fly back
what you’ve dealt

indelible name, seeds
pine needles actually needles
stiff as though
or large

her hands shape white scars in the air

in death valley in a lake bed
(“the racetrack”)

spooky stones dig out tracks

(“peripatetic” “ice collars”)

war makes its ghosts
irritable, all the incursions, deeds
hand to penitence
they want you to mail them back their damaged skins
here & there, seeds

beat a seal out of the air
keep your mouth shut
the static
wants to convert us

girls in white messages

as soon as you move

a hand with a hole in it where a brazed star meant to be
readable as lockjaw, as your shipwrecked dice, carry
the waves
tonelessly
recalibrate your approach,
beached & stunned

rosin, palms, coconut husks, hurricane
soughoff: borrow me
a dotted line

thwit thwit

think of your prose as muscular & your poems
as broken bones & blood; there isn’t any skin

because no one can trust what it does
alternatively, the wind

blows open the door, the house howls
open your mouth & freeze with the night that rushes in

or sing so hard it pushes the outside
back outside.  but don’t shut
the door.  you’ll never forgive yourself.

tied up migrating

will flick off chips of your bones
point white, or they’d crumble anyway

rain over us, we’ll believe it’s the sky

be tough, passerine
write your own obituary

seeds fall away beneath
their feet

keep reading, driftwood