reypulque

There aren’t so many bolts from the blue, there aren’t so many you don’t says. I’ve been talking to you without your help for so long that I forget how far apart we were, and how much further you are now. How little I knew, how much more I do not know. Words I say each day to your radiant absence don’t amount to much...
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Unless I look you dead in the eye

all my words are useless,

too used to the shifting red and blue

as passions heat and cool,

too used to the pretty birds in a row

to realize there’s a target

on every heads or tails, the pressing

sentiment or hard knocks taught

obsolescence of all my tricks and treaties.

Unless you tell me straight to...
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The last light as the sun

closes shop and makes its excuses,

the early day, the places to be,

going through it’s pockets,

checking it’s keys the way

we used to look at watches—

that spark to the start,

the when we began, the long reach

across the table tossing

all the shadows around,

the blinding bright before the curtain,

the moment where ancient forces...
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The heat only has a few ways to go,

to punish the flesh of tongue and lip,

to sulk together in the stubborn steel,

or step between matter’s stages,

ascend from the hot black coffee

into the wind whipped

nymphs of playful, dancing steam,

tickling gray beard and

rueful smile alike

ever the coquette, the delighted ingenue

spilling her traces and stirring

her hair and...
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I take a swallow from the steel cup, forgetting briefly that the coffee has cooled, the cup beset by nervy flies and the ruthless breeze of autumn waking up. I take the rest as time spent if not time served, a punishment befitting the life. Always aggrieved and put upon, the thinking pours it on thick. The cherished voice becomes a relentless quiet, no other...
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Time is told from either side

the clock grinding on the wall

the time until and the time since

turning over together

in the compost of your thinking,

from the dazzle mechanic to

the bride of the sky, from dead pet to

dead pet, with the dead elders to

work the earth of days and dreams.

The word itself arrives a great bird,

high and...
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The small things come hardest—

the fragment of geode,

the obsidian shard

muddled in the dust,

the stacked books and

favored feathers, postcards

and lovely works, art

crafted in proof, oh proof

that once I was loved

or at least time was served,

this ravaged sediment of

labor and skill, letters left

to their tenses, gifts strewn

across my life. Nothing

so treasured, nothing so...
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It isn’t only the labor of the honeybee or

the sacrifice of the sugarcane,

this sweetness

I seek, it is my work

through this world and the words

I founder in, the heft of these wishes,

the hunger of a love-starved heart

bidden to the hopeless and

the gone, clinging to the wheel

as it turns and turns though the sweet

comes as strong black...
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It isn’t mine to sing though

the singing isn’t stealing,

the song picks its own

team, not just the sparrows

chittering in the pines,

not just the dogs

raising hell at the neighbors

shuffling down the driveway like

lords of the earth, haughty about

the home. Our voices raised

like the shock of defeat,

raised like the baffled revenants

beneath some Christ-y craft or

muddled...
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The sky goes blue for a breath or two, the last lashings of sunlight stirred into the heap of smoke, heaven always holding out for someone better. The day is heat and habit, all the young folk loosed past the limits of their patience, as I hang around with the dregs and drags. The sun will set, and I will again be erased. I will...
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