
When the doctor talks to your family
When entering a dark room
When your lover forgets
When class won’t end
When someone falls
When you can’t afford milk
When class won’t end
When the car slides
When breath slides
When                     When
             When.

Today
                                                                         at a poetry reading.
I thought of coming up behind you
                                                                         we were in your kitchen.
My hands slip up your shirt
                                                         you dropped a turquoise plate in the sink
                                                         it bounced once.
I slide my hands down
into you.
                                                         no one turned off the faucet,

~

Today
                                                         in class
                                                         my sweater ripped a string
onto my finger
                                    one ring

I slid it off and on
                                      if you had been next to me
                                      I would have asked you to marry me
suddenly afraid
of losing this fabric.

I’ve gotten better
at eating the wafer
                                       so Jesus
doesn’t get stuck in the metal.

I still haven’t bought gloves,
             though I had steel-toe boots for awhile.
Callouses are waiting for you to lay hands bare
to everything you own. You can go years without feeling
the bottom of your own table.

I moved Dad into his new house.
This brings the total to 18 moves in 10
years. Mostly in 20 hour windows.
You were around
for 7 or 8 of them

I read once that most of dust is actually stardust
from micro-meteorites. It’s not true.
It is actually dead pieces of you.
I’ve inhaled more of us than anyone.

Item highlights:

250 lb. End table with hidden safe inside
    Combination: unknown
Garbage bag with mom’s clothes
     and one Phillips-head screwdiver
Four landline phones tangled
    with their cords in a laundry hamper
Seven phonebooks in a neat cardboard box

Madalyn: Dad still has the small wooden sign you made him
                     the one that says “Dad’s Workshop” in blue glitter-paint.

Steve:        Dad has recently bought a toaster oven, and he loves it
                     as much as you love yours. He gave me the same speech
                     about the difference in the taste of hot-dogs.

You are both still in the pictures at his house. It startles
me when your faces appear on the screensaver.

was growing to the south of the town
      every spring the men would go down
marching in their robes to burn each stalk
   but the fire would enter their walk
       they rid themselves of the leaden weight
of their robes      the mens wild gait
was pagan   animalistic
their whole life had been running from this
   easy in those robes      but now   naked
they touched each others bodies      taken
with the attar of the fire      *******
in ashes      on their knees   *******
not praying   but swallowing      then the robes
   left to burn      from the ash   the field left to grow

Elegy to Val’s Husband

I knew she was not a rose
was never sharp enough, and she didn’t believe
in snapdragons. She grew tomatoes.

She said
How pretty they would be,
touching the stems
how tall,
but I don’t know if he will get to see them.

I wish she would grow morning glories
and sleep through the night.

GUN
I can’t decide: the temple
or the mouth. In my mouth
it reminds me of holding a spoon
on my tongue, or when I  leaned pennies against
my gums. It is like licking the key to the shed, 1999.
The temple reminds me of my mother’s thumb
Pressing against circularly, circularly.
I shoot.
I wake up in front of a computer screen.
The air crashes together rippling
like a snake digests small rodents. I wake up next
to a beautiful woman. The explosion comes in
layers of jagged red and parallel yellow, like a cartoon.

PILLS
Swallow-Puke-Swallow-Can-
not-let-mybody-winthis-­one-Ilock-
-thedoor-andleave-ano-
-te-
No-one-should-come-look
-i­ng-for-me.

TRAIN
Don’t notice the figure lowering himself
onto the tracks, pausing to consider lying down
then the light comes, and I turn toward it
letting my bag slide from me. My jackets molt.
The only sound is the plank rattles of feet
running south. The only feeling is the space
between a cloud and the crack of lightning.
The birth. Light envelopes the figure.

JUMPING
I leap
far
because (Bernoulli’s Principle) not
wanting      to be ******      back
against the side of the build
ing, like examples:
      window-blinds
shower curtains.
      I realize every time
I argued(lied) airplanes were safe.
This is when (building) I hit.

CAR
I am with you,
Jenny. I couldn’t do this
without you. I hold your hand
and realize I have never touched your
skin until this moment. Neither of our hands
are cold. The fumes coming from the siphon hose
are warm. I smell the dirtbike from the time,
9 years old, I topped the hill. Beyond,
are wildflowers. I cannot remember if this
is a dream. Waking up, Jenny,
our hands are
falling apart. Jenny,
your hand has not gone limp,
but it has lifted like a jellyfish.