i am the concave ash center
the ground-down dredges
of what happened before you got here

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Haze knows about slapping tables, a practiced slapping. Some nights,
if need be, she backhands all the serpents gathered around her, hissing...

If a man pulls up next to you in his car
pants unzipped and hand jouncing,
fly like a bird in the other direction.

Here is a grain of salt, a pocket full of posies, ashes,
crumbs for retracing our steps...

Princess Di looked best in bicycle shorts,
carnations are to prom as shame is to sex, &
everything tastes better with garlic.

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In a nearby field, the cherry trees
go dizzy with their own sweet juice,
get drunk on their own bloodstream.

even with a passport, I must
stand at the back fence
of lost desires.

Are angels jealous of birds
because they can fly without having to carry God?

We put an ad in the local paper, but no one has any interest in purchasing our Franco-Austrian cloud machines.

What kind of violator are you?
The world is a ridiculously human place

that wounds forever.
I want to be hungry ‘til I die.

The great lone Spanish words, like a Castilian ship
come into full view when the air is still.

A woman in my workshop
Once told me that the way in which

I had adopted you & Al Copeland
For my poetry was convenient

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  There is a time and place for falling safes,
another for pianos. Wake up with a horse's head and
fall asleep with bees...

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if/when glass enters the bloodstream try not to panic you can cry you can
drink detox tea phone a friend take the call in the tub go to urgent care...

I’ve tried to make West Virginia home:
the crunched-up shacks that pock the avenues,
the narrow roads that vault down hillsides like ceramic crazing