Poetry

Selected Publications

 

Uncene

In the uncene, everything
that will have been is
already given. Incl.
frontier fantasies, fetishes
and the religions that
mastered them. Incl.
zones of exclusion
and the institutions
who loved them. Incl.
the pretense of inclusion
and the potential for un
earthing a stratigraphic form
ula for history and its accidents.
(There will have been only depth
left. No surface to speak with
or against which to gauge
the injection well’s slurry.)

There will have been fissures
and fractures, ghosts gumming
sarcophagi with a tenderness
already unknown. There will
have been neither post nor un
dulating sympathies to mask
the dead who were already
never seen, no space left
to hold something like an eye
which would have been filled
by what will have covered every
thing, incl. the wings of creatures
of air and the surface of the sea.
Incl. redemption stories and the new
worlds they suggested, casually, as we
once did, as we will have done again
and again as if we hadn’t already
seen what we would make of them.

River Rail, 2019

 

 

Proof of Harm

 

This one measures tidal flux against plastic gyre

crest against breast        of least tern      brown pelican

more brown now but also more red and yellow            the slick turned rainbow

the bow of the boat nuzzles against the soft floating bodies in animal fashion

in which nose is more trustworthy than hand

in which scent alerts hair and skin        index of harm or help              contiguous

but not synonymous with language which could be called reason

 

This one measures the speed of sound against the body

when one person calls for help

vs. another

when one is told to raise their hands

when one is asked to raise their hand and is called on

and asked to answer

vs. told to answer for

their body

 

This one measures those two knocking against each other

crest against breast as one person least brown calls for help

another person is told to raise their hands more

brown more red           the sick turning

toward the bow raised against the soft bodies

as one asks which is more trustworthy and scent alerts skin

that is contiguous with language

and synonymous with sound

of bodies knocking against the hull

 

Ninth Letter, Spring/Summer 2017

 

 

Fossils in the Making

 

open a door

the center a threshing, separating you from

airplane, no

bird : machine? Condor etching sun

with wing

 

watch &

be seen

 

its body an elegy

in the making

marking &

unmarking

this being

 

letting me

let me

be

seen

 

Denver Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 4 (2016)

 

 

The Waiting

 

give me any lyre-like thing

I’m on my knees

what

I’m on my knees

*

the swamp I move
through

careful

your own drowning
is at hand

*

presume breath &
you will always be
disappointed

presume death
& be
a hand reaching

*

counting backwards
from nothing

wake me

Lord

the waiting,
take that too

 

Salamander issue 42