CONFESSION:

I thought your love had left
or worse, your love had gone
and I do not want to live-
not amongst this loss
accounted for, resolved, and
    echoing -
the future and past wound
    tight -
something seeming suspended, heavily-
    yet

Perhaps not proper perceived
    have I made it all about me?
What if the love: never a lover
    was once there here a bed
bricked in the bedroom it framed
    I couldn't yet see a name
I turned the cover into a wall
    then turned the wall into a tomb.

Perhaps the bird was just a bird
It could have been that winter was here
Perhaps it could have been spring
and I am simply a bird
    seemingly doing my thing
I am simply a bird

Perhaps that sound, that obvious blur
    mightn't have even been mine.
Ignoring the people just pointing at mine.
What is this love - this new land
This strange beast yawning
    divine or damned
Spiraling-

fawning us in - circular eyes
    around again - pleasant as privacy
sucking us in - seeming so gentle
    to last at all - keeping things even
and sucking us in - looking around
    around again - circular skies
a love a bird - sucking us in
    feeling around - feeling complacent
Where have you gone?

What is that, wind?
Speaking so gently,
    perhaps it was wind.
Floating the bird
    soothing the love
Speaking the season
    conceding the bird
Becoming the state
    yawning the blur.
I think it was her.

BYWATER

(have you) seen the red grit, paper, television, salting sound

bobbling through the everywhere

like a bubblethin grenade I've become

a sly, tried soundless sigh

numb, but it's okay

if you can distinguish an orange

from an orange, calm a catamaran

float an apple for not being an orange

and quiet the proper situation

sometimes you're a hero

sometimes you're a wave

of peppers

(you)

abandoned strand of Christmas lights

gracing the post-winter pre-spring

transitioning trees, graciously

gathering drinks

skulking through

skulking black bushes

becoming one with wrought iron

you said what you love

below the daymoon

lying in the dirt burning

sand

burning like citrus

I want to spend time with you.

"The daytime birds are still singing

and my face is so red."

but it's okay

NUMBING OF THE EAR, TIMELESSLY

disguised with inundation
hands of a mason's youngest son
across the crepuscular evening
thinking of you, soft as none

streetlights stilting, lighting sidewalks
(commonplace, not cobblestone)
shadows and headlights catching
twirly maplepods, competence, fastness

tattered greenmoon pearlights
as in, theatrics. smaller than innocence
a pistol: antique and unloaded
harmlessly painting a picture of none

still. "ain't comin' back."
malignant peace treatises
some remember, some forget

"NOTHING BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN, AND I DON'T FEEL STRESSED AT ALL."

spread thin with millions of eaglets
eager and earnest and so young
with cheap tickets to hemingway
readings. shrapnel included and easily
sweetened faces on faces shouting "friction!"
"these days"
whoever to be cared for
followed, with care
confronted with being cared for
following with care
sweetened
how much honey required
for momentum to hover
the hump and cover the
speed bump? I only ask
because sunlight reminded.
seizures of sunlight
through breezes through branches sweetened
I think I can see your sorrow
and sweeten it
and in this, this is how we met
to have never heard of love
rather than gnawing through
expectations of life and life
I kind of how I like it I feel
as if I could with no memory of before
nothing ever ends/this never ends/because I'm so young

ONE OF FIVE, ONE BEFORE, GENERALITY, TANGENT

dancing on broken branches
(but I don't dance)
it didn't adapt-
or, adopt-
onus unknown, I
usually lose myself
(or at least, occasionally)
what I'm saying is
I wasn't very me
we weren't very we
people say passion
probably don't know

(don't lone alone
or together-
see that fruit?
completely confident)

comely pineapple
slow train below
segmented stop sign
sporting caffeine
with some shopping
(groceries, mostly)
wet, without rain
still without sun
green enough
still mostly gray

she seemed so plain
face heavily powdered
purchased- 
no, puckered - lips
perhaps she secretly sniffs cocaine
eyes heavily powdered
too thick to see into
freely forgotten, possibly a shame

people say apostrophe
people say slash
people sit on couches
and chairs and
watch television in pairs
and fall in love or
maybe just lust and
lay on couches and 
toss and tumble then
fight and fuss and
sit on couches watching
television with hate,
indifference, and maybe
not even lust and confused
feelings of necessity

making dinner
for a friend

SELF EXPRESSION OF A DANDELION

baby-
why haven't you forgotten?
my fate supposes
pre-supposes
all while dandelion crosses
dandelion.
smelt purloined,
grinningly;
came to me,
isomorphic education
included. teaching the
children antitheses
aposiopesis mis-
connected and op-
portunity. behind
with feeling and 
life and box matches
lit, all wind repented
by dusk today

COURTNEY BARNETT - DEPRESTON

You said we should look out further, I guess it wouldn't hurt us. We don't have to be around all these coffee shops. Now we've got that percolator, never made a latte greater. I'm saving twenty three dollars a week.

