Portrait of my backyard
Distance hints at a small pond.
Victor points to the stones in a path
leading up the felt of clipped hedges.
You did it again, didn’t you, he says—
let your eyes travel without your feet.
Yes!
For as long as I could occupy,
I’m like one of those frogs, silver-green,
swiping the mirror’s cheek.
aspen intermezzo
Middle meal. I think the busboy flirts.
Love is asking itself questions and
the years are shapes superimposed,
so what’s this geometry of many?
You call. I say I miss puppy breath. You say A Little Life could be your most
brutal read. When the sun won’t,
what confesses the heat?
Pluck the alarms; grief is a petal-puddle lost
of caution. I hang up.
We might be two kites in a clothes dryer.
I’m on this patio—cold and he’s graduating me
from burnet tea to hot bourbon.
The grounds are snow-slick.
Other tourists and I can’t plant
our feet or fake appearing situated.
But here I am, plate, and appraised,
wanting him for what he doesn’t know.
For what hasn’t outstayed
weightless. I feel my belt
fit tight, chopstick another hole in the leather.
This poem is a threat, and the threatened.
Not gun not bullet.
nowhere close, i make a scene
a lie He is lying poolside
Swims, to scatter pearls on the skin.
slicks Back to chaise along belts of vinyl.
On Trophy Boys’ latest issue drapes his right
wrist. Dial Down—where his watch is kept.
One flinch pricks their glittered quantification.
Behind topiary—the gardener buds out,
betters the view. I don’t
mind—it’s unlike me to admit my body
unlearn accounting
for it. The way eyes turn
ego’s stereo. My new habit is to mirage.
Tempt what load from lust hardened.
I’m desperate to tell my younger
parents—the diets by bribe were the wrong
way to end a dress-rehearsal in self-talk.
Who knew I could assist cause
so long a smear campaign. But how
to action this landscape portrait in a two-way easel.
In the house: a pageant in a china cabinet—
generation-melds of silver, citrine sugar bowls,
cordials with pinched stems…
I want to keep measuring. what does want measure
some separate pulse. Time, it takes a shrinking shape.
out the window, my dog digs nothing
more than a knot of mud—scraps minutes,
litter for hours.