it’s been a month since i sent you the
crayon-paint-pencil image attempt to capture
the cafe in Lansingburgh where we ate formal polish dinner
overpriced and empty and so stupid in the early germs of love
before you took me on what i now scowl fondly at as
your best-of tour, backwoods gas stations soft serve
hot dogs coke in a can on a porch swing
we scrambled up the green shale canyon even saw
a naked woman walking like an actual nymph
decided she must have been ok although in retrospect
what was she doing feet bare and so many razor shards
i sent you my artist effort on christmas eve, the training was full
i won’t see you i was waitlisted and still broke
i can’t become a healer like you, oozing california
my child bearing years leaving their sweat stain on your
self actualizing years, you did not respond to the drawing you have
refined your borderlands i saw on venmo u paid your ex to
ghost write your hinge remember when you schooled me on
hot plastics and frying eggs we lived beneath a burnt out attic
football player wallpaper still peeling off the little boy’s bedroom wall
creepy hallway the heat would go out and you’d caterpillar sleep
in an explosive goose feather tube i’d sleep on the fold out when i
hated you it smelled like rust, weird powder in the creases
but also there were toxic balcony sunsets we loved them
you’d make me your grandpa’s margaritas
pucker salt you oozing california then too
i could drink 100 and river gaze
an otter, tugboats, trash drifting by the
pink orange setting world
oil film like a dirty wish
on everything trying
to move
SONNET 1
THE WORLD CANNOT END
waiting on the cliff, waiting to be lifted
how a person can dent another person’s
auto body just by not looking out
for left turns, still not really their fault -
physics - fathoming all occasions
as degrees of stretching or truncating time,
another drink, or being re routed
trying to find the restaurant in the first place
everything ends, the drive, the drink
ice becomes water and it makes
perfect sense to fear the hot blue light
resting on the baby chair as you sleep
imagine you stoic, not able to give
but also remember the attentive hands,
pressure searching for ribbons
picture punctures, rewinds you like
rodent chatter, sparkling gremlin in a rabbit dress
being pushed in a swing in Hoboken, infatuated by
the flat warm wind,
if god is tapping if the presence of god
is a lack of god if the tree is a hook
and if we are trees
if god is never words
dig in the dirt around your house
and visit the water to look for god
wait for god listen for god
if i made a crown from last summer’s
arugula stalks, if i had gods instead of ghosts
or if my god was a ghost
if i let the sky teach me about change
if i let impact teach me about truth
finger prints in the bulk aisle
a boy with a name like mine
yellow and blue kinds of liquid dish soap
bamboo behind the mulch pile
hating someone you love
loving someone you hate,
sips and powders
new time unknown time
my dead uncle's wife dreamt he shook her
by the shoulders and pointed to the world
with a worried look
does dreaming of an ending world
help the world to end
he also said that so long as love
is an ember
the world cannot
end