ISSUE: Summer 2018
shortened are the number of times
I will speak to my father alive
the days I can just goof off and no one cares
are likewise declining
like the wild population of the rhinoceros
nosing gigantically the waterhole mud
the year a third done already
at the trash pile an enormous
photograph of Mount Rainier shaped like a trash pile
from the mountaintop at night you can
see clusters of light that are the towns
where as in the clusters of light above,
grave calculations are performed
like my cousin the sheriff or my cousin the felon
I usually only see the sun at the usual great
distance but this light on my parking ticket is no less
part of the sun than its impersonal flares
I give a quick goodbye like shaking water off my hands
Robert Creeley! There are fewer and fewer Roberts Creeley.
There are fewer / fewer excellent things to remember.
fewer people buzz me in through secret doors.
The moon hangs over the garage
reminding me that I will or will not live forever
gently appointed with a rude corsage
fulcrum of the sun-and-moon-balanced lever
and if the sun travels on the descending-airplane’s wing
then also some tongue-red camellias
just now bloom
but already some have fallen into the grass’s ring
same sunlight plane and flower both perfume
this yard where I vomit after having hauled
from the basement, soaked in rat piss and shit and death,
layers of insulation inexpertly installed,
fiber and virus entering every breath,
yard also of the annual Derby party when Mary Park
lived here and I drank julep
from cold sweating pewter
