riptide

windy beachfront property
late night twinkles after the water
goes to bed. a mantilla
across the void.

she throws a package
into the waves. encantational
slides or maybe notes
to neptune's laughter. whatever
is inside beyond an act of faith
is not important.

what's important
is that the sea
is going out, taking
startling reflections
with it.

















*




she is in charge
of the meat for christmas
dinner. suddenly the party
grows less manageable, what was three
is now 21as if
divinity mated with itself
and formed a common
carbon isotope.

she wears a green skirt
her top is red.
colors of cardinal & pine.

she asks the butcher
for the steak to be pounded
to paper. teeth will write the poem
into flesh


she needs three ripe bananas
and beck's most scratchy tunes.
the nuts await, oven's hot. the mailbox
has been empty for a week. she's
reminded of a heart, or the place it used
to be before she went down to the sea.




















*




i'm listening to beck today.
country phase. goodbying
moving to disconnect. i'll try
to forget what you gave me. these tunes
we didn't listen to, together. gathering
everything because it was there.
a bag full of pecans, bogs of watercress.


pulled and pasted on stereoscopy
a salad with balsamic vineagrette.
the stores close early today
so people can be with their families.
i have no tree. i want no tree. i want
to admire my daughter's give her
all the ornaments i collected while were
together. you never knew me. you didn't
ask. i didn't tell . our life was like
the ascending strains of/ a day in the /
sampled in a song,
or the white out of synecdoche
inside a refugee camp. lost cause.
but we believed in it
because we didn't know
what love was
for.
















&**^^^




































out on the sandbar, we walk carefully
there are round and primitive organisms
growing under the thin membrane of water
and silt. so very graceful and fragile these circles
in the early stages
before silica slides into a skeleton
weaves itself into thickened diamonds
less likely to break, mounded as if quiet
tribes had buried their refuse below the surface
like meconium with a new life. if you brush
away the sand and reach carefully to
the flat underside, pull it whole above
the ocean, it must breathe
faltering and leaky, it will stain your palm
with the yellow of sun behind the remnants
of storm, in late afternoon not setting.
dirty & bright like how i see you
outlined in windows which meet at a corner
yesterday, when i did not know who you
would become.