We are following a blue jay –
the air dripping off him trails, spooling off
behind his wingtips carving the shallow sky –
Each wingtip dipped in ink, dragging its
calligraphy behind him.

We glide in tow below, up the gentle grade,
The swirling ribbons of vapor hanging over us –
Smoky helixes left suspended by seconds-old barrel rolls.
The wisps of cloud – stagnant gray streamers –
expand slowly like sponges breathing in.

Our balance is pleasant, flooding back so comfortably.
We have always known the glide,
and had simply forgotten;
Things were happening without us –
The world galloped by.
We mistook the sound for applause.
The world was poking us.

The euphoria rotted –
We came to our senses.
We are making our own.

Now, we are tilted just right.
Leaning forward we lead with our throats
our toes like tailfeathers behind us
raking the air just above the dirt.
Following the blue jay’s jet stream
We glide –
You, a ray parting currents
I, a ghost parting lives.

Do I dare disturb the universe? The crumpling

of the snow below my boots seems all the provoking

I can manage on such a tenuous evening.

Between my vertebrae

I can hear my nerves forget themselves.

The wetness at my toes pulls the heat from them

In long thin strands.

I am at the mercy of the sharp air,

Stripping my throat of all its precious calmness and

Squeezing the moisture from behind my eyes.

I’m lost in the world, my compass rose

A dazzling shade of absent.

This is the snow that never melts.

Your voice told us about Philadelphia and things
other people had seen. The microphone only amplified
the creaky waverings of your nervous throat.
Your other hand, now in your pocket
now out of your pocket
has been flush with the ground
and pressed against glass
and wrapped around candles
not complaining about the wax running down their knuckles.

You deserve composure; your words are deliberate.
I know that you have lived more than I have,
if such things can be tapped out on an abacus.
Your only duty is to stand straight,
look down and slide those beads over,
one
by
one.

There is no Fourth Wall, Remy.
You are saturated with stage lights
and we are all your friends.
We don’t know if your fingernails are too long
or your mouth is as dry as dandruff
or how long it took you to decide which poem to read.
And you don’t need to tell us. All you need to tell us
is that life is like a poem.
It doesn’t have to rhyme
but it’s got to end.

In the afternoon I walked to a field
where no lungs breathe
and the whispering stalks sway;
a golden field fenced by stone and trees
that hasn’t felt the stamp of a hoof in a lifetime.

A hawk sailed through the air
flapping once, twice,
not concerned with the shifting warmth
or the sighing pink of the sky;
the remaining puddles of sunlight
leaking into each other.

A twig snapped behind me.
I turned and saw nothing,
the woods complaining aloud.
I was able to convince myself
It was nothing.

And in the evening I watched the lakewater rest;
its lashes fluttering, slapping the shore drowsy
and saw the minnows unafraid, hardly darting.

The wet-feathered loon,
whose lonely low cry
went unanswered,
I watched dive.
When he returned to the surface
he shook his head of the droplets
and turned it upwards,
calling again to the cowardly moon
who said nothing.

All the noise, then, was
my mouth opening
and the loon’s echoes bouncing
around the cathedral of the lake.

I remember the little things that make me
Close my eyes and breathe through my nose,
Things I wrap around my heart,
Strips of wet papier-mâché, uniform and never drying.
Smoothing out the wrinkles and covering my soul airtight.

I forget the little things that will dry soft, old and separate
Like fraying yellowed bandages, and will flap in the wispy breeze of life.
Tattered, they will eventually tear off and dissolve into the ether,
Where they belong.

And the moments I attempted
To keep solid
Within exoskeletons of hardcover
Safe in their rigid shelter, side by side
Like a choir cheek to cheek

Will be moved by their aging spines, gently and swiftly,
Back and forth, back and forth –
Slid across the wood and against other stacked vertebrae,
Pushed down the line by a young one making room on the shelf,
The bookends yielding, losing ground.

Constellations form in the stars appearing
Between my eyelids and irises.
They shift and form shapes in
The exact perspective, the point of view I held
When I lifted my chin and stretched my body out and
Absorbed all of life around me, every cell glowing
With reassurance and comfort.

And even when the toxic wrappings cling to me; when
An ashy blot embedded beneath the skintight surface
Zigzags like a scarab beetle scuttling its little black mass
Back and forth, back and forth
Settling in a place it knows it will be safe –

I retain a shallow pond of floating flowerheads
Small and flat as the palm of my hand,
Somewhere, calm and secure
Swirling slow as the rotation of Earth.

And when ripples appear, solitary and booming
I do not worry, for my petals and lily pads and
My favorite floating lotus gracefully sidestep
Back and forth, back and forth,
Leaning with the momentum of the disturbance.

