METEMPSYCHOSIS

In the infinite 

closet known as 

immateriality, 

it must be hard 

for a cold

little soul 

searching 

and searching 

in the desperate dark 

for the armholes 

in a garment 

called the heart

of a stranger. 

MAD RUSH

Ironically, it's just that 

pliant softness

and fragility 

of open petals 

that causes us, as we 

dash past, to grow 

anxious—

to clamp our mouths 

shut, stiffen 

up, and become 

what we fear most: those 

tense, insipid 

imitations of ourselves. 

It's as though, 

when confronted 

with such 

slow and deliberate 

forms of movement, 

our subconscious aches 

from its breakneck approach.

But instead of going limp, 

we go 

unbending

as we make haste 

for cover, since we feel

so exposed. 

NEW AGE

In the end, perhaps 

it'll all come out 

like a laugh 

from the mouth of each play-

acting skeleton—

how the truth 

was a leaf 

in the air 

for a moment

just before it hit the ground:

a surfeit 

of love,

always there—

but no 

care, because 

no self. 

THAT'S PROGRESS

All our lives, 

we can't shake 

the feeling 

that our bodies 

should be more static—

not these great 

twist contests 

of vestigial viruses

and genes 

in giant lines, switching 

off and on again 

one at a time 

like they're taking turns trying 

to duck the limbo stick. 

In fact, it seems 

almost automatic—

every precious time 

we get the chance 

to close our eyes, we see 

in a dream, the lure 

of advancement 

as an abstract 

substitute for light—

that feeling of warmth 

by which we might, 

in an ancient time, 

once have felf 

unselfconscious enough 

to unspool 

in the water—to expand 

and to rise 

toward a surface that, 

to breach, we all knew 

would be suicide. 

PSYOP

Fleshy scented

fists of magnolias 

shall uncurl 

and beckon in 

troves of mist 

as cardinals 

issue falsely 

approbative dictums 

and gestures 

toward warm 

breezes come and go 

coyly as so much

conditional love—

and this 

is how April 

will manage to sell 

its thirty-

day-wind-and-rain 

hell to its victims. 

MUTE SWAN

Perhaps the only 

extant creature 

to have successfully 

upended the belief 

in her own body, 

she alone knows—

to catch the wild quiet 

and keep it 

is harder 

than it seems at first. 

And perhaps, 

to achieve this, 

she has spent her life picturing 

a breath 

without limits,

a breadth 

with no length, 

a burst far beyond 

the bounds of sound and color 

too haphazard 

to ever have been 

intended. 

But more likely, 

she has learned 

in the monochrome fire 

of repetition

how to forge 

a more effortless noise 

with neither the desire 

nor the need 

to make another. 

 

THE IMPERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

Viewing their star 

from increasingly far 

as the explosion 

we live in 

rides the spine of everything

each night will add 

just another 

milligram to hell.

As if the ghosts 

that swam in these shells 

could not possibly find 

their way home 

without reminding 

that matter can neither 

be created nor destroyed,

that the gaping 

void is no match 

for mathematics.

And so, we try to focus 

on the faith that our facts 

persist without us; 

gradually, 

we learn not to be 

afraid of growing distance—no, 

it's the tiniest 

change in brightness 

that shatters us.