December 2017

Cherub-bee-dee how does a man
who doesn’t read English well know that cherub-bee-dum
those aren’t really words-bee-dee.
But birds.

Cherub-bee-dum, he stumbles, reading to me
by the sliding glass door cherub-bee-dee, through which I watch
my brother play in the dum-dum-yard.

Cherub-bee-dee, cherub-bee-dum, like how my father...

As grains sort inside a schist

An ancient woodland indicator called dark dog’s mercury

River like liquid shale

And white-tipped black lizard-turds on the blue wall

For a loss that every other loss fits inside

Picking a mole until it bleeds

As the day heaves forward...

The city where I grew up
was not a western city,
nor an eastern city.
It lay north of Bohemia, south
of Greenland, below sandstone Switzerland
in a river valley, green with fields.
It was the dump in the middle, the rump
of an exquisite gesture in...