Lost and Found

I found my grandmother in the freezer
gnawing on a roast I had bought on sale
but never had the heart to eat.
She still had all her teeth: something
she had always been proud of,
"I don't eat with my robot
hip" she used to reason.

There was no one left to impress,
but she kept going as though she were
going to fell the roast, dam a river,
raise a family and pass on her efforts.

I left her to the burn-
I'm not proud of it, but would you
have me take her out only to lose her
again; find her behind the dryer, knitting,
what I would guess is a sweater, from dust bunnies
or in the cabinet doing her best
to open a can with another can,
banging them together like clumsy lovers,
but I'll bet I'm afraid to find her
as I left her: ever on her way out,
biting her tongue like an undulating snake
with no discernible head.

Everything is Fleeting

To have desire,
torn from my breast
like an eight-armed tumor
restless with all I do not burn,
feels like nothing I want to feel.

Those I cannot put my finger on:
the quivering catch in my throat;
the taste of fresh salt trickling inland
through twin valleys half mine.

When my heart swells
with space or water
and my fingertips tremble,
scarcely able to contain
what I had tried to dampen
or temper I am reminded that this.

This too.

In a Vacuum

We played fools on the screen,
gesturing toward intricacies
of human contact
through a vacuum.

All Irises In Their Own Ivory Oceans

When the sky is flooded incandescent
and the pinhole pricks
for breath give way
look up.

Focus on the unseen threads
piercing our earth
in a radiant forest
born into black,

ever unfolding across
some saturated expanse,
to bend into convex exits
empty since time's inception.

There is no message
in the waves:
a Morse Code of particles
compelled to play at order.

Take heart,
though what once
lit the lantern
may have left long ago

the body is a filament.
I exist to burn.
I burn for existence
illuminated by another iris.

Poke

What's funny about poetry



is most people don't like it.