Dance

the mind of the hunting hawk. thought can be as hard to move as a rusty red wheelbarrow.

that person from Porlock. we’re political to the extent that we love. a wall is a fragile thing.

in the summer swimming hole my twelve year old body displaced the weight of her name.

 

a child wakened by nightmare. pessimists have always had the easier side to argue. yes,

Keats was 25, and, no, it doesn’t matter. cut off from the world by our skin. apology as an

act of aggression. now Nietzsche is dead and rather embarrassed by it.

 

thick prairie wheat, the smell of sex. old Graves’ erection — Up, Wanton, Up. she lacked

the instruments to play what she heard. a crude waste, those elegies you write. dreams

have no alphabet.

 

the small folds in her lips. the human heart beats well after it’s broken. Babel was a long

time ago. they are a little too much and much too little, the chickadee’s wings. but skin is

very, very thin.