We drove to a house in Preston, we see police arresting a man with his hand in a bag. How's that for first impressions? This place seems depressing. It's a "California bungalow in a cul-de-sac."

It's got a lovely garden, a garage for two cars to park in ("or a lot of room for storage if you've just got one"). And it's going pretty cheap you say? "Well it's a deceased estate...aren't the pressed metal ceilings great?"

Then I see the handrails in the shower, a collection of those canisters for coffee, tea and flour, and a photo of a young man in a van in Vietnam.

And I can't think of floorboards anymore, whether the front room faces south or north, and I wonder what she bought it for.

(If you've got a spare half a million, you should knock it down and start rebuilding.)

LUNCH BREAK

preface

I'm working in this restaurant

if you can believe that.

half of my human interaction involves

(both) literal and metaphorical

lunch breaks.

1

on a lunch break, all are equal:

little totters, venerable veins a-walking,

suits with heels and hair grease,

overalls with those flat orange pencils

(are they sharpened the same way?)

and car grease, I presume. a minority

have humanity, their eyes like flint

being flinted reflecting something like

sanctity, and they see how things work.

2

now, how can this be made poetic?

3

I've got this friend

who has this boyfriend

who has this gun.

now I think being shot

could be something,

but not a good way to die.

also, I've got this date!

Auroras

by Joanna Klink
[it's magic]

It began in a foyer of evenings
The evenings left traces of glass in the trees
A book and a footpath we followed
Under throat-pipes of birds

We moved through a room of leaves
Thin streams of silver buried under our eyes
A field of white clover buried under our eyes
Or a river we stopped at to watch
The wind cross it, recross it

Room into room you paused
Where once on a stoop we leaned back
Talking late into daylight
The morning trees shook off twilight
Opening and closing our eyes auroras

Beyond groves and flora we followed a road
Dotted with polished brown bottles,
Scoured furrows, a wood emptied of trees

It was enough to hollow us out
The evenings left grasses half-wild at our feet
Branches with spaces for winds

The earth changes
The way we speak to each other has changed
As for a long while we stood in a hall full of exits
Listening for a landscape beyond us

NASHVILLE MEMORY

  baby
what does that even mean
sweet mango tea,        tart
sweat

blackberry leaves
hibiscus,  for   show
papaya,    for sound
rose hips,       etc

but it is blood
what    a     wonder
thinned  with water
tea       leaves

like cucumber, how?
like    wintery    leaves
brittle shells bouncing
like       roundabouts

indeed a wonder
most people are absolutely
terrified    of   roundabouts
in      the    south

poetry is what makes me
interesting. it's inside you waiting
for me  ,  may I use it, or have it?
why      is     your     ring

so unfocused? reminds
of looking for a single
sock  (when its not on
your                     foot)

    Fox!
nearly      dead
with the cutest
fidgets

ever seen with a beer.
this is a good way to
get to know a person
and                 oneself

what is it about poetry?
this is why I  need you.

It's the easiest thing in the world, if you let it be. And the hipsters outside the coffeeshop and the hipsters outside the university across from the coffeeshop, across from the university. It was all too easy. I just got tea, and this is just a memory. I'm writing this now, but it happened five years ago. Except nothing happened, except the memory. There was a Katie and a Nikki, me, coffee and tea, bagels most likely, perfectly colored and summered and lengthened green grass, everything seemed to be wood oriented (wooden chairs, wooden tables, wooden stairs, wooden buildings) on the coffeeshop side and concrete type material (but the academic type) on the university side, populated by flocks of hipsters and a girl with some brass (a horn). What they don't seem to know is that there have been hipsters since there have been hips. There can only be one person in the world doing something truly new at any moment, and that moment can last any amount of  time.