Boner, you’d have gotten that.
I don’t think you know Niven
disports privately with the judge.
Sacred gardener Tarzan, schooner, adieu.
Mina Harker, chosen for love
supernaturally. Same eternal eye-rolling
capability. A list of inventors killed
by their own inventions. My name.
Wool gloves sinking in muddy
trough. “Deep inside my love lies
the earth.” Wait, no. Guess how
pale I am right now. The nation’s most
famous volcano. Rising gray flash
cut off at tunnel was going to be
a whale, I’m so mad about that
house, how badly it held
our summer, how adamantly
it wouldn’t rain. How richly the mess
lives on inside an outfit. Sad salmon
pinned to black wax. Jinx-removing
candle. I could burn my body, great goat,
train chugging me away forever.
Please just don’t be in
there. Bathroom needs key.
Still door asks for knock.

I like it when a dam is breached. I like a river relieved of missing its fish pour through. I like to ride up the crenellated butte, high and no place to pee. I like how waking from a hilarious nightmare (endless testing and approval of chairs) was the big run-up to today’s make of bed. I like a plane landing on a river. I like to stride from tail to cockpit and then wheel to face the crowd. I too eat the bad cake, I say. I talk myself out of even noticing the marzipan. I like to feel my fluff factory bubbling up, and I do like some credit for that. I like that the mailman ordered special glasses to view the Transit of Venus. When I ask to borrow them, I like his lean in for a kiss. Mars, uh, wants to, but Mars, uh, can’t, I always like to say.

What kind of anchor hooks a bottom
and dreams of climbing back? Treads the green
artificial lake and dreams of climbing back?

I am out to win a face
Azurite is the most brilliant blue
method of address I can think of
Working through the holiday
No paltry banner but a man-cake

Moonshine for the new candidacy

Two paper lanterns
on New Year’s Eve:

One catches fire early
and falls onto the sand.
The other glows, floats up.

It is the furthest thing.
Nothing riding on it. The moon
tucked into a clean pocket.

In fire country names are a treat.
The rancher wants the wolf. I partnered
for metaphor. No other man

shown to me. All of his bodies
were lovely. I’d gone looking.
Generosity grew smaller than love.

I stretched to be admired. I muttered
and jumped. I animated just one face.
The kitchen was righteously mopped.

It was time to climb Wind Mountain.
Rain curtained it. If a proposal surfaced.
If a dorsal.

If the water appeared cloudy
questionable for any reason
we would not go in.

On the Boring Lava Field I have holes in my heels.

I drift affixed to spigots.

A trumpet vine of lava
tumbles up inside each leg.

I try to open a vent
in the shape of a houseboat,
the shape of a bear at dawn.

I’m already hardening
over this picture of you
smoking next to a river.