Someone swept eyelashes into piles, pilfered wish-
bones from the dustbin.

Careful as rain that wept through the sash,
bone-damp. Drear of metal,

sky like a gun-belt, polish-worn,
has the gift: lightening.

God’s arrow knows where to strike.

II.

Before ground breaks; basalt, limestone.
The shift of plates is aqueous,

earth’s tone tidal, billowing. Patience
as petrifaction. Fruit as stone.

Confluence of soil, sediment, silt.
Where they meet is liquid.

Horizon, shadow, a body in silhouette.

III.

Without milemarkers,
is there anywhere to go? Momentum,

a series of blisters on finger tips,
a red face, spider on the wall.

The crawling on skin, flame on wick.
Ounce after ounce of burning.

Want, flint in mouth.

IV.

Remember how it was done. Distance,
the smallness of frame.

What was it like falling; bent
yet impenetrable, catching on

the rockface, soot in eyes — falling.
How muffled , how noiselessly

hushed.

V.

Retreat. Insects against the windshield,
it’s dark, getting darker.

Incongruent air, blue flash shudders the steeple,
window-glass cracks,

sidewalks bulge, buckle — heat heavy, splits
the surface. Skin taut, a punch

the body braces.

VI.

Slick palms, nervous. The unflagging
thought, every minute full

of want, cells admonish cells. Water
pearls forehead to temple —

melting in the act. Febrile hide,
marrow in cinders. Fits, spells,

wind dancing with ash.

There again, sweat
in the throat, bitter
buttons fastened, tongue
soaked, lambently new.

The body’s disbelief —
yaw of gait, delicate
tango — a withered pulp
perceptible. Marrow dark,

acidic. Curette
automatic as breath. You begin
to disintegrate while dancing.
The music like mold.

II.

Sorrow song, the single crow
circles west, whip of wind and wing.
Atmosphere like eggshells cupped
in nervous palms. Tornado-

green sky woven to lifeline.
The smell of falling, taste
electric —salt, pennies, ash. Count
the cracks, bolts drawn down,

drowned in silt and dry husks. Roots
split, branches twisted, a peel of bark.
In your bones it approaches,
a freight train or foundry in the blood.

III.

Dust-mouth, film caked
teeth, chalk-throated casualty.
Where’s the refuge, the earthsafe
purity? One wave short

of extinction, a degree from melting,
subduction and emergence, hot rocks
pillow and porous; the mudslide,
the avalanche. Omens only
animals heed. Sweat drops glide,
panic-wet, against fur. Intuition
guided, a gull girding the coast.
A baleful wind.

IV.

Honeysuckle soothes regret,
suspends grief. Star of anise
and acacia leaves for summoning.
Patience to hear a voice, dream.

Across the wall of stones,
from underfoot, a hum felt,
quaking. Ground warps damp
to dry, oak and elm sprout, fade.

Names smooth away and stone crumbles.
The dead do not touch here
but sing sleeplessly of their shift,
bone to bark, blood to straw.

your tongue is the texture of detergent, it could clean
lies from my tongue. Chase the ghetto from my mouth,
spit in my palm. Shut my eyes,
   
    they’re crowded
    with throwing knives,
    stained with neon,

refract the air and taste
like trouble. When I’m told

       there’s nothing I won’t do.

                   *

I’ve filled the space between arms
with crusts of bread,
                     winnowed
breath. I won’t stand for this
breathing, proof
there’s a right type of humidity,

          one that pools in the cove under your feet.

          You may be a lightning rod the way you tempt
          weather, ignore every instance,

advice and moonless predictions. The wrinkled tinfoil

                      of an almost-built skyscraper is your eyes
                      searching my eyes for a picture of you;

a maze of lines, a connection of dots:

my numbered days.

                        *

In static
       you see your face. In my face,
your face. In every window

I watch myself swallow; wait
to lick fingerprints from glass.         I’m sick

          from the smell of bread baking in bones.

The jet-spin days where I wait for you and you’re gone

except for the eyelashes on the counter, a loose thread in the rug, candle
on the sill with the last wick you lit and snuffed and left

          for the breeze.
          No one lasts long here.

                      *

My marrow’s an oven
       of broken glass
firing while I tell this story,

figure out
    how to bait you and bake

you in. The mostly white residence
of your eyes, a cove carved out
in a snowless city waiting for a breath

                jetstream to loosen eyelashes
                free from roots. They land,

balance on a knife tip, fall
to formica in a pile of powder;
the ash I pinch and push
down the barrel

             when I put down
(pick up) my gun.