The Essential Image There must be one Like a nova With a congregation of smaller suns Tripping on its hem Falling into the stratosphere It’s heel caught in conjecture It is after all a non thing A black hole Although now we are obliged to Look at the darn things seriously
A pinpoint of darkness In the deep part of my brain A moment of trauma perhaps A bit of sand from the Sea of memory I hid behind the winter coats in the hall closet Wrapped in my mother’s moutan When I was a wee girl and there were visitors In the forbidden pink living room At school I rarely spoke I mostly looked out the scarred windows That seemed to ripple in the wind Trying to steady my legs That so ached to be out and away They would not stay still I may never have one singular-transcendent moment Or they may never find it So perfectly buried Between sheets of foolscap—another perfect word The sun goes to rest Behind the dunes I watch it sink Feeling the sucking of the planet I should mend any fences That are still left Forlorn—a clever word It forces the mouth into empty kisses It sounds right Let life empty penultimately And fill up slowly again Sliding on tears and promissory notes The ways of the world Don’t change so much After all They shift and sort And fall off the earth While other parts Grow toward its center Nebulas collide—collude And deals are made in late night phone calls Between crooked kings Provincetown, 2024
Do I hallucinate The side of that house Across the street Now goes around the corner And I can see the back From the front Do I think I am Picasso I live for these moments a reward Passed along through A barrage of sequential encoding Our inheritance Lacking only one or two small degrees Of resting before continuing In reverse Open to mutation and dalliance Open to massive joy and relentless tragedy On one slim line The time between A millisecond Am I losing or gaining My mind that is My selfhood And the avenue to simple pleasure Provincetown, 2024
Hiding Out