THE FORGE

we’re speaking by the heat of the
forge, perspiring, charlie grasping
the end of my steel rod with gloved
hands, i pounding metal atop the
metal shop anvil with a sledge ham
-mer.

One night of nothing

When the languorous motion of bats and owls overthrows the scorching August air
making a party only takes three

One night of nothing
heavy      on an empty

for M

   i.
In the beginning there was only the girl
and the ocean. Someone was telling a story; 

in the story a girl’s friend died, an accident, 
so she walked into the sea, breathed

Your hair blows like a plastic grocery bag...

Many days I realize my dreams are fiction half way through.

"Lyric" and "Obvious Pairs"

its stagnant swollen limbs...

"Strange," "Rare Books," "New Suit," and "The Killer"

in this one you’re a six foot / two hundred pound prize

"Why This Pregnant Woman Walked Out of a Subway Restaurant in Tears" and "The Return of Sad Beck, Thank God"

"A Diaristic Quality but Everything Is Still Gone" and "Jonas Mekas at the Tate Modern"

if i say 'i am sorry' to so-and-so...

Most people prefer the Vulcan statue...

it must have been the fifth...

Outside a window a stag picks at an apple core,
its antlers, tilted downwards, catch on a branch,
it stumbles, takes a breath, regains its footing.
                        A wooden sign—nondescript

"The Courtyard" and "Double Jeopardy"

one from the spit where I watched them...

Two cop cars nose to rear...

None of us have The Touch,

Though we have felt The Touch

*

We are all (all of us

Wearing leopard-print dusters Just once,

I was thirty hands tall (like one whole horse

Standing on

                             After Qu Yuan

In my country, our insults give benefit of doubt. Nǐ yǒu bìng— 
You are sick—                                              as if there’s an

oh longed-for, awaited beloved. she says my name
        wrong and makes me come hard. i catalog
lovers like this, coins in kitchen water. six years on,
         type thirsty into google

On that spirited Emmy night,
when the camera cut to you
and you radiating in red satin
said to the world
“It’s an honor just to be Asian”
I lost my breath.
Time stopped,
blindsided by this

          (Dol Hareubang, Jeju Island, South Korea)

And there you sit, your basalt belly swollen heavy,
a gentle smile playing at your stone lips. To say I
sought you out would be a bald-faced

with the flies, small handfuls of sunlight, sensation only one degree
removed from excess.

What to press a heart to, what color pulled up from the earth.

I’m looking for my time machine.

I steer the moon over my right shoulder, vertebrae
lodged above coyote ridge, winding plains road
I drive all the night’s hungers down. White light
clasping the devil’s backbone. Today snow