Poetry

To my former landlady in Santa Cruz, I stole the seashells. It was an accident, the movers wrapping your basket of giant conus, conch and murex into boxes with my broken clamshells and scuffed sea glass from more northern shores. I still hold the conch to my ears, hear  the crashing sea. When you read …

I write the word on ice-fogged glass not yet shattered by night

raids. This is routine, one man removed and cuffed and bashed about his head.

Tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1561.
I’m smiling right out of my face;

whether it’s the sunset or the hummingbirds,
I can’t be sure. I’m exhausted by springtime

Alter- / inner-ego,

vulnerable
to everything outside

and everything within.

Beneath the boat, metal
artifacts. Remnants of Deliverance, the SS
Mont-Blanc’s collision. Wartime
vessels, twisted & tacked
under sediment, the sea floor.

The sea. Sky. Glittering, two sequined
pilgrims. A tear in my sleeve grows, pale skin
disfigured by light, by shadow. Long nights

on water, my breaths I hold like fumes

It is here, in the empty lot across from K-Mart, dusk falling at the cusp
of summer, that you realize you love her.

Throwing the coyote from my bedroom
window wakes me up. Its silhouette and
wild struggle at the screen had sent me
scrabbling at my bureau drawer for something:
a lamp, a camera, a hammer.

And then a final light step:
sputtery inch of a candle

between my fingers, I’ll slip
from a sliver of sun

into black woods—

I chewed your words with my morning
coffee and watched drivers peel out
of their driveways, while you crawled
“along the thoroughfare
of snakes.” Then I ate a peach and sweetbreads.