Acres

everyone lives trapped in a revolving industrial garage with five-ton caution-striped hydraulic doors.

--

there's a black hole in the rearview mirror
as we drive out of nothing, into nothing
the world materializing fifty feet ahead
and dissolving as we pass.
we exist in a circle of definition
going nowhere at fifty-seven miles per hour.

--

We walk along fallow fields, jumping marshes and wading through reeds. We walk along the hedgerows under a leaden sky, into tangled apple trees whose withered fruits lie bleeding and frozen in the mud. All the trees have claws, here. Fingers reach across the pond, eating its icy casing, dyeing it aquamarine, dyeing it blackish and brackish as it starts to rain, and the pool becomes a drumskin, every drop a ring of sound, rippling into our eyes and our ears. We follow the memory of deer up the hill, into true woods. The moss and the ferns are rebels, survivors, verdantly alive in the monochrome scene. Our boots crunch down the slope, over stream and through brambles that tear our skin and clutch at our hair, onto a landscape laid belly up, open to the mercy of the sky... I wander in a daze toward a fallen cloud, a bit of still-frozen snow...? Through someone else's eyes I see the dead goose, its saline feathers sooty and rubied, strewn across the clover. Ornithinian ribs tear at the leaking sky, the ruined head tucked under one mangled, outflung wing. I sing a lament as I walk. I can hear the hunter in the woods; I am dressed all in brown. I sing as I capture the tiny hooves, scattered limbs, the pile of skin, the empty shell, the head, still erect. I sing in the sunlight to the open sky, to the strewn feathers and whitest down, the tangled intestines, the empty eyes and crushed beak, the crumpled feet. The shots ring, ever nearer, and I flinch; I wander, stagger, and weave; I scatter.

Condensation

words forced out
are spectres in the air
hanging.
they crown your head
circling like vultures
eat me eat me eat me.
feathers twitch in the cacophony of silence
as you give up
and lay your head on mine.
we are a city
a picnic-blanket landscape
strewn with cherry stems and eggshells.
we are checked--
red-and-white
back-and-forth
black-and-blue.
swing swing swing push.
there you go, now just hang
until your arms give out.
I'll catch you!
I promise.
sort of.
it's reciprocation, after all.
give-and-get.
I lost every receipt, love
so now we're just jumbled
piled between the bricks
of frustration, of desire.
...wait, what?
but you said...
damnit.
no.
collapse into our blanket cocoon
our pillow canoe
our net of limbs
our net of lies.
tumble back into the haze
of tiny bubbles
of criss-crossed crystal
of amber energy.
melt me.
yes, I am a puddle of mush.
sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiding.
let's make it a shindig
we'll be slush in the streets
dissolve in the heat
of tumbling truths
that haunt your mouth.
there are ghosts in the air
spirits on the windows.
every apparition staring me down
with their empty accusing eyes.
it was a failed exorcism
that only forced your spectres
into my ears, instead.

Drift

a magnet with no opposing poles
pushing closer and pulling away
caught in a tangle of electricity
spinning, spinning
with no direction at all.
a ship sails a cerulean sea
I watch an island through a spyglass.
stranded, not for lack of canvas
but the wind, listless
spirals out and down
and carries me nowhere.
bruised by crystal and brass
the compass never rests, these days.
as sable spreads outward
from lids heavy with thought
dripping with apology
drenched in regret.
lashes whip the room
freezing to stillframe
every smile
every kiss.
stomachs acidify
my basest thoughts
so I can stand here, neutral.
yes, I can look you in the eyes
and not even blink.