Much In The Same Way That Bricks Don't

Hands

reptiles born in the wind, brown scales in white snow

white snow in grey brick

grey brick in brown earth

.

See the mud twist into and around their torso, see them flip belly-up in the sand

the two of them, see their radial symmetry

four thick appendages and an awkwardly protruding head

they curl in now

scales slide across and split showing pink, a grapefruit in a taffy-puller

.

see them write absentmindedly, brain elsewhere

the limbs of limbs moving as an afterthought in anticipation

thin lines almost parallel, a loop almost circular

others more precise, these erratic

disciplined by the sharp winter

stowed away in denim, dark blue

Winterskin

My hand like a snake

fingertip tongue protruding, twisting

feel the sharp ends

.

My hand like a lotus

remove my petals one at a time, two, three, four, five

spread the growing bud

.

My insect palms,

thick chitin layer, rough and hard

see it pull and crack

.

My hand like a snake

twisting,

   like a head

turning,

   like a dog,

retreating

.

turn the coins over, tails glinting

turn them back,

and:

.

My hand like a snake, dying

            my hand like a snake, emerging

                      my hand like a snake,

returning

.

reptiles born in the wind, brown scales in white snow

white snow in grey brick

grey brick in brown earth

Supernova

A sun dying:

and its breath draws in

-

-collapse-

-

and its breath blows out.

Linoleum Mourning

He slopes down

and a cart of charcoal on his spine

running to the back of his neck

and his back arching keeps up the charcoal

but he bends to cough, but he bends to touch

soil and grass-leaves with his face

to rub the side of his cheek, his right nostril

on the wet roughness

.

The charcoal running now and pushing

at the base of his skull, three times now

three coughs drawn out and lingering

the brittle flesh sponge trapping some

letting some out, keeping a memento

.

It holds down his neck bent,

his cheek on linoleum and

the grass is gone

no wet rough but flat

featureless hard, bits of dirt

here and there to pinch the skin

cold but tolerable, nothing to draw into

each lump of crumbling soil a point of reference

nothing to reference to

.

The floor is hard in its own way,

unmovable hardness, not steel but stone

.

And he concludes:

grief is flat and hard

hard like the ground

.

And he infers:

the ground is unmovable.

Glass Ceiling

I.

They keep talking about this glass ceiling

half a lifetime under a window pressing

air trapped building and up-pressing

and red boiling into nothing in the vacuum

in the space below and no air to rush in

and our arm ballooning around and

.

slowly skin pulled tight against

and away from and away and

space between the muscle and the bone

and the white calcium, brittle and expanding

and our bones stretching and

bleached white taffy pulling through and out

through pores open tight like

eyelids pulled open in sleep, ours

and we can’t help but look

but hide our eyes in our palms

to keep them, to keep them ours

.

II.

It keeps going rising

and the sky now where the air

outside is thinner but below nothing

almost nothing but bodies drawn out

pulled long between the ground and sky

and “up” we say “up” and just a little bit farther

just a little bit farther and we’re there

and there is never here but it has to keep rising

.

III.

And we forget that to rise was never

and what is- is the act of disappearing

like magicians a deft hand to draw our eyes down

and how high over the earth now with our knees towering

and we thank the hand, thank the hand for

showing us how tall we are and

how terrible we remember that push

down when we could almost feel our noses in the dirt

the stones in our nostrils how terrible when

but always the vertigo always the painful

stretch of cartilage lonely floating and soon

too high to pull back down and soon our feet leave

.

And we forget that to rise was never the point

that two feet square on the ground and a neck extended

and the expansion of a spine so long compressed

that simple original desire for an arched back

.

IV.

And I’m shouting

and no air to carry my words

that up is not that it cannot

that it was never enough to push up

but it was our motive to remove the object

that as long as there is a push for them

a push for us

.

to the others we are one and the same,

and their fear on breath like cheap vodka and cologne

and we blind to it, palms firmly pressed

we forget the scent and push

and soon away

Just written, very rough. Unfinished. No idea where I’m going…

Nostalgia

Only a decade ago and my stare was water running

in fishless rivulets, in the streams barely as big as the stones between

to me life-size, to me big enough to warrant a dam

.

I remember the summer I became a civil engineer

mud up to my elbows, up to my waist

The distraught counselors, worried I might drown in a swamp

looking for frogs, or in the knee-high lakes

behind our makeshift walls of fallen branches

.

I remember being almost as tall as mom

dad’s height being unreachable

.

I remember him telling me how he would spend all his summers in the streams,

in the lake, in the mud, in the water,

words that slid around my fish-spawn mind

Telling me how he would cry when they called him away

and comprehension

.

And now, drunk on a rock

and a stream going down the driveway

my hands are clean

my hands are clean

Murmurs

He mumbles when he walks

in his head, inaudible

until a vowel low and rising

embarrassment in the parking lot

and on the path by the dumpsters

.

He forgets the stick in his neck

and the tugging at the vertex of his eyelids,

absentminded stabbing packed into a box

and the styrofoam peanuts run up and down

burning like stomach acid in his throat

.

Until he has no reason to hum inaudibly

and he can feel the space where the stick was

and there is a comfortable hollow in his chest

where the box opened, until

his shoulders roll back and his back straightens

Leaf

If ways were had I wouldn’t

.

the sterility of glass sheet looking

out on our forest, of latex hands

and shielded eyes, of lenses

and a bunsen burner

.

the maneuvering of jean shorts

and rainbows, of the high

pitch and square chin,

of the boldly meek and

the stubble that fears them

.

the disregard of pages,

sacred leaves printed in

the same direction we walk

without them, the disregard

of pages and no pain in their absence

.

wouldn’t have me do,

I wouldn’t have you

tear skin but

have you drag feet

and sit in gravel

large enough to turn up

to the branches and the

leaf obscuring the clouds

above obscuring the sky

above and blank

leaves.

Sore

Awaken to one’s own

esophageal eggs

to caviar adhered below

the root of a jaw

to the up pushing and down piercing

of a swallow, of a water tap

left running dry

to the groans of empty pipes

to pipes burst in the freeze-thaw

to an itch at the back of the mouth

to an itch at its ceiling

to ears hung deaf while

pressure balloons behind,

awaken to one’s own

lips open and eyes open

hard and sticky in the afternoon light.