Nebraska

          I liked saying your name, swirling it around in my mouth, feeling its weight on my tongue. Liked gripping it gently between my teeth. The curtain of static parted to reveal you standing in front of the fireplace, flickering in and out of existence, looking at me like you were seeing me for the first time, like you had no idea who I was.

          I had no idea who I was. The fire crackled. The wind ruffled your bangs and you looked annoyed. Through the windshield, the earth was black and the sky was gray and it was all speckled with raindrops. Your thoughts hit me like a tractor trailer and knocked me to the carpet. The highway folded itself in half. The strings twanged hard but never snapped. You'd sliced your finger cutting collards and you held it up and I kissed the bandaged tip.

          Your finger was never bandaged. I never kissed it. I was on my knees my head pressed against your belly as you ran your fingers through my hair.

          A tropical zephyr ran its fingers through my hair. I was swimming through a forest of bleached coral. In Pompeii a buried filly clattered to her feet, trotted off through the rubble. I breathed in dread and breathed out anticipation. Out of the corner of your eye you glimpsed a Buddha sitting and smiling unperturbed beneath an avalanche of river rocks. The fire in the fireplace kept shrinking to a single glowing ember, you got down on your knees to breathe it back to life.

          You got down on your knees to breathe. Angels drifted in wobbly orbit at the farthest reaches of the solar system, hiding behind planetoids every time a spacecraft hurtled past. On the edge of a small town in Nebraska, a couple of guys cased cars in the parking lot, mincing between the silver puddles. My side split open and thousands of little clay figurines made in your image spilled out. When I tried to gather them up they turned to powder in my hands. I had no idea who you were.

          I had no idea who you were. It was like I was seeing you for the first time. You were running your hand along a windowsill covered with Mississippi sand dollars. A chalky lozenge melted under your tongue. Plate piled high with little corn husk bundles. Lemon rind peeled in a single piece, twisted strips of amber flypaper. You were on your knees looking up at me. I reached down and ran my fingers through your hair. The car stopped. I went through the windshield.

            The world went through the windshield. I don't know what happened after that.

         Years later there's the shattered hand, the splintered wound, the splint and the tape and the twine. As you recover you watch the the squirrels bouncing on their circuit from mimosa to rhododendron to corrugated shed to the house we once tore down to build another house from the same wooden planks, then back to the mimosa. The air is chewed to pieces by the symphony of chainsaws and lawnmowers in December. You watch it all through the dining room window, laptop on the table, laughing every time the squirrel almost misses a branch, as in the next room your teenage son dances with the vacuum cleaner.

White Circle

 A piece of chalk

to mark the path

between the pickup truck

and the porch steps,

to measure the distance

from the porch steps

to the straw mat

The wedding guests

wipe their shoes

Heavy lace curtains

A single bare nail driven

into the plaster

Dust on the floor too fine

for the corn broom to catch

Water burbling on the stove

Run your hand along

the smooth, solid bannister

Upstairs flutter of paper

The fathers bicker

as is their ritual

The bride’s thick braid

hangs between the parted blades

of a pair of garden shears

It hangs there a long time

A pail of very cold water

An empty clothesline

The guests shuffle their feet

Cough quietly into their clean sleeves

The chickens scratch in the dirt by the fence

clucking their incessant questions

The ax head buried deep in the block

has only one word with which

to answer them

Campfire

 Erotic letters found in the pocket

of a brown leather jacket

The crackling of autumn leaves

not yet dampened by the winter rains

I check the weather on my phone

just as drops begin to speckle the screen

I duck into a shop for a last-minute gift

I paw at the tchotchkes, listening to the rush

of ocean waves emanating from a plastic rock.

The box says it plays five other “soothing sounds.”

It's not a very convincing looking rock

and the sounds do not sound much like

the ocean, the river, the campfire.

