bruise, would you hand
me a nasturtium,
its orange burnt bitter
carnelian, mouthful
oh where is that jewel
Heir
Tables heaped with meat
and fruit. Plates laden
with roasted juice and what lies
leaking it. He grabs a fist
of serviceberries and purples
his lips. At the last
she lay blue and bloated
as a frog’s upturned belly
in the moat. His reign
stoppered in her. All the sapphires
and gilt. All the chalices
ensanguined. He commands
snowbanks of ermine
to line the crypt. Guard hairs
glistering, ensiform. Murmur
of underfur. An avalanche
to keep them warm.
Groundhog day
i.
Fat joy splayed on its belly
eating everything green gives it.
Fur fluffed and cresting
like a crown.
We go around like this,
mowing up whatever we can
and in our own ways, drowning.
ii.
Who am I to say
this leaf is more delectable
or this flower, that spreads like a gown?
Let the groundhogs devour and burrow.
Let green sustain the mouths.
I can’t even control
my own starving.
Spine
Cantilevered in blind heat:
this lust in a field
of grasses taller than
a man. He told my body
something it would never
forget and I never
saw him again.
Weak in the knees
is more than just a phrase;
it’s a disease
and I still can’t stand up straight.
Lung
Flounder’s eyes lie
one side of its head.
Tarantula can shatter
falling centimeters.
Sweet jabuticaba swells
from trunk, not limb.
Like snow in June, this white
spot on your lung belongs
to no one, being wrong.
Dead things
i.
This is the season of dead things.
Bat curled up on its back, frog broken open
to the meat, a turtle’s pixelated shell.
And all the frantic honeybees.
As a child I daily encountered such death
when the air was close or thundery.
There was the flipping over,
the poking things with sticks.
Look what I found, smeared and bloated.
Look what’s living in it.
ii.
Hawk stood along the path
as I jogged past. He eyed me sharply
but didn’t stir. His ankles had these surprising
little cuffs. When I looked back
he took off into a blur of coral tail, gray wing.
He shrieks around the property
to frighten small creatures into hiding
and picks them off while they scurry.
In this way his cry pierces doubly.
iii.
She was nearly gone
by the time I went to see her.
A nurse was dampening her lips
with a coral triangle of sponge
and she was rasping, a little louder
when I sat next to her and told her I was there
and loved her though who knows if she knew
though they say they do. Her skin
had grown a size too small. Her eyes
that were ice blue were closed that day;
because I’d missed my plane
I missed their final opening.
She died early the next morning.
I held my mother’s hand through this
though we hadn’t spoken in a year.
I’m next, she said. I will be, too.
Quarry
As you slept
I was thinking about the quarry,
about light going deeper
into earth, into rock, the hurt
of light hitting layers
that should be hidden,
that should be buried,
and how when it rained
for a long time that absence filled
with suffering, and we swam.
London, Dresden
In the classically laid out fountain koi
slapped and gaped at the surface
like misguided bathtub toys. Like mute
prisoners. Like the abandoned overgrown
goldfish they were. And even more so
when the sky broke upon them,
unleashing flowers of ice. The bodies
took cover as best they could, as bodies do,
within their medium. And the ice kept on falling,
as long as there was ice to fall.
Flower
The ruler left a welted stripe;
the