that remembering was the only confusion.

-Gertrude Stein

The present was a relic
of a past I was older than

-Elizabeth Willis

 

 

 

o

A triangular slash of blue a flap streaks across
whose particles appear here? Tourette's in smile form.

Every state has its own terrible dream kept afloat
by an open window, a whisper to be announced.

The sun pellets my visage once before the crash.
There I came dressed like a houseplant

caught by the smoke signals of a sheared memory.
We walked in winter formulating granules

into pretend speeches about lounge chairs
and holograms. Blink twice for some comedy.

Replacement follows the waning seconds of dismissal.
Just as the neighbors knock on the door to ask

permission to shake the house, thin air takes a trip.
Another time we'll swap stories as usual.

Point to the dotted line upon which I signed
those were slumber days for us.

 

 

 

o

Truncated by patterns so lofty in fat sandwiched days
before a low rectangle sound blew warning to the village.

The pool shapes my hair counter-intuitive to the weather.
Is the reaction pre-linguistic to avoid disaster?

I'll bet you and your conditions on the sight
of a road map that forbearers burst into song

rather than flames, or simply fancy talk.
Morning lisps greet you in the morning despite an alarm,

while someone somewhere deals with their own terrible
breath. From the corner crams resistance to shoving

a fiver in my back pocket that two weeks yesterday
seemed like a relief to look forward to.

What a grotesque tendency to speak in a funny voice
whenever something slightly daring is ready to slip.

Notes on the day were found in scraps torn so that
a newly manicured future came prepared to your cancel.

 

 

 

o

The gang dispersed during the Olympics, though not
before their tentacular flare sniffed around the bronze.

It was the sprint to the hurdle that became
important, an organized dance to halt events.

I wait by the phone, a model to be ignored for once,
something candid that graphs the forgotten deed?

According to the syllabus, the utilitarian aspects
seem falsely heady, seem a rubber chicken to enjoy

in a pleasure boat wrought with historical leakage.
Up in the sky the F16 fighters make their pass,

a hummingbird drops into view, wards off the upset.
A cat in a box maneuvers in shrunken space

and the handwritten starts here, dueling for
control over the details neither hide nor hair.

The solemn fountain drowns out your voice, while
a head nods in agreement, believing in the appropriate.

 

 

 

o

A return to the balmy predicts an unwelcome perspective
and a jagged view interluded by ongoing trips

to the bathroom. A railroad house lacks places to sit
even though carousing there gives a fine scope

to fit my marginal helping hands. The same street
the tamale guy paces and whoops also casts the location

for others to dump coolers, attend to maulings.
The same street we forget to own up to our plot?

I was dizzy in a dream once but never asked
which stool among the furniture was suitable

for an average request. In an indivisible city
we cannot part amicably to the music of suspense.

Look at the camera from a split screen and assume
the down and out position so you can be left silly

taking in the laughter. What to do with these ants
shifts the story to a separate location, undisclosed perhaps.

 

 

 

o

To be bold in a monochromatic night despite swirling
wind, a limped walk, the fragrance of burnt burgers.

The cloud coverage excused itself, offered a closer look
to fallen ashes caught in a web, brought lowly fuzz

and jumbled pictures which haplessly turned the scare
into a lip-reading fest, a muted lead in prime time.

Perhaps it is that my drawers are tidy and shoes lined
up in accordance to the state, ready to allow feigned

ritual over a cozier artifice. Is it more real to look out
a window than say step into a motion sensor's territory?

Sorry if you find everything expendable in what was once
dubbed unifying as if the fight is better than the solution.

In celebration a two-fisted gulp gives rise to an end all.
We approach in unison this nightly state and wipe our feet

upon entry, digging at the grooves with the warned about
sharp objects, the scary I don't pay attention to.

 

 

 

o

Recycling bin clatter in morning light shudders against
a slanted fence and thin-legged birds across the gutter.

You are already devising plans for the winter and
in bad taste the patchwork wheels the composition in

wakefulness to head south, a flawed expensive watch
to be had. The username for this cadre of children is yawn.

Passwords suspect inputs and outputs of data, always
a luring trap when an alternate system falls flat.

To wake alone one morning white and corral remains
under ancient stairs, that must be the legendary send off

everyone routes me to, when feeling up to it in shambles.
Really, to suggest changing ingredients cost you your job?

Now my admiration is nothing but a catchword, a thing
tasted in mouth, then slowly melts like the infamous wafer.

My presence in bed is nothing but strange friends, a clamor
against the sounding charge, set to be wiped clean.

