The Brooklyn Rail

Man-made Bodies

Midsummer might dream
promise brakes hard
to end at ceremonial table
with sow purse

Hardhats in gone zone
brush newly-papered walls
Deep penetration
and shallow flies
Nah, not her thing

A founding truth
prior to grab-bag illusion
She means to be close
to tautology
where to be
doesn’t fit in
man-made
bodies of water
She redefines the variables

so that’s what I tell them

Discount Tired

Furthest thing from virtue
is its own ward heel
Transparent shoe to contain self
If you have a joke sashay
from honey spoon
to none of your beeswax
and worry a friend

Give with all your leftovers
when pandemic can’t sleep
Hold up the wall next to
long-awaited loss machine
Discount tired

No wakeup baloney
Sky turns silver
Bus passes
downstairs like birdsong
Who do you keep this for?
Eyes open
sentiment and
concern do me in

Tired They Sleep

First-time settlers
the long walk
to East Houston
kin in the Riis
kin in the Wald

They expect little
No stars maybe a single planet
maybe a blank slate

So tired they sleep through ICE raids

If one of them is empty
and craves to learn
Let’s start with rising waters
and rocks in hands

A sort of honest talent
The empty can hear everything
Knowledge especially of questions

One is not here but
here is where one is found

Sadness is the proof

Prettier Grit

Son of light and poetry
can’t finish the shot
drops the lute deep
in his own zone
So call this January fudge
after all
Strip ugly keepsakes off it

Same science assesses
maybe voice of Euridice
the wall of ears
the spilling sob
You listen, you die
in dirty fable
You rearview, she
goes bye-bye at the buzzer

Assurance strays through
prettier grit
In-flight bassoon
out of self
locks into adagio
Sleep astonishes
all through liberty

Wake up in ballroom
without a partner
Deep in earth
wise men in step-ins
sweat alcohol
as she follows you
almost home

Earth Minh

Strip of dead deep surf
inflected with suffocation
Wary snow hawk sees bipeds
flood black bear in light —
meadows picnicked
into houses —
hills ablaze with outlaws ––

Earth minh liberate
earth
with waters
and blows
White burden tricks out so
outsize innocent
behind a fortune
in fences

If you brown
you drown
Straight through
No intermission

As Afterlife

With what hope to search
for my soul in
even this body
A time of dyspatriation
Talk-talk slime
in the ablative
In this broken home
rigor is there
once daylight’s over
I put on both gloves
to grab myself back
Intimate gridlock
among dying friends

Men up and influence women
and the women die
Like a green card waits
as afterlife
I’m bereft to remember
my youth alight
with phrasing off the beat
with lines that obliquely
lance through
coherent clouds
in polyphonic colors
Bodies that inspire
It’s too much to ask me
to spare you the memory

Face Card
in memory of plenty friends

Allies who live on
spirits not saints
no alimentation
inside soundless vacant halls
They depend on the gelding
of a prim reaper
The cost is chalked-up to
nothingness peace
Their names paint walls
long in perspective reach

Allies who without reflection or intent
raise the barometer for
change of care
Variations complementary
to their zone too far
They are not jealous
and still have nipples
insensitive ones
which is why we divide
manias come dusk

The soul doesn’t improve
it reveals to itself
a hot kettle of gas
that recirculates broth to one side

In hand signals memories
that already appear
on a page
In honor of which
I shave my face card
and suds my business
don clothes from the feet up
sit down
and feel like this

Names As Questions

Day breaks surly
lays on counterpoint
percussive highlights
by gizmo
Sheets still fresh after three sleeps
and a dream that
Rhode Island cops
rough me up shout names
as questions
I holler back “Who is Charles Gayle?
Who is Sahib Shahab?”
They freeze I get my
collar straight and roll

Two own feet is all it takes
to get me raised
stick to and share
vices in the name of
my little self
Shadow makes a dog bay
while many kinds of men
lose face
perish in Epicurean analog
Don’t even pretend
it’s mysterious
It’s an equation of light
with a dark dark quotient

What to give credence to:
the negligible in abundance
the dander of insects
the dull gold of intimacy
and incredible death

Scofflaw SCOTUS

Scofflaw SCOTUS
cuts the ribbon
at the crime scene
hangs Jane Roe out back
to cure
drained
smoked
No grave!
Might rally
the unrighteous
Their Honors take the privacy
outta your pipe
and smoke it
naked under robes
in their formal chambers –
are there six or nine sinks?
six or nine sleeves
to clerks’ shirts?
six or nine ball
in the coroner pocket?

Written dissent got no b.o.
needs some stinkback
Narrow reading smells
of skin bleach
and stink-ass
Close that Bible and see
will the bastards
swear on it

Light wavers
when the high bench burns
Right hand says the left hand
holds a wild card
and wilderness is zackly
where we wander