Atlantic, Iowa
Bird Syntax
Bric-a-Brac
Dear Thano
New Hopes†
Doorbell Press
Contact
Life Histories of North American Wild Fowl*
published in Conjunctions
Outside the theater a stranger tells me about a Brand New shoe-shine. Outside the window, the trees are turning to fish spines. Outside, the trees have grown the world a ceiling. Outside is inside sings the open window. After walking a mile in your shoes (she said) should I leave them outside. “The mud room” (I said).
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The Great Outdoors! Or just outside it. At dusk insects swarm the lamp like the stars swarm like insects once I put the light out.
*
The sun dries me like a hide as you gather your little summer-somethings and the world spins the house unwrapped. Modern Home No. 25: page 12. We used to be a dream about fish patterns (I said), “but now it is all grackle and cordwood,” there is nothing else in the world!” “Dinner can be whenever we want it” (she said). Oh. And then, cornbread.
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Ground-up. Ground-down. The shore here is mud and the air is so hot we coat ourselves in it and bob the water like spatterdock. Grammar School Entertainm’t: ground meat. Gourd. Swimming is not an option. Nebraska, your seed. Gerund. Jewel. Germ. I have wondered how long it will take me to die. Black vultures circling the court house.
A few hogheads and barrels of Jamaica sugar. Jesus. Jordan. Jostle. Jackalope... Jiraffe... Jeronimo.
*
Prisoners have made sandbags and stacked them about town, expecting a flood. Canadian Reciprocity (he said).
*
You were in the shower (he said), and I was alone. I was alone and you were in the shower. The shower sounds like rain, sounds like it is raining in the shower.
*
“ANOTHER BIG SALE!” (I said). Outside the store we stop to watch two sparrows torture a wet cicada in the gutter. Incredible (she said), “which really means too big, in an old-fashioned way.” Things I love about you. I respond but even I am not listening to me: I am imagining all the advertisements I will never get to see.
*
Mr. Geo. H. Bender. Nell, Sue, and Corina. Windshields, headlights and windowglass. Judge Briar. PRESIDENT CARTER. Thirteen small oxen. Vladmiar Lenin. These are the men to whom to write (she said).
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“Close your eyes” (she said) and imagine me writing. I have two pencils, one in each hand. I start in the middle and write in opposite directions; one sentence becomes one sentence, the other becomes another. “Are your eyes closed” (she said).
*
Doctor’s Office. The Doctor asks where have I seen you before.
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Things that have happened in my sleep. I drink water from the bedside table and the glass makes a kaleidoscope around my eyes. The radiator ticks like a clock. The bed is billards and it is your turn to break. The bed is a pool table and I scratch (the dog). I dream the dog has shelved herself among the books and I must slide her out and withdraw her at the checkout desk. Glass shavings fall from the moon. You wake me to close the window because the opening is hurting the wall: “it’s just not nice.” The something. The clock ticks like a radiator. I’m sure there are more.
*
Snowplows crawl the streets like enchanted termites, men lilt home with lacquered barcounter beneath their fingernails. This evening M----. cuts the wick of the lamp into a forked-tongue: “see, see” (she said) at the shadows, “Satan is real!” We have all noticed how stormclouds tend to gather over the new cineplex.
*
Tree-stumps that look like dogs watch us argue about “The Hunger Artist” in the rain. “It is true” (I said); “It is a lie!” (she said), making the whole courtroom shudder. But the heart always matures. “How is My Driving?” (I said). “Husband Road” (she said). One fact is worth a thousand theories.
*
Asphalt and the green...Green, here!
*
In winter-time, it is winter-time; spring is a wet cave dripping with stalactites, and the dog hunts new light through the house: morning rhombus, evening triangle. I was locked in the pantry (she said). “The pantry has no door” (I said). The tulips explode.
*The Arkansas-Democrat Gazette, The Big Pine Citizen, The Chicago Eagle, The Daily Republican, Elk City Mining News, The Flat Top Monitor, The Grass Valley Telegraph, The Harper’s Ferry Times, The Idaho Statesman, Jessen’s Weekly, The Knoxville News Sentinel, Los Angeles Times, Maryland Women’s News, The New York Times, The Owyhee Nugget, The Pennsylvania Evening Post, The Quasqueton Guardian, The Reporter, The State Herald, The Twice-a-week Twin Falls Times, The United Automobile Worker, The Vermont Phoenix, The Wave, The Xenia Daily Gazette, The Yukon Valley News, The Zanesville Times Recorder.
On the deck, the window-square’s warm light at my back, and you, in the kitchen, washing off the knife—the good one—turned away.
Arrange some form of public expression on this matter in your community.
Canadian Reciprocity.
: Yours and Ours.
Here, now, at the water’s edge: no snow. It melted away, baring sand (the wet sand of summer, where we dig for shells). Only a straight-line horizon, the world in colored bands: white, blue, gray; blue rolling in, faint through the snow-scrim.
The hushed backdune.
Here, now, at the water’s edge: no snow; it has melted away, baring sand (the wet sand of summer).
The sky, snow falling.