writings

sunlight through the window facing the street coats surfaces in triangles and squares the walls’ incumbent yellow is complemented gains depth dandelion fading into honey mess of cables on my desk making dark webs silhouette of the panes becoming crisp beyond the glass the sky clings to its blueness but at the horizon the honey threatens to climb higher and consuming each needle of the neighbor’s pine bleeds upwards into the blue mixing then dominating and the pine begins to lose its green ...

dogwoods are peppered eastbound and westbound blooming a shade of pink like a strawberry smoothie or a july sunset over the south river after work sometimes i catch the apex of golden hour the light filtering through the trees to dance on the dashboard the blossoms the empty road in the rear view the purring of the car in fifth gear and my tired body acts on me the belt isn’t there to keep my body from flying through the windshield but to provide reassuring pressure on chest and stomach and the dashed white lines tell the car where to go ...

my hands still shake - last night i dreamed i was swallowing and kept choking my throat full of water movements and thuds echoed in my chest someone told me i needed an mri i believed them and found myself naked paper-thin hospital gown covering laying on a human-sized tray the machine pulled me in and moaned making a magnetic metallic inferno stationary tray trembling me imagining every fatal conclusion ...

i do not know your names i think as i walk beneath you you hold your breath waiting for something like recognition i am sorry i know you’re part of this planned constructed land with its new sod hugging the sidewalks bandages against the footsteps of people who have places to be and do not notice your leaves that fall and are not given time to become friends maybe lovers ...

there was something comforting in the passing of cars at night, when i was small and slept in half a bunk bed, light danced through my window and melded with thoughts turning into almost dreams. there was one road in front of my house and it, the sole vehicle conveyor. i am on a rooftop now sheltered by two leafless trees and i can see the whole block i live on and i have been listening. ...

we had rules you know, brother and me. you don’t wear shoes, you yell car when we’re playing in the road and you spot one. you make fires and keep them going even when it rains. we had a playhouse in the backyard and sweet gum trees peppered the property. did you know we collected gum balls and kept them on the roof of the playhouse’s first floor? we were preparing for a war, not because we wanted battle but because we liked the idea of defending ...

the compression before, that space of time feels as though some many limbed being is placing their many fingers into the many folds of my brain and pinching light like picking up a dim dragonfly between index and thumb then the tribulations are over and they retreat themselves from my mind it is the difference between plunging a fork into a cake not done and five minutes later first the crumbs cling to fork and then the cake is returned and the oven continues throwing heat into every cake particle ...

a friend gave me some words to write into a poem and i wrote this. i don’t remember what the words were and i think it loses track of itself a bit by the end but it’s still entertaining peach frozen flecks veins spoon howl train a good peach is soft and fuzzy like a baby’s head and the peach tree clings to its child matching the strength of stem, a tug like infant’s clenched fist on sleeve, a sleeve speckled with King Arthur flour flecks. ...

but not now when i’m with her and free from these clothes, free from self-judgements and free from time, out of time, not like there’s no time left but out of time, like time is a stream flowing through young woods or maybe a mangrove, flowing to touch the salty ocean and i’m out of time stepping out of the stream clenching spring grass or sand in toes, out of time, out of water, wet and drying, and i have no idea how many years are on my skin, fifty or fifteen, they’d feel the same, ...

next to these letters a seashell fragile as a yolk’s home colored as the heavy comforter in my parents’ bed the bed i took naps in with mom matching measuring cadence the pace of air for i hoped rhythm could be something like the winter sun slipping low and lower making nights long and days shorter calling for birds to leave and bears to sleep give me an incantation like the twisting of the world like the sliding slow snapping of constellations into place some spell against the murky ocean or foggy mountain obscuring perfect conch obscuring double yellow for now i have no mother’s breath to guide me or heavy comforter to hold me and i cannot remember how to fall asleep