Smaller & Smaller

Abrasions across
caddy-corners,
across irrevocable
dimensions; attention
levied to strips cut
thinner & thinner
in the repetitive
opening wide
of piqued interest,
its tendencies duly
noted, welcoming
reception instead
of gorge, a wider
shot in pocket; no
one knows what is
biting; lesion
making generosities
stare & stare; invasive
practices still not
denounced; & you
less trustworthy
of what travels alone.

A Collective Noun

1. Unvisited, back door

2. Pocketed whale hanging from keys

3. The familiar driving range, a descend, a wrap around

4. Available parallel lines

5. Holding without question

6. A ripping up, a rug, absorption

7. Telephone with chord knocked free

8. Steel strainer, empty dog dish, etc.

9. A sliding door

10. Knowing as glass figurines

11. Adopted surname, maiden helm, despair

12. Fake tattoos, candid photos, etc.

13. A room with table, with chair, under roof,

isolated from the gusts overhead

14. Gesturing awards, assorted trophies

Reservations

Like various places
with the same song,
same seat, the same
following through.
Contained places,
judging gradually
& making note while
sitting under nighttime
skies. By day, one
can either sit facing
the window or away,
sun as supplied advantage.
Somewhere the lawn
is still green & promising.
The you in this poem
is far away & knows
that all the speakers
it has ever met
have left, gone to stand
at another precipice.
Primitive only means
not knowing any better.

Pink, plastic flamingos

A bird flies overhead
& it doesn’t matter

that no one notices.
It is October

& the billboards
are skimming

the edges & books
& arms expect

refrain. Someone’s
hair is lightly pulled

back in fists, mediated
in mouthfuls; the teeth

of something much
faster than escape.

The ceiling is not
glass. Metaphors

are useful: raspberry,
a lion in a cage.

The decision to get up
& go is just that.

Beginnings

Constant limits like holes in the fence.
This silver island pretending not to notice,
covering angles & indispensable doubts.
The desert reads pages & pages of iconography,
lonely for an empty torso. Right now, an assembly
of sitting & standing & walking through doors.
We have learned how to wait, lending red
to promised compensation, inspired filaments walking
the cement like rib-shaking demonstratives, like an ache
instead of insistence or a sharpened profile in the periphery.
I don't know what happens when you are not near me
& I don't want to--unfinished & intent on holding true:
the strain of looking up or the rush from doorway
to doorway, the reprieve from vacancy & tented constellations.