In the cemetery

The mausoleum
of my heart
inters a new and swelling love

Alongside the others
chambered within
resting

The murmurs of a life
spent wanting to love
needing to love
loving

Nothing is buried there
light beats in
wind forages for dust

I can't see around
the cracked metal door

--it's open
not broken--

But I can imagine
the interior

We keep walking

Near the Fraser

 two-something miles from home to town

I walked all winter to keep from drowning

gravel, no margin, golf course, frozen pond

I held my breath to see the beaver and her dam

and the gash of the creek, awash with sound

the meadow a tawny fireman's sheet

split by the creek like pages on a spine

held smooth and flat between the arms of trees,

a rookery crowding the tallest of their crowns

from a river of crows that ran eye to horizon

What can I do, now that I'm gone

from that place of silence and cold

Is there still a dead branch inside my body

where the bark is bleached to white

where the arms reach out in a fierce, sharp pose

and the hard trunk arches up?

Does a train still scream through a blanket of fog 

to deliver longing and dreams

does its whistle still blow over snow and ice

to fill up the carnal night?

Or do I only have dishes and toilets and screens

and the lonely landscaped block

is there still a table—a wilderness feast—

here, in married life?

Clinique des soins d'urgence Reine Elizabeth

 She answers the unheard other:

"I'm at the Queen E,"

Much too loudly for the space

Which is not truly cute enough

To have a nickname

Her mother, Hester, is rolling away now

Hester's throat is sore today,

Her knee appointment is next week

I know these things because

Too loudly was not a one-time thing

For her daughter on the phone

Hester likely goes by Hester only,

But this I do not know for sure.

The tree where the wheelchair was

Lights the linoleum with fairy spots

It's a lowest common denominator type

Of Christmas tree, ekeing out the title

Because they'll put it away next week

Leaving like Hester a gap in the seats.

My cousin, Leslie, we used to call her

Our Little Butterball when she was born

Up until the moment the nickname

Would cause psychological harm.

She looks just like her, this little girl 

Who now sits in Hester's daughter's seat

Eyeing up the Christmas tree with babyjoy

Zeyneb got called now, and Jeanne.

Given the choice between English and French

Both answer "Oh, either is fine."

How precious, the gift of choice in the waiting room.

STILL

 still life from active life:

the toys on the floor, the desks of piles, 

dishes fill the sink,

steps covered with mud and leaves,

layers of clothes on the hooks.

is the house too small or 

have your belongings multiplied

like the people?

who belongs to who?

chests heavy with grief, still walking around,

still breathing, still making stuff and yelling

you want more 

with nowhere to put it.

my eyelashes rake 

             rain from clouds

pull light through 

              grey canopies

brush saturated

              landscapes golden

feed me sunlight, 

              scrape the plate

Oh, to have them 

            bury me in sleepless 

 night, eternal light

            Deep under the world.            

~~~~~

abundance today

sun cloud sand and ocean wave 

i am washed anew 

Wide fields

eyes wide mouth big
she’s got all sorts of room
for love
calling it in soft like kitten’s fur

sending out searchlights

steady and tender as moonbeams

tendrils so ready to receive
and not one lick of a thought
of looking away
for shame of wanting

just the deepest knowing 

that this mutuality 

is all

new year's

she takes little sips of earth, whiffs of ash

the cream colored Gaggia machine 

is caked in the splotch of decades

of early mornings, her children grown

but last night as the New Year loomed

she said she met a nice man

 

 

'Til the Morning Takes Me

Riga petered out, but someone felt compelled to stop and talk to me,

Vilnius went on for a good while, I suddenly noticed it was light outside,

said whoops as Tristan had a pill shoved in his mouth by a topless woman,

and it seems this is about when I began sending the premonitions home,

Budapest was milder but less mild than expected,

but at least I got the day off after and made my daily call from the baths,

Athens was ok, but there's something wrong there, 

it was just a solid block of Pyramid Club and no-one was sure what to do,

Bratislava was compact and precise and actually 

I had no idea it was morning at all and was forced to leave, 

and later rode a bus to the music shop for spares

in the beautiful slate grey of home,

Basel - I had no idea what I said and to whom but two months later I still

have the distinct feeling I was impish.

---

Peggy got her dates mixed up and didn't text me on the runway,

I'm nervous when she does and now I'll be nervous if she doesn't:

the cockpit went white two minutes in the air,

something fried,

hundreds of flights and I've never had to turn and ask,

planes conduct electricity, right,

that split second of is this what an explosion looks like

and oh ok, my seat is still dry,

interesting how my body isn't resigned to pissing in 

the face of it yet the mind is ah well, too many loose ends,

not my problem anymore.

Still I took a Xanax, squeezed the headrest against my ears

and like Vilnius and Bratislava, 

in the morning,

I was not gone.

Things it has never occurred to me to do

Make fine art 

Murder 

Floral arrangement

Burning man

The marathon 

Poppers

Mfa program