The Book of Things
Amends
Family
language is the moon's side of the sun (that star)

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The Book of Things

for Ales Steger

Tuck this whisper in a drawer labeled comfort.
Lock it with drunk, ecstatic beauty:

 
Your face close enough to mine for a photograph.      
Your breath hollow enough to mimic my own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amends

for Brian Foley

What we say to say
I want you to be madly loved.
 
It’s just several freckles
on fire. They’re just burning
 
away to ash.
Some will be saved

in a folio marked “justice.”
Some will fold into one

another becoming skin.
Truth: there is a story
 
devoted to hurt on the line.
Truth: We will read it later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Family

for Nikkita

There’s something sweet about a muddled voice
echoing across a single ice cube.
 
This sounds like something
my mother a poem would say.
 
This sort of straight-grained
timbre mauls me today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We turn pale over manuscripts sleep has faded & sponged clean of Ash.
                                  —Andre Breton / Philippe Soupault

 

 

language is the moon’s side of the sun (that star)
pushed in lunar distances avoiding
any real knowledge of time

 

 

*

 

One simple method is to hold

 
the hand above the horizon with the arm (stretched out).

 

 

*

 

through the hand’s palm ash is circular breath
the construction is imaginary and tart like stars

 

 

*

 

The width of the little finger is an angle just over a star
(horizon) and can be used to estimate the elevation of the sun

 

 

*

 

Ash pleas to be locked in an oak tree
keyed within a star’s pleas

 

 

*

 

I would have been wood oh so long ago