Poetry

To win a free mattress, lovers must sleep 
hidden and apart behind a wall to discern 
each other by the cadence of their breath. 

this heart, its caverns of somewhere laughter, its waking craters, 
its forest of knives. Dilate its thin pulsing complicities

He loves those first hours after she comes back.

I remain this tender, yearning 
to mend the flattened red wingage of every lantern 
fly that lingers on the stranger’s heels.

a lot of talk about peace is talk about talks
and talks about the size 
or shape of tables

your hand swells my neck, pretty, you say
i am, no matter how decimal-small. 
my eyelash flutters across your shoulder.
gravity. you land on my chest skin—

say i was a careless shutting
of language an accident
sound whirling into the guttur

The dead leaves that won’t admit they’re dead 
are called marcescent 

It was late June, the solstice. 
The day took hours to end. You look like me,
my father said quietly.

In those days when I was the academy’s darling 
I borrowed phrases and made no claims, 
digressed gracefully from every absent thesis