I began reading out of spark,
but this little thing has me growling
and I can’t help, but to feed
knee to head and crouching
cornered against walls of a busy cafe
where there are more jaws buzzing and even more capitol
in the money and these flies drone me out
and the words push me in
towards the heated center of feeling
if my heart were a room then it would have an open window because
the fuzzy thing about the lift is that it chooses my head
on top level
to the inclement of mood and allows no cumber
set hallowed and watching
where an angel has fallen,
superfluous in feather
not from grace or worry,
but from break on my lungs with
none of the bulk
and all of the beauty
I am rinsed,
sunken in
revert to push another sell
and the mouths stay open
because the chump will abide
by the cold fortune honey
caught short-changed
and pudgy
looking like the pulled skirt of mother with
curled hands in a toast of the coming season’s weather
and as day pours at fold lines,
the flies really make a killing
which can make a man take notice
of the birds,
and their singing.

Girl, around 27.
No, woman, rather.
Her youth walked through and hung there, dry, as mine did in exchange
so we pick and choose a role and sidle along the bar where
I am with a perk in the feet, lifted by the ***** of,
but a lot easier than you can imagine as
she lays her words out like warm hands and with a blue bird of compassion,
asks me how I am.
I gripe and she listens in a knowing way then reverse
in very clean queues and open mouths

She says, “They say today is going to be the busiest day of the year”, with a fire lit
behind an eye where she does not smile of her face, but through a grit in the teeth

I laugh inwardly, towards myself in a search for appropriation and then spit heavily onto table, “well, it looks like we both have something to look forward to, then”.

Then angelic laughter where my cheeks couldn’t follow and I am ****** in.

There was a moment then, which I wish could be brought to plate and silver.
a sort of cunning lock between a soul and my own where I hope only to god,
that I’ve thrown a key down river.

She walks out after our matching eyes and mirrored moves
So I watch her,
not her ***,
not her chest,
not her brown, burning hair,
but the still skin of her neck in an open sense where I want to take it in
as if she had the happiness and I am jealous
like a tearing gabble of a baby.

I look out
from a car window
and remember
that I learned to
love the trees
and thought
of all the graves.
Of
all the shallow graves under
the erected deep
where
there is all hair,
lonely and naked,
against the time and rain
as a stage lit river bank
with drawn fire and ice clicks
along the cold side of the keys
to crawl like waves of
timber
among the
oceanic mountains
uttering a small prayer to say
that I am here,
up and coming,
coddled through coarse grind in pulpit about
peace and subtle motion.
All shallow.
All echo.
All graves and disbelief.

The woods all beckon.
The billboards gasp
in a valley of tears
and
I sit
for a long time
and think heavily
at the middle
of my steering wheel
until you push my hair back
and scratch my skin
like shallow cuts
to swell.
Under the erected deep
where
murderous crows lie, scattered
and
her crawl, now
a galvanizing leap.