Things forbidden to say
Thirst in a glazier’s dream
waters to pluck a cold eye
and smack with fat red lips.
But it’s too warm for love
under heavy wool covers
where sleep jams the joints
the dog wants breakfast.
There, from a counter window
the image looks through
the outside deck of the glass
grains rasped powder white
in never-written night script
that melts in its own grasp
Icarus
It’s men, casing
the green day fog
inside a rusty screen
that jumps like a brake
tricks of the trade
the secret maiden flight
follows closeting
this young redneck
who drops like perfume
heavy with boy dare
into the pea green
below slaves’ scythes
capped by a plume
hell’s sallow smoke
Elegy for Minerva
Filaments in cellulose form
strewn as she wakes
to a razor strike that
fells in the arms
of her own child
over dry dark tar
has he passed
once this lintel of red
so his angel might,
only, deep in the bowels?
Canis major
dying dog’s paw
mounds cupping
nothing
sequenced
in the card catalog
of things
come undone
in time
no one says
dying this way
is death
as such
pave stones
do walk
in the night
The Ambiguity of Snow
Dog wishes, buried
in squinty sun
may never sprout
deeper dreads down
under may deface
even terror’s stun gun
before bright dawn
pours on white cloth
buffered over white
strain and shows no
blood on the collar—
but the dead ground,
bone’s crypt, dazzles,
unwinds a drape to hide
a corpse stuffed in.
