PERICARDIUM (belated Valentines Prayer)

• In my old age let me study
• the great vessels 
• the Venus drainage
• the functions which prevent 
• the heart from overflowing 
• the wise tension of that
• which is flexible 
• but does not stretch beyond 
• let me eat barley, scallions
• take bruises as signals 
• and impact as impacting 
• tally the events which sent 
• my heart blood to 
• my face, stomach
• pounding at receipt 
• even grocery store roses 
• wrapped in loud plastic
• eyes and skin changing color 
• to prove the 
• world

COURTESY + COMMON SENSE

• pale gold castle school
• it was so special, that time 
• everything mattered
• what we got at the corner store
• what kind of muffin, dense chocolate 
• or oily poppyseed 
• chocolate milk or Martinelli’s
• diet coke with lemon 
• I wish I smoked then
• so I could return to it now
• stand in a corner and put on a song
• close my eyes and hold the ember 
• out like a lantern
• airplane arms rigid drifting 
• in a controlled 
• glide

NEW KIND OF FIGHT

how could you budge
how could I 
both so chiseled
but it’s cute to be shy 
cute to be alive
cute to be too much 
blinking bright eyes 
in the hot pink landscape 
clapping telephone game 
where you pass along desires 

lap to lap figure eight 
until someone ends up 
closer to what 

they want 

IMPRINT (pear poem 4)

I can’t write it
right 

I am only just learning
to treasure everything  

I wish you could see the mountain today
I wish we could meet
in closeness

some chaotic street
some sour smell

you holding yourself in 
me letting myself out 

Pear Poem 3 (reading about the moon)

picture of you crouched on a rock 
calling the tides, sending strings out 
from your fingers 

hot palms you bought our 
movie tickets, too slippery to hold 
in the butter dark 

the moon, a coin, and our bodies
churning along 

crawling onto the couch,
one paw down my pants 

they say the moon is a stranger,
a case of faces

dark brown mole on your 
shining chin, as kids we teased 
it had its own population

shy islands 
we locked into each other, 
neither of us knowing 
what do with pain 

you learned so much 

eating and spitting yourself 
out again 

aged on the porch, young in the wind 
reading about Zen, making altars 
with garbage, cooking Poppy tea

living with your mother, your father, 

and then yourself, 
dying 

you were her moon, and mine 

dignified in the dark

eager and kind 

moon always looking for 
the sun of total
warmth 

dozing in the promise 

of a shadow 

lifting  

SHARING A BED

fire dampens 

little submissive archetype 

bearing resentful sweets

I will contain, not move

I will press you and 

never be satisfied with 

the pressing 

think of the sweet pizza 

I lived on in Queens 

roll my body out

give it a chance 

to deflate

were the stars more

when we were young, 

or were our brains just 

better at falling?

brains like leaking lakes

spring-green grass

shaking in low wind 

and a chanted whisper

daring no-one 

to love you

WHITE LIGHT DAYS

break the blanket’s trust
expect dissonance

hot in a circular time song

like why lullabies are creepy

no illumination, no auras
fear unspools 

in real time 

old dust smell from 

vent heating

dine on foraged ego waffles
from the poltergeist freezer 

we’ve made all these worlds 

to protect us from 
the real one 

AT THE DACHA

what’s more romantic

the sun or the moon? 

budgeting is romantic

eating potatoes and 
drinking warm water 
is romantic

a river like this 
still exists

a word stranger, more iridescent
than innocent

more knowing, more mutable 
than powerful

exists

a river 

not lazy or lost

not a metaphor
not the color of 

abundance  

an opal algae 

changing 

river 

exists

THINGS TO TELL MOM

In the valley the mailboxes

are hung by chains

some of the people who pass us
have snow kissed cheeks 
pink as bank candy
there are small black insects 
frozen into the snow pack 
and a busty snow woman
guarding the rock beach 
I know what you’d like to know 
like you know when I’m mad
no matter how deep I burrow the heat 
because I want to be more than I am 
and more of what I am 
the original model

the one you labored into the morning
until they told you to stop trying 
hot heavy New York City springtime 
quacking creature who grew 
to lichen-line her pockets like you showed
and laugh like kindling catching
when the mood starts to avalanche 
out here the woods open up and the river widens 

where the suspension bridge 

made of the same trees that surround it
make you halt, recall 

all mishap, design, intention 

still trumped by earth herself 
because she bad, like my brother said
same May day plus thirty or so years
on some other evergreen ridge
where we shared chips and gatorade 
relished supplies after the joint blessed lifetime
of being fed so well by you 
down deep below the ripples salmon rest 

you can throw an ice ball into the ice river 

and it remains itself 

the willow tree in its fine white dusting 
beautiful as your hair, drying from the bath
you make us soup while we’re 

out in the cold,  sliding our feet 

in the corduroy tracks 
leave a note demanding we eat 
like one deep bowl could keep us 

and you
alive forever 

BODY MEMORIES

Usually Bulgaria

sometimes school 

or a long drive with Jesse 
to a sun drenched  river rock 
a lush forest island
the eerie village train station
golden apple trees and kittens
I’m always telling you there’s 
no pressure hard enough
turn my head so you can find 
gull bladder number something 
as identified by soothing buzzcut 
in her fuchsia  Youtube basement 
now turn your face away 

