THEY SAID THE SMALLEST WOODEN HORSE WAS DEAD IN YOUR COSTUME


gone unnoticed the inevitable protagonists accrue

fragile centipede working rot into unreliable endnotes

a storm, cicadas, ribbons of smoke above the river

somewhere else a war

light falls as usual

& the hour fails to be episodic

in the most expensive suit I’ve ever worn

                 ****

A POINT OF VIEW APART FROM A PERSONAL EMBRACE


watching the unfolding of an envelope

a red thread from a felt purse

landscape pulled in increments

or another anchor to architecture love

to the voice-over of someone older

if this desire for narrative outweighed

our unwillingness to concede an end

                 ****

TO MAP THE WEARING AWAY OF THINGS


what endows an anecdote with so much tinder

a particular tree in how light fell

how human nouns what the nucleus of commerce won’t replicate

the world in a real enough window

money made of money a bare ankle

pacing from the vault to the podium

to fasten the world a believable cape

                 ****

THE FOREST BURNS INTO LATER TIME


all that I saw from the balcony

an evening’s warranted fiction yoked

little lamb that gathers & gathers against a half-eaten idea

I’m writing from the weather

inside a dictionary of difficult words

details solidify with each retelling

but someone coughs & the theater caves in

                 ****

NOTHING UNDER THE STONES BUT THE STORY OF LIFTING


in one scene we stood on a bridge

watching boats catch in their sails late wedges of light

there was grace, ease a hero’s mask assembled

from an hour’s background music

our inclination to trail a supposed mother toward the concrete

a crow calls out its lineage in a single note

a surrogate thorn an imperfect Xerox

                 ****

A DUE MEASURE OF DURATION


already dusk bringing a different feeling

to the scuttle of leaves, billboards outlining the city

outliving directives in a little book of prayers

a cue to place the pencil down & wait

for the refrain to repeat itself

somehow we sustain history

one hand making a fist, two a steeple

                 ****

ONE EVENT COLLAPSES INTO ANOTHER'S UNSAID


an evening worn on the locality of thinking

imagined as a tactile day-moon

unanchored as I am

by letters, books, creased sheet music

cicadas’ shells lodged between lengths of sawed lumber

the public they, gloved in expectancy

O sweet Rashomon, it is thick & manageable & perpetual

                 ****

IT WAS RAINING NEAR DUSK & I WAS STILL READING


from a window painted shut to a woodcut

of the player’s fingers nailed to a flute

beautiful as laugh tracks alone with our wallets

I’d call you uncomfortable in dress shoes

while the night comes undone waiting

still there is lightning & inevitable rot

the pronoun’s shadow—its dark lake

                 ****

SIMPLE AS A WALL PAINTED BLUE


scaled from sovereignty to ethos

the logic of a button worn from overuse

I’d change my shirt to say “story of the day”

like a coin that previously fit the slot no longer deserving

another city’s disorder or the bird’s moronic circles

evolving a gentle etymology of sky

memory handles what comes to sister missing

                 ****

FIGURATION IN CONFLICT WITH AN AFTERNOON


whose you is a whisper all verb

whose you a child’s hair in flames

whose you is replacing a curtain

whose you is thickening the mortar

whose you imprinting a beating heart

whose you aged a flower

who found it dried in the center of a book

                 ****

AN APPROXIMATION OF THE ACTUAL LETTER


I died in a book

& couldn’t touch the ink around me

it was autumn

I died in a book asking

the word for leaf for leave

I died in a book on the eve of music

in the distance, another distance

                 ****

IF THERE IS ALWAYS A ROOM'S REVERSAL OF EVENTS


a painted over presence from ear to understanding

what won’t wash in the agreed upon outcome

of a stand-in for our refusal of silhouettes

spilling momentous into scenery

a still life not so gone to greener pastures

that I can’t forgive myself an afternoon

unlocked unbroken untangled unaired