April 2011

i. a long voyage, 1621

I left you where you are:
A humming late summer afternoon
& mottled by shade a man reading a letter
Becomes the image of a man reading
That I am forgetting.
This page is small yet stout enough
To bear me...

What I notice first within
          this rough scene fixed
in memory is the rare
          quality of its lightning, as if
those bolts were clipped
          from a comic book, pasted
on low cloud, or fashioned
          with cardboard, daubed
with gilt then...

A word you can’t quite say
without itching, flinching; it’s not easy
to ignore its squirming appetite, stay
your primal juddering. And yes, at
night, each microbe gurns in the salty sea
of gut and gullet, born again, boldly eats
as you ate it, brews its...