cover

already
in morning,
pre-sun,
the sky is a warm apron
not knowing
the gender of land it covers:
onion bulbs are not ovaries.
coconuts not scroti.
and
even though it is
up there supporting clouds
and fooling
everyone
with the sun’s location,
it is
down here
too,
just above wires and chimneys;
searching under its
pleated cotton, wet
with dishwater,
for all the world,
shadowed
and
precise.

 

stepping out

seams of her showgirl stockings
are fingers wagging no as she walks away.
shadows from heel clicks are
such smooth savage bones.
confusion takes you down a side street
when she thinks you went home.
tributaries that were full
are dry beds now;
the cracked clay
that can never warm
a body liquid as hers.
you couldn’t hurt her
but there is always yourself; your hand
just inches from a strategic vein.
having had it with indecision,
you want it done cheaply,
deep in night,
under a greasy moon.

how’s this?
in the middle of a long street, a car’s
sudden headlights
cost you nothing
until you get in.

 

a seminal event

the jury
says
you can lie
down on a flatbed
at night,
as two dimensional as a shadow,
and no one
will see you snicker.
the rust that has worked into seams,
the excrement and breath of mice,
the tracks scurrying from light,
the ties no one can make between coal and smoke,
the freight,
are not admissible
in this gorge
of historic time
dug deep by
persistence of
anyone’s watergate,
from where we still believe
anything’s possible
even though we have yawned
through years
deciding what is not.