Strangers

I don’t know where theyleave before they get here,but when they do I have tohear them out regardless. I can’t get in the wayof the old man mixingsomething in the riverwith the hatchet that he carriedas a means of erasingthe memory of himselffrom the region. Or the girl who only walksaround on cloudy daysin the […]

Ritual

Red front doors open upout to a view of just the riverin the places where it weavesthroughout the city.Everything depends on enough peoplewaking up when they’re supposed to,keeping everything alive.Once we have it we don’t like going back.Unmaking to us is like an admissionwe were wrong somehowbut look where we are nowand tell me this […]

Population 800

Horizons in my memorylike transparent linesthe windows make with blindsthat I leave open on the dayswhen it is worthless looking in. The police walk aroundin their mech suitsshooting tear gas canistersthrough school bus windowsbefore laughing hysterically. Grocery store cashiersget beaten by their managersjust for being needed in the first place. By the way I’m the […]

Spike

A man outside a junkyard stops trafficjust by standing in the road.A direction most ignored for better viewsof yellow orchards down the other way. The man doesn’t walk right, it’s likehis legs are twisted up somehow,and he staggers off the pavementwhen his point is made but I don’tunderstand it. Just focus on the hour if […]

Perch

Cold soda on the basement stairswhere the ground is like a mountain sideand the water heater singsabout the table saw.Peppered jerky in a plastic bag,a drawer with only knives in it,all under bats that sleep like cats,up just two ceilings.A red satellite like a higher kite,we aren’t connected to,but could be if we wanted to.Mercury […]

Lighthouse

Don’t desert me out here in the wildernesswhere anything can be born out of the surfor tangled masses past the tree linewhere the light has trouble shiningthrough the canopy. I want to steer the boat while you supplymomentum with the riveras it carries us along.I want to carve cheesy quotes into the oarslike we traveling […]

Insolate

Orchids chew on sunbeamswhile they nod at all the silentpassing humming birds.I kill them with a spadeI took from a garden shedin an overgrown section of the forest,no one knew about but me. The world is a spiraling treebent out of shape for usto mangle into shelter.Whole packets of trading cards,burnt in a barrel, still […]