 

 

 

o

That the glossy cover of a favorite book curls in heat
just in time for a dinner unplanned at a concealed hour

and a blaze unfiltered. I lost your friction giggle to
a scheduling problem, a double-booking at an unknown

address. It is consistent that we cannot say reprieve
until a dead-end road burns at both ends, waiting

for the moment when translation becomes exact in its
message giving. You are out of your can, out and about

in a trance where decent frequencies cannot be authorized.
Connections end in their map made lines where distance

is determined, packed down in preparation or burnt
to a crisp after a solar burst. There's always a figure

standing in for something, on the field or even in the field.
Which one is destroyed first for the gateway needed?

More than ever the news is nothing but dirty and smoky,
where nothing's left, in terms of possession is the best way.

 

 

 

o

The light's perils confuse when it comes in coded lines
as if to singe the eyebrows off the walls with a junky

magnifying glass. In the dark now where night vision
still cannot locate the exact placement of tires upon curb

and grit on the wipers, but it's your car I'm looking for.
Indeterminacy of details, like the numbers picked when

hoping for an answer or the sun flecks in your fallen hair
when a mist begins, keeps me waving at strangers passing

by in jalopies. Cacophonous in dreaming and settling
the tab, I hang up my dancing shoes in an attempt to say

I won't bumble in public or bubble in letter C just to fill
in something. Between the clicking of heels and scanning

an image to show as proof, we tussled with our wills
against the incoming shadowy self-advertisement called

tomorrow's edge. Is it somewhat safer or "good to know"
that our wills can be psychologically predicted in jest?

 

 

 

o

In musket gray light a modern deliverance of love, a letter?
And from chaos stems order and we call it history.

A rust colored dog climbs the tree in front of your house,
the place that busts a dream's counter logic in the wake.

Rolled barrels in stride the way you rolled feet in bed
to salvage the design, and now the target near the base

just missed the mark. I kick started your map, forgot
to turn around, you fiddled with hair in a new-minted

glow. The birds chatter incessantly and without design
ink splotches the bed cover, debilitating a pen.

Water now slaps harder in coldness and in density
the way impediments fill up the sky to heavy the feet

in a direction where gravity and decency get stiffed.
When my lungs are eaten by the rain outside

jumper cables are bliss and doubt hauntingly generative.
Just clear the sample, what something isn't draws me out.

 

 

 

o

The rusty blue and the water that fills its wagon so
to bring awareness to a passing rain all morning long.

Who can't describe to you the fallout over minced words?
A puffy red coat now presents itself and the tiny body

it protects with the larger steps it intends to follow.
I dropped the ball that landed near the impediments

of an embankment scattered across the horizon line
causing its whirling order to get lost among the rough.

Upon distancing the days when the weight of pollution
meant something to sift through, I tossed aside a pretense

carved out of glass and thought it resembled a bungalow.
I recall when the boardwalk made us channel a stance

one way or the other, not unlike our swaddled dance.
A trip I would call contagious and subtle and you,

dimming outline in a pledge to unbind the present.
I check the hefty sky for it continues to go unremarked.

 

 

 

o

An unsigned two-pear still life painted with square strokes
hangs in a pleasantly lit restaurant south of the Thames, where

tables are small and toilets on separate floors. Deliver mail
to this place of devotion, a separatist by way of default,

a double fault at deuce, thirty all, forty love and a tired foot.
Detach from the day's evaluation and seek tenderness in little

light dabs as they stick to branch tips like an unexpected wet snow.
Since the only use is to relieve the interruption in the footprint pattern,

it's stupid to blame someone for using uh huh instead of
you're welcome. Listening to the music talking to yourself,

I began to think of legend way before it started approaching
the wobbly tracks that go two stops west of the palms.

Is it cuz the hummingbird now hangs upside down without talon?
Talent comes in wanting to not know simultaneously each

definition and the dawn is mine in what unfaithful view is left.
Foreheads contemplate the vast spaces one thinks they deserve.

 

 

 

o

To think this rupture has been composed in a building before,
in a two-story walk up with aluminum siding and a transfer

rust color not yet disposed of. This emblazoned morning
going on nerve walks into the deadpan doorframe for yet

another episode of high jinks, but with the intent to capture
the subtlety in a dispirited occasion. The red-tailed hawk

devised a means for enclosing the vaguest recollections
within an arc of chronicled days at its most ordinary, to be

not found in grand flights but in celebratory combinations.
I couldn't stop focusing on the countdown and healthy

respect for the confusions, not knowing the rules of daily
event but there is beauty there. There lies reassurance

in forgetting and saying there's nothing wrong with brand new.
This exhaustion is nothing more than a night when the sunrise

seems exciting. Is it responsibility to turn on and initiate specificity?
The trappings go unchallenged until the phone rings in disbelief.