Of Untenable Prescience
To yoke the water for no reason
to be a wind-cadenced syllable.
Without eyes, the night abandons me
its teeth shine with heat
as yellows inundate rest.
How brilliantly loss dents heart
and the little bitternesses invade evening
having lunched on roses at midday
I resist sunset, defer to venom
as black cacti open to the rush.
Allow me a handful of planets,
teach me the knot of your throat.
From Of Gazelles Unheard (Beautiful Outlaw 2013)
Sequins and Graffiti
A third moon-bath cleanses New York dank
of chromium swaddle, brute degrees of dactyl soot –
one flash exponential to the 94th relevation.
Boom box humidity smudges the refrain
the croon spiked with inescapable orbits
luggage impermeable to purpose, depleted
of feral plaid and souvenir.
O’ those badly shampooed angels who trouble
the pool, ruffling the streets,
too young to know
the jaundiced fruits of 2 am, impoverished neons
painted on the retina,
flight with one foot on the ground.
Published in Big City Lit
December 2019
SELECTED POEMS
Why She Ate Her Hair
Because she lived in a house of hunger
emaciation nation
the state of starvation
Because she ran out of sky
and this could bring heaven
Because she needed definition
to be angular
Because if she ate enough of herself
she might find herself
Because mortality was not enough
and surely god was hairless
Because they accused her of being
full of herself
and she thought she'd prove them right.
Inspired by a 19th century photograph of a young anorexic woman who died from ingesting her own hair. (Van Dyke Print, "Stomach Encased in Hair,” 19th century.)
From To Suture What Frays (Kelsay Books 2017)
Originally published in The Tao of Loathliness (fooliar press 2005)
Also appeared in Barrow Street Summer 2000
MORE WORK
Burning House (February 2018):
“Skin”
“Talk of Deer”
“Love and Other Falsehoods”
Celan 100 – Periodicities (November 2020)
“Afterwar/d”
“Fragments not Conducive to a Zen Garden”
“in all her habits of sadness”
“The Trees that Grow there May Not”
Ice Floe Press (December 2019)
Excerpt from “Places of Memory”
“Throats”
“Synthèse”
r.k.v.r.y. quarterly (June 2019)
“Chemotherapy and the Tasmanian Devil”
League of Canadian Poets – Very Small Verse
Contest: “Clepsydra” - 2022 Winner
Come, let's wash the rain
before it dies
of thirst.
Action, Spectacle: (Winter 2023)
SWOOPCARD 12
Letter Press Poetry Card
(Swoopological, 2022)
“Lady Pharoah” – poem commissioned for exhibition catalogue: Fantasia by Signe Emdal,
Exhibition at Galerie Maria Wettergren, Paris.
7 September- 25 November 2023