Poetry
Even one and one’s loneliness,the we of our cats or the we of
two horses in the autumn field,side to side, head to rump,
briefcases into the dinosaur, counterfactual jackals slavering centipedes in stone: that’s a fine spelunking! way to beak the ink face, gerrymander. to press always fibers between plate glass, a way to break snakeskin boots in!
Griselda waits. Child eater. Good wife.
The stories we are told as childrenleave mute tethers, limning the interiorof grey matter, the hollowed synapse.
clone keeps a diaryclone writes in codeclone taunts me
My best friend’s grandmothersurvived the holocaust.Lived in a tiny roomoff of the kitchenate like a birdyet wanted to be near food.Others in the houseslept in huge bedrooms
Draw a line to five, when Frank Bitsueis hauling water from the well then counthis living grandchildren and divide themby the ones who chased sheep into the rain.Subract the crash. Add summers and sleep of
I guess you didn't get my letter, since youdied before I put it in the mail.But maybe that's OK—I mean, whatwas left to say anyway? Confession (I neverenjoyed hunting, or peeing in public)?
In cold darkness calling from tree to treeLaughing at our foolish dreamsCrooning love in a long lost keyFeathers at once oil slick and tricksterSwitchblade beaks
Born in an Illinois barn,
that two-headed calf
became a coin Frank flipped
through World War Two,
judging heaven from
a foxhole. “God loves evil…
Only one night we watchedthe full moon remember the tops of the trees,
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Madison, WI 53703
Phone: 608.733.6633 x25