Silt

Yes, it was a kind of terror. As if fingering
the spine of a book, then finding
every page is gone. In this admission,
children can go missing,

houses burn. No one comes.

The other version is this: the road goes on forever:
lined in Ocotillo, pure hot tarmac
throughout the valley,
along the skeleton coast—

Elk River Road

                                         (Humboldt County, California)

Like the last of the damned, a handful,
slender bay—

It’s true I had wondered: marigolds growing
all over

this locked door.
Excited (admit it)

by the voile of the drapes.
Fluttering

all, farmer-ly.

The role of the marigolds, the voile.

Admonishment

To be impossible, but full

of endless mouth. Same goes
for hissing starlight in the daytime.
You hold

the slippery kitten ‘til it says
let me eat

somebody else’s music now.

The Cartesian Other

In the narrowest spaces, she doth unravel, as if
a forest fire.



In its simplest form, starving: lack of food

but also (archaic)
to bludgeon with cold.

But the lake like a Molotov cocktail…

The dominant color always flame.

Still

Good to live
where the stars still work. A little
cirrus/nimbus? floating by—

Confess: you wanted the world (and you)

to just shut up.
But what is there to say? He posed
me like a dead girl and I liked it