From good poems

The January Effect

        I liked where my hand was a moment ago,   but even this is changing.   They say the way January goes so goes the year,   and China’s market had plunged into the open mouth of a lily hiding underground.   So goes meaning, so slips mystification—   these evening…

You Nearly Always Feel This Way Now

            You nearly always wake in a panic, thinking the time has passed just before the alarm sounds, or the moment just before the highway exit appears you could have sworn you’d missed it a while back, or that impulse to drop, and much later to return to putting the…

Shrimp, Headless Already

  I’ll teach you to peel all the legs and thorax   in one piece once I learn   when skin is this fresh you see through the body   and notice bait bloating in the mouth   of the willing   we were always either laboring or are labored over   I’m learning to…

Oysters

      it helps to think it’s a game a stone you find and shuck         but then how could you be this girl I knew a little dove too soon – without enough evil trying to shake the world’s grip as she falls toward the back of your throat   again    …

Tropical Pineapple with Umbrella

  she won’t talk about her time in Cuba or the drugs he cut into her breasts   right before the colors blurred passing through his hand like the gray chaos   of a sharp-edged edifice   but she’ll say the stint on the steamboat casino back to Miami made it worth it   she…

Anchovies

    we’ve come all the way from Oklahoma for locals to ask if we’re celebrities  No     she says     climbing out of the back of a convertible in a bathing suit with an almost empty bottle when we thought no one was watching      everyone was watching and forever meant…

What Chaos

      we played a childish attempt to baptize each other & found each other undead for the time being as if the ablutions were working but we’ve seen how imitation & daily use make for a placebo that waits as waiting is all a completed thing can do to replace itself like I…

Bomb

          I could have shown you a swimming pool perky with turquoise light had we planned the last sunset right but instead I’m cancelling plans and taking the first flight out of Oklahoma because even though a ripple slows it never quite comes to stillness so I’m leaving this watch on…

Gold Coast

 the breaking sun shows us the gold coast does manage to glitter seashells are pink and white as ideals and makes me want to steal everything of beauty for myself when he says Ft. Lauderdale is my girlfriend he knows a woman loves to be wanted but that’s not wanting in return and then…

New

        time told a story about tadpoles being mermaids who reabsorb their tails and fashion themselves new skin to graph over old scales like the sun that will hammer skin off a glittering surface like the moonbeam that will wash off the silk of morning time is spinning a wire rack of…