Excerpt from The Lesser Fields
Ontogeny
Here and not here, I breathe away
the parts of myself I no longer require.
Would that they return as fish
orbiting globes of algae and every
now and then one might dimple
what I imagine will be my skin—
surface film or epithelium; body I fold
my body into; gravelcloud
and rainstem—a water unending
as the field where I pitch a dozen apples
toward the trunk of a tree until each one
having shattered into many pieces
is a length of horizon by which I measure
where I have not yet happened.
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Lives of Greta
There is that bird again
Finding its way
In transitive flights—
Not fear in the space
Where the rock was
But its fact—
A feeling of if and dirt
In the space where the rock was
A phrase and its refusal.
Then start again.
A feeling of if and a feeling of or
A feeling of and
And a feeling of then
Of where and what more
But when
In life’s nonsense
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Lives of Animal
Stab the night with a shank—
The prettiest metal
Dripping stars. In the body
Cavities of the animals
Arrange a thousand lit candles.
Blink once, then shut your eyes
To see the slaughter.
Custody is in the air. Blink twice
To feel the frost
Sharpen winter’s shears
For the smoke of flesh
Its profit and umber ruin.