​morning lines #144
I brought out parchment to bake the scones on.
Instead I wrapped myself in it and waited
for the UPS man to come with string
and a gentle hand.
 
morning lines #143
I won’t waste the season’s last
raspberries on you, pink-red pouches,
so sweet I could weep.
They ache to be tongue-fucked.
Instead, I’ll kiss their eyelashes and lick
their tears before dropping them,
one by one, deep into my mouth,
past bitter and fear.

​morning lines #142
In the poem, his dog was named Blue.
That was the colorful part
because the poem was basically
black and brown, close to the bare,
broken ground and about what
most poems are about:
death and love drained of life.
 
morning lines #141
How can the days go any faster,
the feathered feet, 
mucous running from all the running,
tangled vines mangling heavily dangling
from the ceiling till you can't see the floor
and you’re inevitably shown the door?

An army of tiny Mr. Creosotes, clutching umbrellas, falls from the sky,
in a rare as rummy California summer rain that smells of dogs feet and
typewriter manuscript. I feel brief belligerent shocks of lightning
between my ears.

She threads her teeth, like buttons,
one by one, in slow consternation,
onto a length of floss, thinking herself
clever for choosing floss over the
solid imaginary line that goes from
her comfortable bed to the
​blue-yellow moon.

morning lines #136
Wisdom is knowing how near the end is.
How soon the blackbird comes crashing
against the window pane.
 
morning lines #135
“Here is a souvenir of me.”
It’s not my ear.
It’s not the rusty condom ring of my anus.
It’s not my whisper-soft eraser-colored nipples.
I don’t know what it is.
But keep it as you would your precious tongue
against the straight white of your teeth.
Because it’s worthless.

morning lines #134
mary ann
They gave her red grapes every day in the late afternoon.
She spat out like a bored sniper the dark leathery skins, random shots
that made contact with her lap, the floor, my amused and grateful heart.
 
I see her now in a melon-shaped hat, cherries the color of dried blood swinging
from her ears. She wears a vest made of mandarins and roses, and sits as judge
(with a wink and a shrug), holding, like an egg, the germ of her droll whole mind,
while the plum in my chest heaves and bleeds at the loss and gloss of her.

You pounce my lungs as I lay waking and make your point
with an extended paw: Your toenails graze my cheek.
I place my hand on your tiny skull. It feels wired, jacked in
to the wall behind me. You act as if I’ve nested
hummingbird eggs -- navy beans, white pupils -- in my eyes
for the hibernation of late summer, now that the eclipse
is captured, the day grows steadily less, and grief steals inside of me.

Lyrica, oh Pfizer, takes the corners of this REM-sleep sheet,
shaking it out until it billows and sails toward sky and space,
to who-knows-where --
someone knows --
settling onto the white noise of the night,
and ultimately disappearing into the dark light,
the shades and shadows of which I’ll never see.

rode my bike to the pharmacy, got my antiseizure drug, browsed the bookstore for Dying: A Memoir, drank sweet frozen coffee, rode home with the wind in my helmeted hair, kissed the dog, and ate little tofu squares, peas, and rice, more diorama than dinner, an acrylamide brick village, its sticky white walkways dotted haphazardly with blips of
​Kelly green

Stroke the downy hairs of my throat until the bird rises up and I can push it out of my mouth. The wet matted thing dries by the will of the sun. I watch it hop on its remaining foot, like longing, like hope, like desire held by its wings.

In the story of my decline, fine metal mesh, the shape of moth wings, seals my
​miserable mouth.
 
In the story of my decline, duct tape binds these still-buoyed breasts until they’re broken, boarded, and blessed.
 
In the story of my decline, an oily shop rag finds a dry space between my anus and urinary meatus, laying the desert at my feet.
 
In the story of my decline, my navel retreats like an eclipse to somewhere behind the moon, leaving a smooth, sagging belly for only me to marvel at.