red fire farm

you and i
are particle physics
discovered in the dreams
of incandescent humans
silver light dripping
behind their pupils
incomprehensible
overwhelming;
it would take eons
to teach us
in all of our complexity
no paperbound textbook
dusty and memory-sweet
could ever hold our words;
you and i are more obscure
than one thousand dimensions
more difficult to detect
than a distant earth
we are
a theory
innate, obvious, elegant
and in one day, replaced
by the next genius
with a silver light

tabitha

we were once less cautious
and i let you plant a seed in me
expecting something sweet
something that smelled
of honeysuckle, lilac, and eucalyptus
but spring is here, and you are gone
and i am too selfish to kill our child,
her name too sad to tell.
i don't write you letters and you
never send child support and she
just grows and grows.
my daughter and i
witness you from afar
praying that you never breathe again
we laugh when windows shatter.
i am more cautious now
in love with birth control
praying that one day
winter will take our child away
erase her in white, white gusts

and one for wonder woman

you were the wisest
and if you look at my responses
to the poems you put on your blog
in 2009
you will see that i was dumb back then
and have become a human
looking for other humans
having found them all in closets
trying on clothes that are pretty
but don't make them feel so

amory

petrichor morning
hope rising from the earth
in fresh spring clouds
while men spray
insecticide
to kill the things that bite
half of me
caught by all of you
the other half in bed all day
smelling the morning's rain
only vaguely aware
of atomized poison
in the next room
making love to the dawn of spring

in the mail

i cannot send you
my sunny day words
because every day
for you is sunny
and i am a jealous cat
perched on spring's ledge
taking swipes
at each passing day
as if it were a ball of yarn
(or more accurately, a mouse).

three dots

if i said

and you said

both of us love

other humans

i would wonder

and you would wonder

if both of us still love

each other

and i would wonder

if you were wondering

whether or not

i was happy loving

anyone aside from you.

spring, freezing

bringing in the last of the boxes
i moved with, ten months ago
nearly slipping on march ice
that threatens to make love to april
i uncover a few bottles of shampoo
that i bought on a shopping trip to a health food store
with my echoing wound of an ex-lover
in his dying GMC jimmy
one year back.
shampoo,
and an extra ratchet strap, still packaged
from a day when i searched forever
looking for a lost rope
to tie up a boat
that threatened to keep me and
my newest wound locked in harmony
for at least a few more hours.
eventually we bought a new one
and found the original exactly where we thought it had been
so i kept our purchase
and he took the old one all the way to california
where he unpacked his boxes quickly,
learned to say the word "home,"
scarred over more quickly than i,
and forgot about the march ice
that stubborn frost
that teaches who to make love to,
and how