where the sheep are where

Fishheads sprinkling the field like candy. Cattails tattling on the fish, their exhalations ring against poppy-roots. Here come your footsteps, trying not to be oafish, silhouettes sheared of sledgehammers. Meaning: they have nothing to say. Meaning: if you need help make it perfectly clear. If only the soft swishing of rice was a salve. You know you could put the moon in your bowl and spoon it with raspberry compote, but something up there tattoos star-shaped blisters into the back of your hand. And maybe no blood would be able to reach your finger-tips. So, keep your hands at your sides. Let the carp swallow moons and nibble your toes. Keep your pants rolled up.

Kelp.

The answer.
wrapped or braided.

You were told to make your feet like a book,
to open and read their bottoms.

With this green could it be more like a sandwich?

Sharp edges in all your dreams,
always a place called home,
but unrecognizable.

Then there’s a bone fishhook wizzing through the air.

Blue and white waves inked onto fine linen.

Peel back the skin –
there, the salmon’s trapezius. Clenching,
electric pulses dissipating in the current.

You wrap it tight, keep the metatarsal cozy,
and there might be a bed
to sleep in at the end of the road scraping in the dark.

forsythia (part 1)

Simply put, there is not enough spaghetti in the world.

There is not enough and your head is a pumpkin.

Pulp flapping like a watermill, the rhythm of days

that are indistinguishable from each other.

You say if you got to choose the flag attatched

to your spine, it would be a no-flag.

What about the wobbly thing winging off the back of your bike?

The clouds are herded into inky pens.

This rock and roll song sure beats the hell out of road rash.

Like, when the tire slips on the trolley tracks.

Oh, it’s raining and your head is still a pumpkin.

on the night/scribble something (and our sweat)

everyone step back this is a crime scene

ma’am please put away the camera

it appears that smoke has learned to talk



i says “hello thing,” to the clinging dirt

and then my ankle sheds its mask

that’s when a boomerang clips my throat



okay, i’m putting a box over here near the oleander

i’ll put your punches in it when they dud

remember: you can’t fire me, i quit



this cathedral merry-go-rounds collections of crowns

nights i jimmy the sluice-gate and sway

days i shuffle packs of flattened cans



no really, from above dotted lines artery the ground

tethering the taste of hours ago to now

a pair of lips that corner the rising sun



the left foot filling in for the right

when the drag becomes too much of a drag

step around the house for a moment let’s forget