1.
maryland turns into my mother’s favorite place.
she never moves there at all.
in the happiest life,
america is a rippling star
in a strange girl’s field,
her lips on my mother’s face,
saying,
everything leaves,
so stay.
2.
we’re in France again.
nobody stares.
in the metro tunnel,
then the wind,
bodies sway together,
bells warm in the air.
i climb the louvre,
momentous glass
in hand. i can
screenshot
the sun.
i can move
everyone.
3.
what task becomes at hand?
i’m higher than the bowl of greens
i ruined, mom,
last new year’s eve.
i meant to say
i’m sorry for this.
you climbed and gathered
all day, and i watched
from afar, taking dusk
for unfinished business
we couldn’t be
reborn into again.
at the end of this rope
stands another,
wider than God.
4.
under the eyes of good fortune,
she removed her nose/breasts
for love of art
and hatred of the crowd.
the sun is flatter
than God now.
5.
this exercise is meant for release.
palms down, hips up. release.
may we balance our way to an ending
we sure as hell don’t know; release
each other of configurations, teachers and co-pilots
of death anxiety, yawning open, release.
there’s some canine in the vacuum between us,
don’t you think, doc? teeth forward, seeking release
from the forms that brought us here today.
hips and lines of black boxes to sign: for release.
you’re smooth as water in the year of the rat, you know.
enough to spare relief, a hard place to find release.
i think i’ve got life anxiety.
what i am afraid of is release.
6.
where to go from here when once again you come press
your thumb against my asking mouth where i keep
these secrets interpretative soft open unkneeled poems
the unkempt pedaling me close and i mean really really close
on a bicycle to the end of the world we were falling on the nearest beach
we once strolled down the oily dark the starlings on the chesapeake green
could you tell what it was what it held years to come years
to grow within she laid there like jellyfish in a corn field strewn
transparent dendrites of yellow gold strained up towards the sky
her drying cells her wicked hair swept up against
a face i can no longer recall
at all
7.
wet rain
over a blanket
of ears
mother
who never landed
anywhere
