Like a noble gas,
 I’ll have 
 nothing 
 to do with
 you.
  
 *
  
 Where can I 
 help you hang
 your head
 when no one’s sure
 who wears
 the pantomimes
 in your family?
  
 *
  
 We ate macaroni, and we
 ate macaroni, and there
 was one meatball, and we split
 that. 

 Ancestors make the most annoying houseguests. 
 You try to forget all that, 
 but they still fondle you.
 Their gaze creeps out of every pant-leg—
 peeks out of shower curtains, and somehow,
 they inch their voices into the seams of your socks.
  
 I’ve spent all these years
 making myself presentable,
 and then.  The summer begins to form
 like some hand of wriggling fingers
 I must have dreamt about 
 a hundred times before.  
 People don’t get things
 when they want them—
 because that’s how I keep picturing the clock
 before I put myself down.
   

 Across landscapes, within
 Earth’s green circles, every river
 is an arrow.  Each tree
 is a chance.  There is dirt
 on my hands, and those are chickens
 in our yard.  We shroud ourselves
 with protective feathers.  In a garden
 (mine, I suppose) a lone bluebell
 bends moonward.
  
 That blinking stoplight
 is just a guide to keep your name clear
 and your heart sick.  Let’s fix something:
 you and me.  We need more time for fog
 and silvery passivity to lapse, so here—
 you oil this valve, and I’ll tape up 
 this cardboard box.  Movement is nearly
 all I can give.  Once in a while, 
 I do.  I do.  My bare feet slide nicely
 into your pickup truck. 

 Geological ages don’t rest easily.  It’s new
 semi-advanced understanding
 of the habit.  Our underneaths yearn
 for a shadow.  It can’t happen 
 overnight like this—cold, clear.  But,
 we are barefoot, and it will happen. 

 In the substratum
 the heart beats once
 a week.  A small
  
 dumb present, I try
 to be sweet.  It depends
 on how far you are away
  
 from what you are.  The way out
 is through the door.  Morning
 and late morning, the fluidity
  
 and constancy of pain and
 its consistency.  A gentle ventilation—
 a chaser.  And now…one hallucination
 that you’ve dreamt twice. 

 1.      Proposing the health of the boy
 in buttons, I found no terriers
 wandering among the zodiac. 
 You see, it’s not that coloured flowers
 are always scented, but it’s flowers
 not grown in open air that I dislike.
  
 2.     Nothing in this cupboard that is cracked
 can hold water.  Therefore, dispose
 of the boy in buttons.
  
  
  
   

 My brother is a rat.  A big one,
 kind of lozenged in the throat.  At times,
 he moves around a bit with sudden jumps, 
 epiglottal stops—jerking around a little
 like a frightened chair.
  
 No, as one’s mother would say, 
 you may not.  Once in a while, 
 I get an acidic taste, which I figure 
 is a waste of sense.  Without a periscope,
 but looking side to side, as if to mix stuff up.
 Let me tell you, it doesn’t work.  Sometimes I pretend
 that mine are the tarpon’s hands.  I’m not wearing
 these hands home.  That big rat. 

 This is the day, I think.
 The day that wants more 
 than a worthy pillow.  
 An inflexible physical dilemma
 where there is no virtual home tour.
 Come to this house and be obsessed.
  
 Twisting, turning, cleaning out, 
 I trip.  An arrow pursues my thigh.
 I am bound.  This wound breathes
 through silken guilt.
  
 Wishing that answers happen,
 this season becomes meat-free
 with time to complain about laundry,
 disjointed eating, thicker-than-usual soup.
 Speaking everkindly to the night, 
 thinking blanks, I blink through yestereven,
 yestermorn. I’m so in love that I want to die
 and be spit back into Earth as distorted starlit drips.
  
 There was always water.
 Do you remember its taste
 as you float?  Hesitate on this puzzle:
 imagine my breasts as daisies, and you,
 piercing them with a hummingbird’s precision.
 The dream is realized when the bees begin to nest
 inside my chest.
  
 This is evening now, I know.
 I am bruised while weather gives up
 its threats.  Well, I said,
  
 this is what it’s all about.  The conflict
 of the inner skin—where my deft flesh
 meets the hunting season.  This pageant
 is always the same when you mistake
 battle for battle.  There is that catch
 in my neck again—a blood red muzzl 

 Among the shades of late early evening—your name:
 a bird’s nest in my hand. Whispers from the open plains
 kiss our skin as midnight crowds around our eyes.
  
 In these borrowed beds, all spaces ache for you.
 Fog burns the coolness of the moon, 
 while planets mix in secret.  You and I 
 are too wise.  

 They say:  You will.
 I’m not so sure.
  
 They say:  The daybreak of autumn needs you.
 I am not convinced.
  
 They say:  The hand that covers your mouth will smother you.
 I don’t think that’s necessarily
 a bad thing.