ETTARD

The sun ripens
like a peach toward night;
wet-fleshed and red
its warm juice squelches
between my knuckles—
I had anticipated rapture
as my teeth clave
to the bony pit but I think
I’d rather have watched
its bright sickle
covey to the red breast
of dusk—
now its savaged strips
of rag-flesh nuzzle red
against my palm like
the lingering press of fingers
on your hip—
I never open a package
the way it’s meant.

SHED

the moon is a corn snake
in the grass.

she worms through
the gaps in my slats—
I am in need of repair.

her dry belly dusts
the dry dust in my parlor,
and chairs upon which
she has not sat—in a month—
maybe more.


she has not seemed so full, nor so
new-skinned nor immaculate,
now that she is distant—
never so
rapturous.

THE IGNORANT GARDENER


I know when to plant,
but not when to water, nor when to shore up the soil,
and so my green blooms die.

THE MOVEMENT OF MOUNTAINS

I.
It is a wonder to me,
the brute precision in the chambers of an engine,
and it is a wonder to me
that they churn with such strength.

I know the feel of distances—I breathe
the dust of the Cascades, and the greenery,
and think of the hills of home, and I know them
to be the same;

The hairy bulk of the tor—
Thick mobs of trees, straight-backed, unruled.
My eyes cannot pierce
the voluminous shadows beneath.


II.
I creep along the hairy stomach of the earth
and marvel at its deep flesh.
I touch the immaculate purple,
the velvet-knuckled foxglove.

And on the westerlies gloat
black-hulled men o’ war, their umbrous knolls
rammed full of thunder.


III.
And if the earth by rubbing its fecund fleshes together
heaves up such crags,
what do my fingers do to you?

REYNARD

Eventide
I have heard you, but you
have not sought me,
so have not caught me—
how your fingers have howled
in low tones
in the red cold
eventide.

Each night the trumpets
moan—you have brought home
the white stag; the bristled
boar’s throat still
cakes your teeth. Yet you
have not pursued

this hump
of disconsolate fleshes—
the shudder
that has reft the shade
between your thighs;
the bright pelt

shivering in a winter barrow
yearning to be the
spike of flame
in your dim brambled holt.

I am writhing in impotent frustration--ceaseless fits of melancholy interspersed with violent bursts of euphoria, crowded by testy taciturnitude and ill, snappish humours. My chest seems constantly on the brink of implosion; my ribs flex inward on my heart, breath waxes taut and raspish.

I am leaving. But that isn't all of it.

I need violence and exertion, distraction: a victim for the crouched rage twisting bleak talons in my gut.

I cannot be mythological all the time--every so often, poets must get sappy.


CULINARY EXTEMPORE

the train has no direct route
away from the apricot sliver
of your shoulder.

the thames is brown. the bright
belly of france is a far haunt,
her breath pendulous,
her sinews slim peaches of
light through
cheap kitchen glass.

what remains to pluck
across the cold channel; the metro
clucks off into the tunnel
like a lingering tongue

and the white wine of your bones
shimmers into the dark gullet.
now there is no
dim kitchen jazz,
the tart has limped off
your pomegranate lips.

how can I heat your oven
and get you cooking
when I cannot even find
your scent in a slick clutter of rain.