BellumLetters # 18

OF PREY

Today the falcons -- wings curled like lashes
at their tips -- their wings making marks -- slashes
back and forth above me -- etched a zig-zag script
upon the air. The trees ripped
of their leaves -- bare but for the few black nests
in their branches -- cast their stray branches like nets
up at the sky, their ragged limbs
reaching for the birds -- the falcons' slim
outlines -- letter-bone-bodies writing a song
that sounds like winter -- lean, and white, and long.

BellumLetters # 17

"domestic incident"

One thing, a peg on the board, could
be isolated. Pushed forward along
the block to block path that swayed
front to back and back; the peg
moved dully along. The trained eye
does not blink back. They
are trained to not come back.
Roving the boxed-in track, the pegs
truck along. Not in halves or pairs
or packs, no door-to-door knocking.
No knocked over bottles. No
pink babies in the back. Only
the tick tick tick as the lines
thicken and sink. One by one
as elsewhere ink overflows its gutters.

BellumLetters # 16

Everyone Came Running


No hands: x-ray breast laced with lead, bullet
in the house come chasing skin. Flame
cells happened the way snow held
glass, magnifying everything.

BellumLetters # 15

ON THE LINES


person_______________________________________________________


______________________________________________person______


___________person______________________________

___________________________person______________________________


_____________person_______________________________

___________________________person___________________________________

BellumLetters # 14

Sender/Receiver

Glossary of veins, clittella
and brain, crops of hearts
and ventricles. Nephridia
uncurled a series of bones
so that the blood concealed
its surfaces. Coalescence
of waves and fuel where
two skins meet. Rubbed
together, ignition keyed
for fences. Dust and glass
and nails spread by metal
birds, fragile engines flashing
incendiary streamers.

BellumLetters # 13

Detention Sonnet

BellumLetters # 12

HALFWAY HOUSE

As if it were halfway home:
the red dogs the same
color as the beach, the swimmers
turning gold, the tops
of underwater mountains
forgiving hydrogen and grenades.
It's only a phase. The green
river full of ash quivers
like a bow; the winter swans
did not return this year, nor
did the silver swim flicks, minnow
towers swaddled in the haze.
IF more than half are called away
again, the other half will never
come home: paper cranes
folded into shallow paper graves.

BellumLetters # 11

TREASURE MAP

It's not enough to just
be lost. Magpie
at the mistress box
and glass jaw bobbing.
Thieving a way home
along the hems
with the bobbin. "X"
is where, gathered
in the crook of a tree,
jewels and bones construct
a furtive geometry. Cages
or faux forests composed
by driftwood staked
in tundra, the gorgeous
lie of generous muscles.

BellumLetters # 10

LIKE A LAMB

They would answer us if only
they knew our names. The glimmer
threaded through phone lines, spools
and spools of wire. Our numbers rifle.
They file them away. We could go riding
but then we could not pretend
the story ended anywhere other
than a sort of taming, braids
and boxes made for captives.
When they call us, it's as though
their voice is made of worms
and all our longings dirt.

BellumLetters # 9

LIKE A LION

The lupine is so obvious
in its blue, not like asphodel
which is white and cold
and smells like death.
Not like us who pretend
to forget this is the betting
list, the get. The odds
are our way of pretending.

April is the mime forging
outlines: apple, machine
gun, stray letters in the slug-
gutter. Clone of our dotted
lines: mirrors untethered
and let to roam sinew
and gravel, the slow roads
we build away from home.

Only the still patience
of the toys compares
to our games with glue and paper.
Let's forget it's spring -- say
the ash on the air
is actually snow.
Winter is the mother
of invention; it buries us.