Poetry

If you like me will you make me better
look at your sandbox of a screen how my
bones have ground fine like my mother’s if
I promise

Where you are going
you cannot take
your things leave
in this locker the rivets
at the corners of your blue
jeans

There are so many things a body
can collect into itself
milk of a mother in a cup of coffee

Two Cooper’s hawks on an electric pole, facing
opposite directions. The larger bird hopped up to the 

top as I neared. I stood there until my eyes hurt.
Our eyes must be on loan. When we die, we 

have mercy nothing
prepared my body to lose its
brother nothing prepares a grown man to fall

The tops of the buildings were shorn. So I walked
down Market Street to see if I could find them. 

The fog tried to take my head off. I was so scared on
some parts of Market that I stayed a few feet behind 

In the Sonoran Desert, my brother hands me a revolver. In place of tenderness
he tells me to kill a woodpecker. It’s injured, on its back like a sunbather
thrashing in a gravel bed.

In the occupied West Bank 
two doctors enter a prison:

one the jailer, one the jailed. 
The jailer walks in. His colleague

Overhead the Kentucky sky was clear and went on forever. I don’t really remember how we parted or where I went after, only that he wanted to stay awhile, that at some point he hugged me, tucked a cig behind his ear, and started down toward...

A friend from one of those Shithole places tells me 
she’s worried. Am I sick? Depressed? I’ve lost 
my mischievous smile. She’s listened to my laments: