THE FINGER

for Anselm Berrigan

Thou shalt
not convert
thy neighbor’s wife
into nebulous brush
scraping ‘gainst day’s folly
yet it be night
success is the lowest art
says Anselm and what’s more
a retouched codpiece at the Frick
or grid with grin crossing Bleeker
and I don’t yet understand
“the magic” of Chardin’s plums
so why am I here
to pollinate a bureaucracy
of cold little men
commenting on Rembrandt
his right hand
nearly bursting
its obscene
bouquet of fingers
joy is just
weird enough it seems
to grope from behind
and diminished in its aftershock
I want to be serrated
the guy at the bodega knows
all too much about my preferences
retouched codpiece over Roman shewolf
wink across to two Vermeers
probably ladies at work
I know I am
sewn contemporary domestic
all my dreams
of going
royal soured
with the understanding
that my ring
finger will always pale
when my middle stiffens

THE LIGHT

Plastic bag
cat hisses
from the bough
of a dogwood
as sun pisses through
a few stubborn leaves
some drown in backyard canals
some words appear to splash
but this little light of mine
it burns past two uninhabitable planets
before it ever burns me
curb littered with lipsticked butts
I thought everyone quit
maybe they quit quitting
maybe blue newspaper
skin splitting so
a wind
of recovery
can blow in
like strange hair
patterns in the mirror
maybe genetic maybe earned
I took apart the light
by slowly threading my wrist
like a reel of pale film
through its old yolk-mouthed distemper
making my hair feel cumbersome
maybe the skull is expanding
like a mollusk that
desires new ocean digs
maybe the light
was never heavier
than today
blue jay
on dogwood
eviscerated by it
my veins accelerating
from frame to frame

THE FORM

for Andrea Arnold

Night grass
that twinkles
from earlier rain
pleases the eye
as it shivers under
a girl’s bloody nose
just off the English highway
it’s strange to us both
how our skin never actually touches
except through the congress of magnetism
but does it constitute form
in the way language does?
I left the movie
feeling emptied by resilience
a brilliant emptiness
like returning home
at night
from some
simple day’s journey
but does home
constitute form or magnetism?
I left the house
because it felt like form
was taking over each room
and this life made of stanzas
this little song I made swerving
through them and the night
was more about the girl
crying by the English highway
with the twinkling grass
than it could ever
be about me
the cat purring
and biting
the buttons
off my shirt
an old mobile
of drowsy paper owls
now alert and watchful
over the cramped living room
which is filling with words
as fast as you read them

THE SWORD

for John Coletti

Sanjuro feels
not unhappy
he’s just broke
camellias floating sly
off-white pile
like black-eyed suds
I asked the question
everyone else thought obvious
how do you fuck
the mountain when the mountain
won’t hear you pitch woo
and when’s this war over
two parts I always say
Sanjuro liked the amputee look
on survey in a Western town
doesn’t mean the words are different
like this guy I know sells
dolphins turn out to be brutal
wildlife dudes dressed up for payback
one hand on the stomach zipper
the other over heavy beard
Sanjuro didn’t want no trouble
he was just built deadly
like sleeping in the way
way back with no dogs
Sanjuro looked at it
like a backwards antidote
infecting the merely bad
with a debilitating goodness
he guessed it
was something modern
maybe post-Malthusian
turned out
everything Sanjuro
had ever loved
depended on this
one simple decision
is a man safer
as the sword or
as the fleshy parts
opening a way forward

THE SNOW

for Courtney Martin (New Year’s Eve 2009)

Dad’s Buddha
clad in
a tank-top
of fresh snow
accepts our laughter
as later the rumble
strip filled with ice
chimes back to us
its long silver ribbon
this is how weather wakes
such drowsing heads to blossom
like a Christmas tree worm
slowly creeps back to frill
the world is as full
of jokes as the snowflake is
stuffed with miraculous and banal charm
like the flying farolito that streaks
past a lone and baffled coyote
these mysteries persist at song’s loss
and return when our eyes unfurl
and the you you were
is suddenly less and more
full like the sky is
in the ache before dawn
we’ll put on our boots
our hat and gloves
breathe a little smoke
there is no death
out of reach
as John says
there is only
this hiss
before broadcast