Ascent

…When I drive on the Mohawk trail,
it’s a sort of sex—car and road
on full alert, breathing in rhythm
to the changing scenery.
A shift from two to three dimensions;
a falling, lurching into something
like love.

My senses can’t sleep
as this topographic music
approaches its peak, temperature dropping
degree by degree—the slow towns and farms
all passed far behind me; inclines shifting
as my car swerves like a pinball on its curves.
The Cold River’s ominous congress
through rocks, deafening—
reminding me that this road
is dangerous, and people die on it…

Half-Life

it occurs to me
late
(really late)
around that time when internet research decays
from topics of insolvency and fellowships
to tongue splitting, furries and Rasputin’s pickled cock
that I am really, really lonely
for you

and my brain,
radioactive and glowing,
has decided
(after all possible avenues for defilement
that Google and the human race have catalogued)…

Kindness Bomb Cyclone

…The world hasn’t changed.
My heart still struggles against gravity.
The snow still falls and collects
by the seed cakes, where chickadees
fight over the squirrels’ sloppy seconds.
I still drift.
A neighbor is shoveling my snow outside;
I hear the blade scraping on pavement.
I’ve brought him Earl Grey tea in a travel mug
and went outside to trade small words.
It was hard—
I wanted to stay by the woodstove, pretending
I didn’t hear it, pretending I didn’t need this…

Victory

I’ve won. 
All the fountains are lit up
and all the trials I’ve been tasked with
are done. I’ve traveled the underworld,
cakes in hand; kept my coin
for the ferryman. I wandered in the dark,
cards close to my chest
and when the lost souls cried to me, 
they didn’t know my real name.

Coda

“When you’re five, endings are sweet.
The familiar turning of a car on your street
in your sleep, and the sighing of brakes
before the door opens to wake you
with the cool taste of night.
The sound of rustling paper—
last page falling on the story your mother
read you, when you’re already tucked in bed:
“The End,” in all-caps whisper—
“Sleep well,” ‘Good night.'”

Cat’s Cradle

We fit like zig-zags, 
serrated teeth
biting in opposite directions. 

We gnashed our hungry ghosts
and lashed electric DNA 
on time’s angry barbed-wire fence,
calling all the cockatoos
to our sleeping tree. 

The child is the one who stayed,
bending the branches low
and, with her pink disarming chirping,
demanded the moon obey…

Moon in Scorpio

I’m an envelope carried for too long, 
protecting my contents; my skin is paper
sheathing over fire that’s learned the art
of not combusting. 
I’m doing the dishes today.
Washing and shelving plates.
Answering my child’s questions.
Driving through a forest in the dark,
the moon in Scorpio and moonlight
twisting my cold feet in their boots…

Gravity

There’s a place beyond the runway lights
where clouds learn to talk to each other.
The air traffic signals
bounce off the silver linings,
radiating light spokes into the ether
and the wheels turning
sound like the music
of departure from the body;
the bullroar hum
indicating something otherworldly
and not quite comfortable
to the habits of feet…

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