Travel

The roadways finesse our tongues bashfully;
through shagged over-growth & reasoned slopes
its roping waves with white arms & awaits
attention. There are markings along the way.
A sense of sabotage leaks & travels from ravine
to ravine, running carefully. Casualty, tree trunks
& trash ironed flat by chance. It is true the day
ends & that a harness is only worth what it holds.
We are belted & moving forward with just a handful
of matches & nothing worth striking, while amnesty
dreadfully follows anticipating open windows.

A List Against Loss

A brace of proud objects:

automatic gestures,
impeding grey scales,
a step in the wrong direction

Now just reclining chairs & aluminum cans.
Now deliberation.

Without pronouns everything is the same.

Readying disrepair in weighted boots,
inching forward, forward.

The Smallest Pond

The fledging land lines of uniformity strike again amongst
a complex anatomy of fans & belts & restitutive awnings,
whose sole purpose is borrowed & flanked so that the sky
can pitch rain like falling nickels, all the while disregarding
forewarned expectation & meeting in this circular place
where what is forced is either straightened or shakes.
It is the wind that helps, not the getting closer & in the manner
of the under-earth after light is recovered from darkness this surface
approaches unsuggestively & in unknown conflict. Reflection
is limited to the attention one gives, éclat with modified increments—
a face over looking itself, over looking the road; a fleeting semblance
altering what is brave & posturing androgynous totems; sanctity
worthy of worship or dismay & now with the sun setting
makes the reluctance to peer beyond the rim even easier.

In hearing motors

turning:
the break

resisted
small light

in the shadow, duplication

what conversation

mouths
having made

similar
shapes before

knowingly placed

lamps

arms reach

adjacent to pilgrimage,

the bigger implication

lost

the window open

the feet of people
I will never know

in practice

the turning

eats

it grows, it doesn’t know how to stop

At the toes of giants

long round faces

the day large
& accepting

below stairs
behind doors
brushed hair

—moving away

the settling foundation
beneath the frame

doors open & close
& never once
is anyone suspicious