DREAM HOUSE

These spiders
are the talkative hands

of the draftsman,
gesturing

the dimensions
of the dream house—

a sketch rendered
in mid-air,

nearly enough
to whisper in.

This poem originally appeared in Poet Lore

SAME NARCISSUS

heaven is gradually shredding evidence of our eternal loneliness

and the bits are coming down like New Year’s Eve again–

the noiseless tatters of precipitation parachute in, stick

like moist ash to these minor hair catastrophes,

mummify the risen antennae of every twitching and nascent desire…

and the wind is polishing your earthly loneliness

until it grows smooth and clear, bears the icy

ornamentality of a blue eye just rattling around

inside the head of a plastic doll–

there’s no way for the light to ever see out of our holiday cheer

though the darkness has a way of clearly seeing

into all our coveted toys– the chauffer

works his rag into the hood of a limousine, erasing each flake as it lands,

until he could plainly see his boss sneering back at him in the shine,

then wonders if he could buy back the rights to his own face–

grimace afloat in the starry sheen– same narcissus,

same snow dusting his worry-lines like stage make-up,

like a thousand adoring air kisses, the flashbulbs fickle as yesterday,

the melting amens…

poem originally appeared in a chapbook, “The Ransacked Planetarium” (Pudding House Press 2009)

FLY IN THE BAKERY AT EVENING TIME

Hunger
revelates in the gloaming

alights
upon a vanilla rosette

preens
on a whipped cloud,

dies and wakes in ever sweeter
heavens,

performs fly-angels in the lemon cream…

buzzes
like a question

above the bride and groom.

originally appeared in American Letters and Commentary

REVERSIBLE JACKET

Something in my mind had been deflowered.
I held a secret for so long, I became that secret.
Suddenly myself again, I could not say exactly why.
The bees said who cares, the grass said
being is as being does.
Like some reversible jacket,
my smile, either way, was still a smile.

THE PEOPLE I LOVE

I think of Einstein,
not so much his genius,
but that blast of hair–
so many scribbled-out equations,
a thousand tries at truth
he could never comb down.
I think of his famous closet
full of identical suits
to keep him focused on a point
too big or small
to bother with the everyday.

This is why I love the most
carelessly groomed people,
the people at parties
who head straight for the corners
and make jokes so dark
you’d have to squint to see the humor,
especially at this diner at five in the morning,
where our snickering is so loud, so crazy,
it scares off the tattooed bikers,
and even the guy who talks to his coffee,
stirs it to dissolve the tiny microphones
he believes the FBI has planted.

Outside, the street is like a print
in the smudged glow of a darkroom
surprised by what it’s becoming–
one red bulb shining faintly above,
trying hard to see like the rest of us
just what to make of it.

This poem originally appeared in The American Literary Review.

ROSARIES

The cars are worry beads, stalled
inside the woman’s grip.

Even her ambulance
is a vertebrae strung upon a nerve …

the siren ruminates over the major questions
until the red light smears

the faces of window shoppers, whose heads
turn away from their own mortality

and float off again– each head, the body’s
own balloon drifting away

so the flesh may enjoy its thoughts
from a distance.

Like one stray salmon dieing into the future, the ambulance crashes
through wave after wave of recurring dream…

makes an exit wound
of hopelessness

until the paramedics are beyond fearing
their vehicle may fish-tail wildly in the drizzle, crash

and splay
the glittering

instruments of survival–
a box filled with rosary beads– the luminous roe spilled into a world

so prolific with loss
the odds are at least one being among us will breathe again.

This poem originally appeared in The Manhattan Review.

ZONING PROPOSAL FAXED VIA THE IMAGINATION, THEN CANCELLED

If you live in a walk-up overlooking a chasm
where the wind bobbles hub caps

like a clumsy thief, and leaves tattoos
of rubber on the passing lane and flecks

of windshield, which are the eye-twinklings

of those who have perished, happy hour after
happy hour, and who without fail, have been ejected

clear through that failure– then I would like you

to compose a poem, and toss it now from your fire escape.
Let it swoop down and cling to the grillwork

of a passing eighteen-wheeler, so your words
might read the handwriting on the tallest embankment–

so that poem might pour through the manifestoes
of the local Graffitarati
and become

so worldly that a more knowing city
may crystallize around such day-glo claims. But please, don’t avert

your eyes as that new Jerusalem crumbles like the windshield

through which blooms the continual error
of some stranger’s face forced prematurely

into flower, because any experiment

or poem would collapse under the weight
of such honesty, and because

I had the wrong address when I sent this to you
in the first place– you, whose neighborhood and poems

and sleep are already cleaved by the incessant traffic.
Because each dwindling light is steered

by a singular being, and
each being is the smallest iota

of comfort you may never have
the comfort of knowing.

This poem originally appeared in Third Coast.