Sunday, February 22, 2009

I think now of the house starting from the corners and then going in. There is a use in piecing this together. Keep the kitchen walls bare mother always told me. It's the busiest room in the home, keep it the starkest. A house is built from the outside in. A house is a container. It is emptied from the inside out. Its skeleton w


ill be remembered. This house was our vetree branches remember a chimney. The windows are blown out now. They are seen by what is not there. The roof is sunken now. The roof swallowed our attic. The attic where


our secrets slept. The attic where on rainy nights you could hear the raccoons. From the corner room you could see the ships in port. From here I can see it intact. A house after our own hearts: not withstanding many winters, inclement weather, shifting neighborhood lines, a highway, the industry forgotten. I am old now. I have few fascinations left. Preserving his name. Ke


eping the walls from crumbling, the boughs from crashing in. Each room behind a closed door and inside them secret plays happening one act at a time. Every floorboard a name shouted on a city street. There is



the human desire to be bound, to be withheld. A house



could not contain all the dead


words

#3

a little white

house lingers

in
my memory

of that

little white house i dream

every night

the
little boy rows

what
does the body


become?
expression stays longer than

bone turns to

powder easier than

and only teeth

remain.
Yes, he'd say, I do remember the jellyfish washed up on the shore.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

the end

Dead words bloom tucked
under tongue: His name, some
verbs; the scrim is lifted, the
language learned.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Language is so arbitrary
that nada can mean nothing
in one place and hope in another.

He's not leaving
behind feathers,
only saying hello.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

As a species
we have little
instinct left.

Feel the ground through
tremble lips. Hear from
which direction a train is coming.