Poems
Five and Cold
Five and cold on the red couch
brown if you ask Frances
red/brown then but the wavelengths
are not caloric though classified warm
as colors like coffee in the copper
red cup on polished mahogany
cold that stays near the orange floor
red she’d say tiles tidy as complete
sentences close packed huddled
You could say cold that is slowing me
is productive in the northern oceans
colder the better for those surviving
winter on waxes
Against Reductionism
Additive is the lake attaching mallards to its surface
pulling the beeches down around them
the wide sky featherless and the water cooling glass
of a great reflector searching the pitch black
But who remembers pitch these days an antiquated mystery
like ecstatic and archival language
I have had enough of diminishment I have even stopped writing
A in place of my whole name
Some Truths
Everything has devils
the dust has one
its fingers remind us
Debriding a wound
has a bad sound
as if married
and then divorced
The Fang say ghosts
are two dimensional
turning sideways
in our presence
lest we see them
A mirror no heavier
for all it holds