from Tucson and Taos Poems
in food deserts. Agnes, not Georgia
“Are people here nice?” If you call it
a retreat, you can omit the oven
mitt. “Ew, sticky olive oil”
“Is that a ghoul?” “I feel her
in my mouth” “Ew, Charles!”
Epiphany, after
emotional fever, a paved road
makes us giddy. Midmorning
A sharpening sun, the right road
in the wrong direction, “so warm
from her hands”
72F sunny, sunrise 7:23, sunset
5:51. Spring, not yet. I want as much
light as a movie set living
room. Let’s agree to never
be blond. Bass line from the
neighbor frat. Spine spread
on a soft cylinder of would I
impossibly blue. Architecture buffers
the contrail. Saturday rhymes in
a celebrity feeling
Careless floors, bleached or
absently waxed. Sesame baby teeth
and bunny’s breath. Let’s
entertain memories of clean. All week
reading the Norton, how we’ve been
pretty the whole time of the poem
sobs the loss of living
parents. “Syntax was her thing
to hide her lesbianism”
An attractive
child, I sounded out newsprint
celeb mags lining a carry-on
Literal pulp homeschool from stars’
staged pop realism. Innocent
or hygienic? Daring to fall
through the drawbridge, or
outrunning nine to get enough
food? I was here, through
these lines. “I echo
naturally” Olives next to
kombucha next to sourdough
dark on an open kitchen counter
Cities of rocks
hillsides, cities of bright neutral, bright
dark sky (Texas Canyon 12:56). On all sides
the eye, prickly ridged pastel
gravel Moment
traces big grain (Chihuahuan)
Many motels to hello
grapefruit trees. “Riding in a car on
the American highways is like
writing poetry with your whole body”
The coast is an island (Tues 12/29
Silver Lake) Nowhere otherly
gorged paper bag peak. “We’ll wait
until the quotidian passes”
Bicycles stream by. Weekenders snap
purple green cactus. A high sculpture
on wheels slows the streetcar
Waterbirds and cars sonically go
People dress to drink
their water. I cannot
take credit for any cruel theater
or secure tables fast enough
We vision each other
On left blade, a green jewel point
Eye of a panther resurrects
comfort, catacombs, gray-greens
open, overgrow Haul ass, arc of Joan!
from a traceable relation
Footsteps amplified my silent attention and restored me by proxy to everyday life
After the film’s halfway point, marked by song, Cleo walks down ten steps, crosses a courtyard, and exits narrative time onto Rue Huygens
I’m permitted to enter the scene as one of any number of bystanders whose faces begin enunciating an observation just as the camera sweeps away to keep time with the in-scene beats of Cleo’s stride
On cue, we behave as if in a time of sacred ones, a nun’s order of the grammars of queer conduct
The far from ideal architecture presents some moments for improvised choreography
I’m surprised to find a sentence evaporate in a light trace of its arc down a creaky stairway through a dimly lit foyer into a yard where there’s a cast iron bathtub
When thrown aloft in Italian carnivals, Jordan almonds linked CONFETTI to CONFECT, something candied, salted, rendered in its own fat
Dedication to Beauty is a romantic occupation, the courage to know which conjunction is most beautiful here and there in a shadow language
The sentence isn’t an etching in the way a poem line is an inscription that interrupts a surface
Mom was Miss Liberty, third place, in the Miss Malasiqui Pageant at age fourteen
Transactional, place-making, translingual, instinctive, provisional, carnivalesque
This risks whimsy
Varda isn’t afraid
Mr. Button, later seen in an episode of From Here to There, takes a tray of plain matchboxes, chooses one to empty out wooden matches into a jar labeled with the current year
Varda shows us four jars: each labeled by year, and partially filled with half-burned matches
My father says his pain isn’t due to the cancer, he’s just old, don’t worry
A sentence takes time to appear in its strange form, as form at all
“outrageously speculative and experimental”
“private and solitary”
“useless activity”
This recursion is the hand of my parents, my inheritance
I sat on one of the low wooden beams, and throat-singing spirituals vibrated my ass with low frequencies
In the main gallery, a monastic drone issuing from a beautiful gold teardrop suspended over a huge, shiny floral receptacle rose and fell in pitch
With high frequency vibrations, the shiny fetish fed back to us our footsteps
A sort of depressive figure—thin, ombre-haired— walked the periphery