A BREACH OF FRESH AIR

Sometimes you confuse me with other women

scanning our heads in a crowd

I’m not particularly photogenic;

the camera makes me self-conscious

I never learned to pose


Wind fills my puffer on the roundabout

I become airborne on the walk over

Skywriting: a classical artform

The professor thwarted foodborne illness,

but fell victim to zoonotic disease


The randomizer gestures from off-stage

A memory misplaced:

never arriving, but the waiting is the same

Unmoored As if all of childhood’s a dream

or simply never was

SOBER MOMENT

Writing a love letter in poison ivy
You’re in one nostril out the other

Bedsheets a damp apparition
hanging from the door hinge

The more fractal our heartbeats the homier
Exhale dramatically through your nose

Gave away my laundry money
All money is dirty money

I walk through blue and white acrylic
to see how far our footsteps travel

Hoarding hunks of malachite
I’m wearing the apiarist’s gold satin jumper

embroidered with bees and flowers –
and a matching mesh wire mask

GLASS PAVILION

I watered the tulips that wilted overnight

When we sleep in the loft the bad dreams dissipate

Not that it’s not bad but like it’s no big deal

Your subconscious carries a cumulus over us

Slanted walls whisper exhausted prophecies


We were stirring lentils and reading Pinter

Birthday guests rode the freight elevator

Abandoned houseplants pre-stretched canvases

We locked ourselves out on the rooftop

knocking for the ceramicist to let us in


In the night my fears crystallize into daggers

My parched tongue wants for water

The factory window gradient blue

A curled spider falls from my hair

I dreamed I wrote a poem in the shape of a star