First There Was

Start
by saying it out loud.
When it's spoken
is when it begins.

Great Recessions

The farm could stay,
but when Lehman emptied its offices
late afternoon that Tuesday
treasure and all
the horses had to go

They were led to water
walked up the plank
dispatched on yachts
bereft of mortgage
the Atlantic swallowed whole

Back in Woodstock
the locked land
paddocks pristine
ready for residents
Snow is growing in fossil hoof prints
stables painted red
open for business
standing silent
in groves of gray ash

Nothing Unclean

When the door closes
I lose track of time
As it seeps backwards
I'm in a cab
I'm home
I'm in bed
You're shuddering next to me
I'm seventeen
They tell me she's disappeared into the bathroom
I'm with my broken father
Looking at the clouds
Expelled by the planes
Filling the only sky of Michigan
The air so fragile
It shatters when the rain hits it
Crashing on us running
Two hundred miles an hour
To the door
Thundered shut
My stomach cinches
The plane begins to rise

Some Weather

In the upper midwest
the wind turns
at four o'clock.
An ice edge forms
the oxygen cased
in a sharp, slim blade.

Later, Refracted

soon you're broken off peace will walk and talk
the scent of that day coming roars through folded time compressing
swift toughness leaded lips I'll speak like cotton and it's spun winning with such guilt and
fix you a calendar I series of boxes edge the perfect ribbon
and I that field the square yes but ever ragged after the haze cotton
bound by senses bailed and stored rhythmically I grow back toward future
little more than splintered stocks trying the Sun and I'll tell for
roping ladylike loss in the open square of that month and whatever
piece on offer head in hands folded open my fast comes forth to
soak the scent of time

It depends on your definition

I entered her house

While she slept

I changed the floorboards first

One nail per night

I continued

Every bit of architecture

Till the same house

Was a different house

It was a gradual change

She never noticed it

Or maybe she just pretended not to

(She hid impressions behind her hair)

So I started to call during daylight

Working in the awake open

Sometimes I didn't leave at all

My labor was silent and separate

A ghost machine

I painted the whole place

I tossed everything overboard

And bought it all again

I answered her mail

And the door

When my work was done

I watched her bathe

She stared silent, too

In the cooling blank water

Waiting for something

To begin

Or end

V

V was a six foot two red head, born a twin. I knew her when she wandered. She had a high soft voice, like whispering above an airplane engine. She wore caramel lips and a clever smile. At times, she took so long to say hello you were left tilting with your mouth open, falling in to her neck, soft as ferns. She was always crashing relationships into shore, after which she’d pack a bag for elsewhere. Her landlord was a round woman from Naples. When V left with her single suitcase she’d ask,
“When will you return?”
“Who knows, there’s so much to see.”
“Yes my vagabonda.” 

The last time I saw V was without notice or surprise, at a bar in Brooklyn. She’d boarded a bus in Cleveland where she’d taken up work as a grade school teacher. She had a few dollars and wore boots that came to her knees. She asked me where there was dancing. After a drink we walked out into February’s night where she evaporated into the ice.