lights and our communal gaze

the man bends over the page,

pushes his hair behind his ears.

His words circle the stage

like a moth, a real one, 

that orbits the back of his head

like a halo (not real),

descends upon his hair.

There it folds itself up,

a neat paper boat, gray craft

on gray water. He finishes

on an anapest, turns the page,

and pays no heed

to the moth embarking,

dragging our gaze

(that clumsy skier)

up and away.

light bulbs. You can see now his fingers turning

yellow. Whether from filter-less cigarettes

or jaundice I am uncertain. A man in

white says his lungs are cloudy. I find myself laughing,

“Told you to buy filtered.” Only he finds it

amusing. I catch slight phrases about kidneys:

“Kidney disease,” “kidney failure,” “transplant.”

But none of these words move me. Death has been knocking

at that boy’s door for years, yet there he was: whole.

Had I listened, maybe a white casket

filled with flowers would stop haunting my dreams.

gasp of air caught in sleepy lungs, a chill

breath, purging old tears, when our quiet world

was blank and fresh.

Our calloused feet thrummed the road in steady

beat, and armed with crusty green fishing nets

and tupperware we would traipse through dewy

grass and pass red tulips, their wide satin

petals cupping drops of shimmering rain,

bending heavily toward the ground before

the sun wilted them, spines bowed to expose

dark stamens as the red cracked and faded

and petals melted away.

The shadowy green opened to soft and

muddy bottoms, with slick rocks coated in

olive moss. We would wade in knee-deep, our

feet spinning up spirals of silty grass

and tiny tadpoles, toeing our way through

the tangle of brown weeds and the silky

layer of algae.

Standing still, trembling hands and hearts beating

in our chests, we waited for the tadpoles

to return cautiously, blindly into

our cupped palms and plastic jars. Swooping them

up we always felt triumphant as we

added them to our bucket, our big stash,

our final stockpile where they milled about

in mild shock and we ignored them as soon

as the novelty wore off.

In the afternoon we sat and watched soft

drooping leaves and silhouettes of pine trees

as they faded into the grey-pink glow

of the waning sky. We breathed in the air

and the dirt rose up and blended with hair

and skin, growing musty inside of us

until it seeped out of our pores.

So we stood up and went home dragging our

sloshing bucket to boast to our parents

and leave under the eaves of the porch til

they nearly died in the dense summer heat

and our father drove them back and dumped them

into their murky home. Our feet were black

like charcoal, careless, sinking in the road,

following the broken beat of fading light.

He obstructs the disgusting numb 

Of distant mind resistance. 

The jumper is quick, hoping his courage will shift 

Him into an exclamation point.

As he drops off, the stinging pull and kiss 

Of rushed wind hits his soles, thrust 

With no firmly fastened street 

To land on. There is only the silt sitting 

Under glassy water fast asleep. 

The impact is violent. 

Ripples burst near the missile. 

Hydrogen and Oxygen

Fight for their voice in the riot, 

But the body bounds back.