Poetry

The sallow cowboy
asks you to dance so you
put the limes down &
accept. Flat in his
arms, tracing the
baseboards, faces leering
around you with beer
bottle noses & hands
made of foam. The room
queers quickly, blending,
then spirals, & the cowboy’s
hand on your back is a knob,
a way to open you up, & out.

A huge box that once held
a plasma screen television

now lies, overturned by wind,
on the bone-white cement

in front of an urbane townhouse
Bloated with styrofoam,

the box will wait there for
six days until trash pickup

hooks a napkin
into his
shirt-collar
 
flips open
a laptop

My one brother was adopted
So I don’t share any of his natural qualities
And my same-mother brother he’s no good
He claims a mix up at the hospital
On account of his curly blond hair
And I’m so obnoxious

We went on a ski vacation then came home
I went directly next door to tell Brian Fronczek

Towards the surface
of the water
my mind
shouting

with greater
difficulty
moving up
from my chest

the name
still holds
this throat

the echoes
cling
inside this skull
from longing

a quick blur
a quiver

down to
black earth
not below
yet-
no voice

Her shaft moves across the blue
like a hand
a line of sight.

Uncompromising
on both sides
her arms rise
above the water.

He finds
an impossible focus
of two things at once
in that single ray
of light
the living arrow
stands at the world’s center.

The image
bears upon the silent water

Unrehearsed
her
concentration
here
is elaborate.

The sudden absence
of her nymphs
transforms her thoughts
into physical distance

all birds possess a core of fire

His dull movement arresting
the visual image
her form then
has nested in his eye.

It is the name
Artemis

Movement in
her eyes pass
a line of seafaring birds.

She registers the contours
of his feelings the weltering
blood the entire
soundless landscape
that has claimed him
in the line
of her image.

His slightest movement
is enough
to distract her.

Damp,
she finds his lips
in knocking

Her strength
traces
a sudden loss
of feeling.

Her nymphs help
her to dream more

the metaphors in her mind
leap over intermediary thoughts
too rapidly

lions who roam
in their splendor
oblivious
to any weakness.

Her familiarity
lies through touching
especially with an arrow.

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