I'll find the heart of your foot

gnarled knot lodged from 
day of cement pouring 
sigh at the sweetness of 
the orca in your dreams 
gentle creature who was 
maybe you or maybe me 
twisting in bed debating 
until each other opens 
the window to the rain 
that’s the axis not access point 
taking turns in the tundra 
pressing  poison 

to distribute 

the message

(TRANSMISSION FROM) BEN’S BRAIN

• same same 
• shin ramen for dinner/ pizza for lunch
• Apocalypse Now ambiance or 
• fall asleep to Timothy Morton
• can’t directly perceive 
• great changes 
• they just too much 
• as some say that the world has 
• "already ended" 
• first internetting of the morning  
• aesthetic of even alive 
• born into such liminal 
• blah blah space 
• brains look for patterns
• and maybe there are none
• until there are some

FINGERLESS MIND

fingerless glove dropped on the sidewalk 

that my bare hand didn't feel missing 

man with a shaved head and eyepatch yells 
is this your glove like a trusted friend  

might ask  - is that your mind 

at risk of drowning in the standstill 

of  a sidewalk tsunami from a jeep 

driving by 

friends don’t let friends completely lose 

their fingerless minds, or at least  console them 

when they do 

all things must pass/ time is medicine

one day you’ll wake up, and/ you are valid/

a gift

I don’t know my mind well enough 
to tell if it's lost, or mine, when someone runs breathless 

to show me what I dropped 

it's an abstract infrastructure, a locked up business 

unreachable institution draining all the resources 

between my ears

more I know what it leaks down to

the pulsing places, softer stickier zones 

the transfer stations and rain barrel realms 

peripheral warming huts,

overlooked not 

underused

VIALS

someone here wrote a poem about strawberry cheesecake 
and someone here wrote a poem about the blood inside your veins 
and when I went to get my blood drawn downtown 
the nurse had me lay down (I told her I  pass out)

softly recounted her holiday weekend

how she went to the Starbucks Reserve (she’d been meaning to go)

and had a chocolate espresso drink (that wasn’t a mocha)
and strawberry cheesecake (dang was it good)

how you holding up she asked 

hanging in there I said  (fist clenched against the draining)

well it’s over she said 

as poems are psychic algorithms 
as she an ordinary angel 
as my blood is darkness

and there's blood

to spare 

I dreamt you were taking a teaching job in Nebraska
you were so dewey pre natal romantic about it
rumors of farmhouses for  $250 a month
bragging how your “practice” would remain somatic 
no matter the regional regulations 
I was mostly jealous smirking  
day-drunk Eve loopy from blue ray and gossip
the repeated news that MSG is actually 
not bad for you, and hopefully salt and sugar neither? 
But lying in the sleep capsule with its dry dry heat 

I can taste how our old dynamic is not seasoned for vitality at all, 

and I’d trade my dreams in a pumping beat 

for 3 year old Maeve’s, flush with Covid
who wakes her family in the night 
to demand in several screams
the snack the snack the snack
in the golden bowl

RIGHT DOWN THE LINE

all these years you’ve been so rich 

standing on a mud oval 

wide enough for both your slouch 

and its shadow 

those upturned palms keep choosing you 
but how do you choose back?

In your best terrain
you’re decisive and benevolent 
mystery drunk and porous 

to all feeling

body swapped with the beholder’s
woozy devotion 

and only you/ can break your heart 

THE MOST BASIC ASTROLOGY

buy stars and chains
for your ears
fear your face 

in ten years
the love feeling is
a grabbing at the psycho prospect 
of utter happiness
grab them by the 
happiness
anger at anything
pretty 
engage your 
bottle rocket core
and gulp step
towards contact
sit in the hair filled car
hot water bodies 
open veins 
trunks swaying in the 
climate control  

affirm our link 
merging onto the highway
smelling like 
ourselves

KNOWING WHAT I KNEW

they say shame 
is a trampoline
words like that 
are wilting 
what about mold
and dust
and rashes
instead of dressing wounds
what about just 

a dress 

black and mesh 
from the thrift store
riding the bus there
we’d feel the surge 
of fresh life
days when the mountains 
made a glacial basket
for our growth 
I sewed paper roses 
to the collar 
wore black plastic bracelets
butterfly clips
everything in its place
protection 

because love and panic
were one 

UNSTAINED SHE STAINS THE WORLD

Creation has gifted me 

crying smiling coffee face

smirk of a stain 

new emblem for the real real
I made the face myself, first 
in the spring of my 

great heart leaking
I’d go to get the coffee
then hide with the coffee
then cry out the coffee
straight into my notebook
along with so many
unreadable words
now that I have the emblem 
and once I have learned to make 
the coffee consistent 
we will name our standby children
Earnest and Bashful
show them how to decorate 
windows with paper bags 
so the walker-bys
know how happy we are

inside

One of your still alive friends 
gave you his old gold minivan

song in the tape deck
slow motion blossom 

shadow of a blue bedroom 
fish tank
 
and the echo of your dead drunk friends 

singing to you on speakerphone 

propped up in the 
cold night sand 

the van hisses
and whistles 

spirit sing along of the good talk 

you’ve been carrying on  forever

punching each other 
on the bridge

climbing through each others 
windows

eating each others 
parent’s food

what will you do yells loud 

across the canopy  

but you still have teeth 

behind your teeth

and freckles beneath 
your eyes

you let yourself 
be cradled

let yourself 

spark 

throw a lime across
the table 

close your eyes 
and listen

to your friends