God filtered through rain,
six color promise.
The sun he forged
burning my toast from
the immunized difference
between us.
My promises are colorful too.
Purple promise to my husband,
to love the landscape of
his judgments.
Red promise to absorb his kisses,
squeeze mine out on his
body like a lotion.
Yellow promise of waiting
for him in the gaps.
Intricately,
the neighbor paints the windows
with the image of his bare chest,
feral abs,
face that cleans itself.
His wife will come through
the white front door
with a basket of
feline flowers.
Like lace
they will crisscross.
and I will close the blinds.
The tree wears a brace.
Summer is only half southern.
Among the roses
atoms splitting.
I reach through torn air.
Past it –
a gummy planet.
My life will live on
without me.
Hair and schedules
are only shells.
Nothing stands well
against the climate
of persnickety evil.
The tree’s chi sinks into
its roots.
The roses,
meanwhile,
fire their hopeful signals
at random.
The ghost tries my
new furniture,
finds it comfortable,
sits inside me when I
refuse to get up and
make way.
I’ve not been inhabited
by myself in many days,
so this is refreshing.
But I itch.
He doesn’t quite fit.
The last of the rain
hides under the chipped bench.
In a burrow ten feet away,
Summer and her bulimic brood.
Children stare at their faces in puddles,
faces framed by the
rainbow slick of motor oil
in the water.
What hallucinogenic heat
pushes a woman to the docks,
makes her surrender in
the family boat named
SS Hypatia?
Firm meadows
call me out.
Work is not my friend,
always one foot
ahead of my disease eaten ankle.
Tuesday will dissolve.
Powerful palling
cannot cut the concrete.
A young girl filing her
fingernails will tear it
to shreds.
Life is beauty
too high
and devouring everything.
What machinery can’t do,
a Valentine doily and
a lollipop can.
Girls grow in to women,
request houses of firm foundation,
wear fake nails.
To the north,
isolation escaping over ice.
I was born of the crowd
to the crowd,
my mouth pasted on me closed.
I whip my back with feathers,
wear sackcloth of spun gold.
As the curve of collective consciousness
moves us closer and closer
to opposite edges.
The secret catapult
and the old rope swing
evade notice.
Except to me,
my eyes red galoshes in a
congregation of black.
Did I ever loan him a life vest
or sell him food?
We live our lives in a
stranger’s life.
He ran alongside the
multitudes until he
absorbed them.
In the creamy morning light,
fat snow lounges on the mountaintop.
My new day has no confidence.
My shoes wait by the door,
made of bone china
And stained with my used blood.
Secondhand fire bounces
off the receding moon.
Numbers await me,
my house and my mind
Filled with them.
Math cuts me.
The subtraction demanded
of me is too much.
I shove my feet in my shoes.
Outside the morning is frosting
on my world.
I have nothing but
the robbery of my body.
The knife peels away
my life like skin from an apple.
My mouth was never
designed to grow old.
In the impossible hour,
my matter exposed to the end.
Miniature Moon 