The grass is a code.
I can’t read it,
But I know the rabbit
Hiding against my fence can.
That’s why he’s hiding
What I do know is
That the flower’s teeth
Have been chattering
All morning.
The hawk is tethered
To his nest.
He is of no concern
The chemicals will move
With grace
A gentle burning
That lulls life away.
The monsoon
Hit the desert hard
He had been through
So much,
But this?
Life smokes some weed
And doesn’t care.
Drowning in fluorescent
Torrents,
Sand looks for a way
Out.
My tectonic youth
is subducting.
I explode on my paper house
as a black cherry ash
Particles of my personality
Swell
up
like a flooded
Well.
If I wasn’t so brilliant
I would drown.
The diamonds forming
Under my tongue save me
And tell a story of fun.
My sheath is made of leather.
I am a woman.
I am a knife.
Tonight I will dine
on an industrial
Dynasty,
eating in the workspace
of men –
Eating men.
Iron rising from my pulse
To the air
I see my doppelganger –
The pregnant cat
Luring the mouse.
This is part of my project to write poems that pair with colors and textures, or the other way around.
…waiting for a train
Rolling a die
On the brink
Of greatness
…on the tracks
Dust of the less fortunate
…across town
Someone waits for him
There are salty crimes
To be answered for
he slips into the sun
When the blood covered
the stones,
3 was created
It was then
That the staple guns
Came out
1 was a motion – imperceptible
2 was an equation –
the question and the answer.
3 looked like a rain puddle.
3 was made of metal.
With a blowtorch,
The creation of 4 as a
fine piece of art
The whole is less than
The sum of its parts
Permanent subtraction,
Each a negative
Sucking from her own math
Under the bitter heat
This metal does not
Waver.
I am the cloak of winter
shed too soon in the meadow
where naked spring is
penetrated by thawing snow.
Unneeded,
I whip around in the wind.
When your home is a time,
leaving is a dangerous,
ferocious thing.
The electric book hums,
breath gently, contently
escaping between pages.
What if you popped a balloon
and the air kept coming
and coming?
This conjuncture stays in
the library where it belongs
tended by the purple librarian.
In the living room
the dance has become
joints half eaten by microbes,
rhythmically popping.
What starts as a good time
will end in death
as it always does.
In the shelves,
a sleeping beast with my face.
I have released pleasure
from my net.
Over the years I have
captured every domesticated thrill,
caught every unguarded illusion.
But pleasure was the prize.
I cannot nail it in my shadowbox.
It withers when it does
not travel.
My motives caravan
through a red, peerless desert.
Water travels just ahead
slightly faster than either I
or my mirror glass needs
can go.
Out here,
straws and dictionaries
present serious problems.
As though it were dead skin
scraped from the devil’s heel
by a pumice stone,
my purest motive blows
around the others.
If I flew my determinations
like kites,
attached to my stringy nerves,
could they rise to Heaven
and beg for a cloud?
Miniature Moon 