BellumLetters

OPEN BOOKS or PROFIT

It will not be enough to open
the wires; the monkey records
filed away shall be shelled
and scattered and planted
as keys hid in the garden wall
pretend roots where a lens
flowers unlock their soft
hocks to dispel wounds
excited by the spring rage
of rockets, plastic, and microphones.
The diesel ills. How can we fill
the dirt with so many books
when so many come home empty.

BellumLetters: A Project for National Poetry Month

P R E V E N T I O N

Today I drew marks
in the sand; they
reminded me of letters
or bones or teeth. Perhaps
you would call them vulgar.
The light pulls back
as an arm draws the arrow.
Bow, the bough breaking.
Rope and pulley singing
as wind throws birds
from the cliffs. It isn't even
ours -- this sand. We are
so stupid sometimes.

march

no war remembered how our hands held
or if the green sun was for growing
old or growing rain. There are numbers
I cannot understand and a glass hum
like saucers tilting away from
from oceans. A disc set
to spin as tires clear and darken.
Machine wreaths ringing halos
that clasp and sharpen
palms to palm-arrows
mining chime-shattered lines.

hunt oil mit

Webs

I didn't mean
to do it: satin
mast where
there should
be rain, baby
winters in thin
rows seeding
the fringe, oracle
of closed things
chiming when
it shouldn't sing.
Yet your pointer

ticks in stained
mocking: hand
spread as a blade
without its bone.

baby heart fly

saw_made_took

held_saw_ felt

afterthought

where the good was something
you could saw in two
as if the sky could
saw itself in two.

I pulled a string
and remembered the mending
knot, the place where two
braids became unknown.

A barn where floss
in known as mirror, where hay
pulls blood to its mouth
and ovens flood.

Bridle, mistress: no gold
leaf save for that you make
from meat, from vertabrae
unbound --