ROWBOAT FULL OF ROCKS


I remember the boy with his mouth sewn shut,
the little bubbles of water
that boiled out of his eyes while he burned. It was time to
oooput on our gloves.

I was wearing a jean jacket,
The one streaming with avalanches. It wasn’t a dream.
One by one we began to assemble the pieces of
ooodriftwood.

People kept searching for their own graves.

But by now the whole beach was on fire. A girl in cut-offs
Was in the middle of carving the remaining light
ooofrom my eyes with a pairing knife.

I love you, I love you, I love you, I kept saying to her.

I don’t know if I went to sleep. I remember the girl took
ooomy hand
And gently pressed my thumb
Against the soft, warm sponge of an ink pad.

We simply want to make an impression, she whispered,
ooolike water
Dribbling over sand.

But there was nothing else to touch,
Not even anyone to kiss.

Just light filling the house, a bird with a nail in its brain
oooflapping
Against the wood of an abandoned dresser.

***


THE PLEASURE

There’s nothing swimming
in my ether

fly-blown cellophane
in a winter-ish din I like to call

traffic

My three dream Little Debbie’s

the sweet wet smell of pavement and “lawn”

they call it a median

and to walk along it is to be of two minds—

Holy (as if mitred)

or comfortable, but obsessed

I can’t explain

a real Janus-headed fish . . .

Somebody draws a tiny
crown but then I realize

it’s a literal biscuit sitting on a napkin

Remember the week it snowed
for a month in our kitchen

you placed those decoys in a line across the driveway

a horizontal life free of pain

a few extra rooms underground

and a Tupperware basket full of porn . . .

You can’t micromanage a narcissist

Stable boy with his costume torn off

eating fried chicken for dinner

and mainlining Cialis