THE PHANTOM

for Erica Kaufman

What concurrence
turns empty
as the eye
forks toward it
or tongue unspools red
its vain syllable slew
to suture through the brain?
I called you a phantom
because you believed you were more
than some sewn order of forces
turning thrum and tumble one
moment only to go taut
in the organ’s congress
like nodes of claver
to build something
black and ecstatic
day suffocating
with candor
as hideous as
this insect’s green
sieve of beating wing
to outgasp the air
which submits with total authority
talking the leaves into flux
the coarse pink flags your hands
make snapping into further unknown directions
where the body reinvents itself
one horizon at a time
in spastic yellow bursts
face like waves
already less here
letting rage
rage on
in abject yellow
bursts talking backward
which corner the brain
hot for its antidote
to surface on the tongue’s
flummoxed felt pennant spilling open
like a fortune that writes itself
I asked you why the absence
of you became so rigid
and you asked me how
an atom goes stiff
if it’s always dancing

THE OWL

for Alex Lemon

Durer’s dour
little owl
stares strangely down
from his perch
on the bathroom wall
already less here now
cornering the brain in waves
whose peaks and dips duly
fritz a garish cough of feathers
into the corpse-light morning air
that my piss has tricked
cacophonous, yellow, diving, free, this
is what they mean
reproaching solemnity in fits
of strange glee
or crushing dissatisfaction
into breathable
red powders
we spiraled outward
left the city
took part-time work
freaking the ancient wood
into gusts of ion readiness
I brought you this owl
in case you needed each other
dawning negative at newly liminal cusps
is that what you mean
about god arriving in seizure
his horses just horses
baroque, relentless, and electrical
to hoove through
the body’s flummox
I’m always
this pregnant
with everyone’s child
unruly gut sprung
into tendrils of unknowing
most are thrill offenders
but I’m just taking flight

THE BEAR

for John Coletti

Waking worn
into day
like tumbling dice
fray into number
I cover the streets
wracked by lesser joys
each quake subsumed going oblique
by the green blinking leaves
make when you stumble away
as the other you returns simultaneously
chewing the absences loose to taut
a litter of bears broke
into the McDonald’s dumpster midnight
remind me to glean
summer horror’s yellow sleep
for every fled
modicum of song
another you
just bursting
cold yet vibratory
like fish thought
new choruses chafing wind
I stopped not looking
again and again got stuck
that way no name forest
heading wherever the limbs fall off
the bear was storing superannuated fat
minus the red happy meal plastic
I went to the cave
looking for questions not answers
stayed for the allegory
all numbers no spirit