Too Many Boys in the Basement
One is enough, and anyway, they’re men.
Kudzu not lichen. Lichen not human.
Human not tulips. Tulips not loam.
To be only loam, to be ready at the touch
for one replication of the universe.
A lightbulb to resemble the daylight,
the daylight eager to erase the night,
night to settle, sure of itself, as a man
in the yard grabs dog by the collar,
drags dog to the ground. Dog of highest
heaven, I’d rather elevate the dog.
Fall Off the Bone
That’s what the roast is supposed to do, so it does.
Oh that I were as well-behaved.
*
If you pray to the bone will you learn
what the bone knows? Or will
you just be the letterhead
on naked paper? Will you
finetune your cuticles
to catch degree by degree
the shift in wind? How will
the spirit sing in your heavy
heart? How will the garden
untended make song
out of streelights?
How low does an alley go
before it meets the sea again?
What is the railroad’s rattle doing
to one loose bulb?
*
Your body is wrong. Your body is wrong as a machine full of lead. Your body doesn’t know
itself. Your knee turns out. Think of your body as a landmine. Think of your body as knotted
garden hose. How could God live in your palm? How, when clenching in your sleep? How, when
you slap an alarm to wake yourself up? If your body knew itself, you’d be up to feed the
chickens before dawn. You’d be someone’s pastoral landscape, wrought in oils so thick you can
taste it, taste the river shuddering through fertile soil. You’d be the sunset at a woman’s back as
she calls to her children, somewhere out of frame, who are skinny with summer, a Catherine
wheel of knees.