IDENTITY POLITIC

As an object in space 

may be extended 

through many different 

time dimensions 

without every really "belonging"

to any of them,

so "i" 

is a shibboleth, 

a torture device 

of convenience, 

a lever used to prod 

parity into abeyance—

better yet: 

a clever code 

used to bootstrap 

the rest of you 

into continuing its 

sentence.

Meanwhile, the past 

and the present 

are your two 

divorced parents:

divisive 

but just a little 

too significant—

indispensable 

to your very 

survival, in fact—

yet acutely 

and instructively  

unwilling 

or unable 

to even so much as 

coexist. 

GHOST STORY

When it comes to the next life, 

half-seen is only 

half-believed; 

if every uninterrupted 

second of our lives 

was an object 

infatuated with its 

image in the mirror—

in other words, its redoubled

but left-handed opposite—

then what does that say 

about changing 

the subject? 

*

To simply begin again 

would seem 

more expedient 

than an excess of oblivion.

But 

knowledge and its limits 

are provisional pairs 

of binary digits. 

A buyer's remorse code, 

held "in contempt" 

of what? 

*

Take this mute testimony 

of branches, for instance, 

first puncturing, then devouring 

every color on the horizon: 

less like the rattling chains 

of some dolorous phantom

than the chains of coincidence 

and fate we get caught in—

tangled, we say

when we're lucky enough, but 

strangled the one time

we're not. 

AFTER THE SNOW LEAVES

land 

battered bare

like a skeleton—

like a picked-

clean rib cage: empty, 

shrunken, brittle, frivolous—

like a blank landscape 

painting in which 

anything can happen—

like a camouflaged

cat that feels 

stealthily superior 

 

while assiduously licking 

her claws clean 

and the tips of every tooth—

like the infinite grandeur 

of a mountaintop view 

getting compressed until 

whatever is left 

resembles blandness—

and the truth. 

FOR THE Nth TIME

As if brand new 

to the fierce 

wild angles 

and delirious 

verve of their 

iridescent bodies, 

hordes of starlings 

have begun 

to swarm the branches 

of the bare tulip 

poplar trees 

every afternoon 

to flap and gossip 

in madcap anticipation 

of the new season. 

For a moment, there is 

not a scrap of silence 

or of room;

then, the spell breaks, 

and the murmuration 

dissipates

as the world at large 

exhales, relaxes, 

and moves on, 

forgetting 

for the nth time, as it 

mercifully must, 

that there's still so many 

small gods at large 

on the planet—

and yet 

so little heaven. 

CONFESSION

To the tire-

marked rat corpse, 

lying half-squashed 

in the pockmarked 

asphalt of the alley's 

left wheel rut: 

yes, of course 

I hope the rain comes 

to flush you well away—

but still I can't 

wish that you didn't 

exist. 

After all, 

to whom else but you 

is it safe to confess 

all my worst 

bents and most 

hideous secrets?

The ways I've been 

callous or raised 

vindictive fists—

or worse, how I've been 

in no rush 

to make change? 

I am not proud 

of this, but what 

can I say?

The slow road to hell 

is long, but it's paved. 

And at least 

until now, I've had 

the sense to get out 

of faster traffic's way. 

CHRISTENING

We label the chutes 

and bulbs now emerging 

as aconite,

snow drop,

crocus,

or primrose—

as if it profited us 

to designate discretely 

the preludes 

to this end of repose 

as these blind and half-starved 

harbingers of spring.

But how much more

would be gained, I wonder, 

if we just let that hunger rage 

in our wonder 

and called these new feelings 

by their actual names? 

SYNCHRONIZE YOUR WATCHES

"Get with the program,"

we like to say—

as if joining the story 

already in progress—

however nebulous, 

humdrum, or rotten—

would align us 

with its future twists 

and keep us safe 

from being forgotten. 

*

There's a right way 

and a wrong way 

to get with the winning team. 

You can urge on 

your own undoing 

like a Sophocles chorus, 

or fly underneath 

the swarming angels 

of your doom, 

then sink 

to the bottom, try to 

quorum-sense the storm.

*

In the best case, 

death is a lot 

like sleep: 

less a shorting out 

of focus 

than a broadening 

of attention—

a late-

in-the-third-act 

realization 

and acceptance of that

which has 

already happened.