Revolution
I.
we sat picking yellow iris under the smoketrees
absentminded umber curling in spirals
leg-locked and curious about each aster’s
upturned chin time was a joke
we could put our finger on with pleasure
II.
counterpoint heaven is a mistranslation
from an early language meaning unfavorable wind
what’s quiet is being taken from us
inaudibly tithed by our hatchmarked survival
and the tools used for farming
are now harnessed for predictions
as in determining the favor of air currents
passing through the valleys where we now live
III.
they say the lord speaks in desolate moans of wind
they say the lord speaks in an arid whisper
while elk graze our severed affections
I tuck my neck in & look out from the caress
of black sand foothills to an outcropping
of angels outlined in sage
I wonder is love always exaggerated
like a story you tell a friend & they pass on
& on until it can no longer recognize its own face
IV.
I can’t forget what I saw when the fire
burned through barns and houses and caravans
of people roped along the road last summer
I saw a fox transposed into flames as it
walked through the charred treeline
two small dots as eyes & a transparent body
disintegrating in real time as it eloped
we don’t exaggerate but our measurements
are imprecise blood and inches
there is no way to estimate a feeling
as it rises in our throats like a phoebe hooded
& bone black to hunt in the wavering dusk
V.
I don’t know how to explain
half of what I’ve felt accumulating
where even language hides from me
all I ever wanted was a teacher
someone to translate the word heaven
to help guide me in these desolate plains
manifest paradise through a revolution
of whispers that seed the valley with rain
I Want To Be The First Shovel Of Spring (Each Root Tip Sapped Like A Gut Into A Carpet Of Red Clover)
the amaretto eyelid of sunset is closing on
a strange season of pain and grace
what’s anchoring the ache that has
swallowed my whole survival
is a theory of home as a place
you never go but only
travel towards like
a cardinal
direction
have I been
sincere enough to
provoke our freedom my
god quiet as a shy piano there
are still species being discovered
every day just smaller levels of magnitude
we must tell the night a story so it will continue
watching syntax crawl up from the ocean glistening
are words pillars of instruction grapes on
the vine or here listening I want at once
to be graceful and have limits from
which that judgement could be
apprehended by a benevolent
eye sweeping and stalwart
across the tallgrass plains
I am trying to tell
a story so long
it will be
able to
remember
the pastel leaking
in the wastewater
your nose blood smelling
like old shoelaces & in
between the refrain
Palomino
I follow my horses
because they have
magnets in their
brain
taking them to paradise or
running water or the north pole
or the ocean
in other words
places I will never go or only learned about
in books— what is the use of reading say
people
who secretly love the language
that plumps their doubling
tongues & pains their slaves
the ginger root I stuck in my boot has
gone sour
& my back tooth is rotting from its
own contradictions we pick fruit in the
dark to taste knowledge
that can only grow in shade &
find
even more questions like why
does one brother die and the
other escape
can sacrifice
bind you closer to the object
you’re burning what does it taste
like when god makes mistakes
if we want to survive this war we have to
evaporate the acid rain and rematerialize let
us
first exchange our razored tears
I will cut them from your face and
you will cut them
from mine