And even if one is splashed or sunken, ruined forever
I can always see it faintly in the depths;
The flower in her hair that morning
Changing color as the years go by.

Years go by and it remains.
Either behind the the left ear or the right,
back and forth, back and forth
it doesn’t matter, all that matters is
that I see it’s there, a fresh and silent lullaby.

she’s a muted piano
and she can ring out every once in awhile
but I hesitate to push the keys hard -
that calloused ivory
should be tickled

and she sings out so smooth
so gentle
with a four note chord
I can sit there for hours
with my fingers heavy

but she’s no interlocutor

I am afraid of the scene that keeps popping up in my head
of you with a baby on your hip with my eyes and your eyes
and the sink running and your hands full
and the flower on the window sill dying
and my tie thin and woolen and
you asking me for a hand
and instead I step up behind you and
give you a kiss on the side of your neck
and your hair gets caught in my lips and
I blow a raspberry
and the child on your hip blows one back
and I smile and turn off the faucet.

This water tastes like rust,
I thought. Coughing, I stole
your attention, and with my eyes,
as I yanked at the air,
I crammed words through your
sockets, that I knew
would get caught in your throat.

Indecision is a nervous dog,
eyes like the plastic saucer in
a rousing game of air hockey,
or a restless somnambulist
shuffling from doorway to doorway
back and forth across the hall.

I held a fistful of broken glass
each shard an angled glance I had received.
Putting my hands together as if in prayer,
I began to rub.
Either like an evil villain watching a plan come together,
or a cold vagrant huddled round a trash can campfire,
I don’t know what I was going for;
a sewn up mirror or a pile of sand.

What I got was a mirror -
a Frankenstein of reflections
whispering to me in grunts and whimpers.
I was silent, listening to the labored breaths
of the mirror, the gravelly crackling
of its flakes moving independently,
rubbing up against each other, gritty.

It spoke up, and rattled out something wise.
“There are certain opportunities here
that do not exist there.”
I breathed hot on the mosaic of silver
and wiped with my elbow, my sleeve
snagging edges here and there.

Micah leaked onto the carpet.
The mirror wheezed as if in pain.
“You will stay,”
it said. The metallic sutures dissolved
and once again I was carrying a collection
of shattered glares.

Your beauty is like that of an oil spill.
Iridescent black, the shimmering rainbow
melting into darkness.
Poured onto the surface, spreading just
the way we’ve come to expect.
After it’s been slathered on to the
gray textured quietude that is comfortably familiar
nobody really knows what to do
except whisper and stare
terrified and mesmerized
at the slimy sheen catching the moonlight
in all the wrong ways.

Like the sound of a watch wrapped in cotton
I hear you with my bones.

Cracking my knuckles beneath the water lapping my shoulders
the sound doesn’t reach my eardrums but enters me anyway.

And walking through an empty street,
my past tugs at me sleeve.

The cold weather wedges slimy clouds under my skin
Foot steps drowning in the cough of the night.

In the same breath I wonder how I let you go
and how I ever fell in love with you in the first place.

the blood in my arms
feels like cold water mixed with
electricity

I see you every day, almost smiling,
And you see me, and remember when we
went to school together, and you do smile
and wave and I shiver but I smile too.
I look upon you like nothing else;
light of a different color swirls around you.
Reluctant hope and reluctant fear
boil in my belly because I’m not sure of you
and I’m even less sure of me. And even
stroking these keys I am nervous.
Because now it is real and not just
another figment of my overactive imagination.

You appear – at lunchtime – far too often
I gave up believing in coincidences a long time ago.
What is your significance?

I have dreams of you that
startle me.
My stomach is confused, like when I’m on a boat in a dark room
My compass spins

And I don’t need fanciful images and
beautiful words when I think of you
Because the image of you that glides around
is always smiling, and always
close.
In my dreams we’re always sure
My heart slips down and beats with a growl
because new passion is stronger than anything I can remember.

My skull’s interior is carved with your name
in cursive letters, long and elegant.
Your penmanship impresses me
every time my eyes roll back.

Let’s drink wine and play Scrabble
and listen to the music we really like
and not listen to what we feel each
other would enjoy. Let’s share our
actual personalities, beliefs, the things
we say when we are by ourselves.
Let’s walk in the woods, holding hands
and talk about the possibilities of other
universes. Let’s have comfortable silences
and not worry about awkward situations
let’s listen to each other breathing
and watch movies neither of us have seen.
I’ll let your head put my shoulder to sleep
and finally be happy with the company I keep.

your hand knocked my hand away
and said, here
and your fingers danced for me
marching past each other
skipping steps and halfsteps
skimming their heels along the ivory
as they swung

I leaned back into your chest
and said, oh.