let’s hear from the melodic nugget/one more time; if i turn/
to the fragment of a kiss

I tell you it’s the flower of death./ The flower that reposes/ with words shut into the old.

A running dog/ Tries to strike/ The stagnated twilight

memory is another flowering of imagination, / seductive as any other beauty and why

one can eat / memories too / but still expect / to starve

Because I’m trembling, because can it be true? / Is this a dream? / Because of the delightful irony / That you—are not a he.

Now more than ever is time to wake again / and run with cousins across scurf to the barn / to dislodge chickens from their roosts

It’s dangerous to lie down / mid-day, late March and dark, / a heavy, wet snow falling from the sky

And the turkey burned dimly against / the urgency of distant and trailing lightning. / Burned against the absence of rain. / Burned and lit the edges of cool sand blue.

the mile markers, the billboards roofing houses / with offers of adult toys, gas / and oil bathed potatoes.

nothing yet published / I bought an IBM Selectric / a testament to / dedication since I / didn’t own a car & barely / rented a room in a small house

I sent them poems written / like Jackson Mac Low. / They sent back an uppity / note, telling me I was / imitating Jackson Mac Low.

Nothing, this foam, virginal verse / Lineates only the cup / In which a distant siren troop / Drowns, bottoms mostly up

My father’s father was / a gravedigger. He scraped the dirt / from under his birdclaw finger / nails every night