canto 8 my father rolled stories of coma patients so that I dreamed of dreaming in deep sleep, dreamed of whales in their purple or blue or deep green deeps, singing, approaching continents with the thin long fins stroking ocean pressures like massive, slowmoving birds. Martha, he said, schooled in England, rearing children in Oklahoma, […]
canto 7 i made loops for Lucy, which is what I dubbed her, brought twist ties for Thor with which to bind the wires, Thor, which is what I dubbed him, and when he finished, and when we were ready for loading and departure, Lucy smiling, Thor thinking about what might’ve been after blood spill, […]
interlude i stand on the edge of a leaf perpendicular to a smoky floor and a smoky sky why a leaf, such a fragile creature, and why an edge, why not the edge of paper, knife or wall, and what leaf would this leaf be, and why a smoky floor and a smoky sky whorling […]
canto 6 and so I yelled Aquinas is a fool or to that effect ambiguous. walking home when I entered my apartment I found two thieves at work unraveling, or trying to unravel, the wires and cords of the electronic machines I owned. Later, they told, we just turned the nob and voila, easy, smooth, […]
canto 5 Henry and his freckles are patient with me. He says, as I wait for a camel to appear on his arm– his arms are continents of ruddy, sometimes bleared congregations of melanin (I told him once: Henry, Henry, I said, the Milky Way traverses your back, right blade to waist, and he said, […]
canto 4 my brother who was a professional of target practice for men in countries our teachers could never pronounce (eye rack, for example) told me that I worry too much, that my mind plays tricks on me, that he saw death forms in the sands and wondered if he’d ever see me again out […]
interlude 1 sometimes I imagine a giant in my house, of whatever gender, a woman giant, a man giant, a giant no matter, who smells, maybe of paint, daylong day air, or polished table surfaces or pastes to put on for bloody cuts, and when I imagine this giant, this whatevergendered Giant I imagine the […]
canto 3 my mother said the flowers in the gardens she made spoke to her, and as a kid I once made a joke about recordings, told her, use Dad’s and prove the case, but in more kiddstuff language, the kind that always makes the hearer wish for mankind’s better days, the kind that tastes […]
canto 2 as I sit at my father’s bedside therefore I wonder if he’s deepsleeping a way up the darkness to the peak of the ladder (and what then? out to what?) or if he remembers his image of heaven, the respirator, the other machines, respiring him, the gears making his blood move, the pressures, […]
canto 1 my father, who was larger than life (how many poems have treated fathers bigger than mountains–think new testament?), told me stories in bed about coma patients coma: which is Greek for deep sleep my mother would say, did you tell him the one about the knight? and my father would smile and I […]
not even the scientists when asked could say what that thing was that had crept on shore the day after the shipping lanes were closed it had brought bubbles and when asked one of the scientists said, no, we won’t know why they don’t pop until more data is generated when asked a scientist said […]
after the english storm everything changed puddles instead passed back memories as it used to be that in a puddle you could see the airy birds reflected or lamp posts or the edges of buildings but now in those puddles after the english storm that other me I remembered that me who’d been asked as […]
It was a day like any other they always are when suddenly my brother Daniel, his girl Melissa, and my odd neighbor Henry suddenly turned into pencil marks on the couch and the couch too and the geometric painting I’d made years ago which I swore had once been more colors than just black and […]