Pixelated sparks as you poke the logs

Ocean spray from crashing waves

A bouquet of roses that explodes into blossom

every time I press the button

Pages blank as snow

That  night the rain whispers against the window

As I nuzzle your ear and slip my hand

between your legs

Gray curtains of cloud, soft down comforter

Jacket thrown over the back of a chair,

phone buzzing over and over

Across the street, the 7-11’s cold white glow

Car tires on the wet road

Your digital moan

Spider up a Pipe

 I'm talking to the one-eyed woman
who stands on the corner of Second and Mission
smoking and snarling through her curls. Hard to say
who are insults are aimed at. They land at her feet
like cigarette butts. I heard that years ago
someone strangled her, left her for dead
in a parking garage, and when she came to
she wandered into the natural history museum
and found herself chased down the wood and marble corridors
by flying horns and antlers that shot through the air
like schools of barracuda. Before they could impale her
she stepped through the glass and disappeared into a diorama
of a group of soft, harmless lemmings
who do not, by the way, actually commit mass suicide
by leaping into the sea, it's a myth we've perpetuated
over the years to convince ourselves that animals are
even more fucked up than we are.
She's the mirror image of my wife, whose face sprung
from a drawer crammed with invisible objects.
My wife also only has one eye, the opposite one
from the woman at Second and Mission, whom
I used to money to which I should have been giving
to my wife for groceries.
My wife insists on grocery shopping in the forest
even though the selection is not as good as at the markets
and everything she buys is covered in sap and stickers.
The woman at 2nd and Mission would tell me stories about her life
after being strangled. I went through a warp, she said.
I passed through a wormhole. I was on TV and the TV
was a tunnel. I was hugging the walls. Scrambling up
the drainpipes like a spider. My head was spinning on my neck
like goddamn Linda Blair, I was spitting streams
of strawberry milk, I was frothing at the mouth. I have powers
no one understands.
With that she winks and blows me a kiss.
I show her the book I wrote about her
but she slaps it out of my hands and stomps on it.
Her satin and furs start to shiver on her bony shoulders,
and suddenly a ragged bird bursts from her bosom,
leaving a trail of dust and mites and glitter behind.
Her eye rolls wildly in its socket the way
my wife's does. The corner has frozen solid
and she asks if I have any money and I say
I already gave you all I have and she starts to scream
and I reach into my pocket, looking for more,
and somehow there always is.

Wolf and Fox Hunt [after Rubens]

The foxes and wolves twist around the legs of the horses,
unafraid of the hooves which could easily pound them into jelly.
All the horses are standing completely still,
frozen mid-cantor, mid-whinny.
I press my ear to one of their bellies and can hear a ticking
and whirring inside, a metallic scratching.

The foxes and wolves are twisting around my ankles
and the ankles of all the frozen horses;
I can see their ribs poking through their pelts.
The ground is one vast carpet stretching to the horizon
in every direction, covered with flower prints and geometric patters
colored all the different shades of dust.
Night falls and the horses glow in the moonlight.

 the sky is filling up with black balloons
and the forests are charred toothpicks
and the fields have turned to dust.
The river is just a trickle
and the skin between your legs
is hard and dry as a scab,
you pick at it but once it starts peeling
it won't stop and before you know it
you've peeled all your flesh off
as the black egg of the sun cracks open
to let its golden goo drip and pool
just beyond the horizon

Next morning the huntsmen lie scattered about the fields,
their bodies hidden by industrious flies
as the sun sops up their blood like a sponge.
The foxes and wolves are nowhere to be found
though I keep thinking I catch glimpses of
the tip of a tail here, a quivering snout there.
A flash of red, a dash of gray.
I reach into the cloud of flies
and gingerly extricate a curved hunting horn
I lift the horn to my lips
and the world bursts into flames.

The Bullet Weighs More Than the Gun

You wanted it to shatter you,
as it had already once before
back before you cobbled yourself
back together, before you pasted
and spackled and glued and wound
yourself with tape like bandages,
back when you were a solid mass,
uncracked, unblemished,
counting down the days before
you would explode.
And now you want it to happen again,
you want to trace the steps
of the annihilation dance.
You want to feed your shards
to the ravenous wind.
Here, put out your hand. Feel that weight.
Feel how little it would take

And it would take everything 

Space Room lavatory